In healthcare practice, care providers are confronted with tragic situations, in which they are expected to make choices and decisions that can have far-reaching consequences. This article investigates the role of moral case deliberation (MCD) in dealing with tragic situations. It focuses on experiences of care givers involved in the treatment of a pregnant woman with a brain tumour, and their ...

We investigated the effects of laughing and weeping induced by watching comedy and tragedy videos on mood and autonomic nervous function. Ten healthy female subjects volunteered for the experiment. Chest electrocardiogram and respiration curve were recorded before, after, and during watching a comedy or a tragedy video. We also asked them to fill out profiles of mood states (POMS) to evaluate t...

Resources as Commons Biologist Garrett Hardin coined the phrase “tragedy of the commons” in his 1968 essay in Science. Hardin chose the word “tragedy” carefully. In his essay, he quotes Alfred North Whitehead: “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.” Here, in Hardin’s words, is the classic example of the tragedy of t...

Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons is an analogy that shows how individuals driven by self-interest can end up destroying the resource upon which they all depend. The proposed solutions for humans rely on highly advanced skills such as negotiation, which raises the question of how non-human organisms manage to resolve similar tragedies. In recent years, this question has promoted evolution...