Alfred I. Tauber: Transgressing

Revisiting Hume's Law.

From the immune self to moral agency Comments

The views I expressed almost 20 years ago have not significantly changed. I still believe that the self-metaphor governs the practice and theoretical orientation of most practicing immunologists, but the neat boundaries of “self” and “other” continue to be broken and replaced by a spectrum of functions based on a gradation of immune responses that do not neatly fit the self-other division. When...

Cells Inhibitor, on Human Neutrophils and Primary Mouse Epidermal Contrasting Actions of Staurosporine, a Protein Kinase C

Staurosporine, a recently described microbial alkaloid, is uniquely potent as an inhibitor of protein kinase C in vitro, being active at MM concentrations rather than the /IM concentrations typical of other inhib itor classes. Like these other inhibitors, however, Staurosporine exhibits only limited selectivity among different protein kinases. We report here that, in intact human neutrophils, I...

Sick autonomy.

Complex social and economic forces have placed patient autonomy at the center of medical ethics, and thereby displaced an older ethic of physician beneficence. This development arose, and is sustained, by waning trust in the traditional doctor-patient relationship. As patients have increasingly become clients and consumers, a contract basis for medical care has put the ancient covenant of care ...

Freud's dreams of reason: the Kantian structure of psychoanalysis.

Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected "philosophy," and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcende...