Recommendations: Are Yours Defensible?

MAY: My Memories Are Yours

In human relations engagement and continuous communication is promoted by the process of sharing experiences. This type of social behaviour plays an important role in the maintenance of relationships with our peers and it is grounded by cognitive features of memory. Aiming at creating agents that sustain long-term interactions, we developed MAY, a conversational virtual companion that gathers m...

TwiC or treat? Are trials within cohorts ethically defensible?

Pragmatic randomized controlled trials (RCTs) seek to evaluate interventions in real-world conditions and, thereby, directly inform decisions made by patients, health providers and health system managers. The recent rise in novel methods to push trials toward being more pragmatic raises several complex issues. Two articles in this issue of Clinical Trials explore the ethical issues raised by on...

Yours sincerely

What’s Mine is Yours

This study is a long-term follow-up on the health and quality of life of Good Samaritan living organ donors who donated an average of 10 years ago. Thirteen donors (kidney, liver, and lung) completed 2 surveys. Data from the RAND 36-Item Health Survey showed that for all domains, as well as the physical and mental component summary scales, the Good Samaritan donor outcomes were superior to the ...

A Defensible Divine Command Theory

The term 'The Divine Command Theory of Ethics' is similar to 'The Ontological Argument' in that there is no unique entity deserving of that title. Rather, there is a multiplicity of theories, each of which is appropriately taken to be a divine command theory. The strongest versions are, if not the finest, at least definist. That is, according to these versions moral predicates, such as 'is obli...