School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemHarnessing genomics to improve health in the Eastern Mediterranean Region - an executive course in genomics policy.(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2005-01-21)BACKGROUND: While innovations in medicine, science and technology have resulted in improved health and quality of life for many people, the benefits of modern medicine continue to elude millions of people in many parts of the world. To assess the potential of genomics to address health needs in EMR, the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office and the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics jointly organized a Genomics and Public Health Policy Executive Course, held September 20th-23rd, 2003, in Muscat, Oman. The 4-day course was sponsored by WHO-EMRO with additional support from the Canadian Program in Genomics and Global Health. The overall objective of the course was to collectively explore how to best harness genomics to improve health in the region. This article presents the course findings and recommendations for genomics policy in EMR. METHODS: The course brought together senior representatives from academia, biotechnology companies, regulatory bodies, media, voluntary, and legal organizations to engage in discussion. Topics covered included scientific advances in genomics, followed by innovations in business models, public sector perspectives, ethics, legal issues and national innovation systems. RESULTS: A set of recommendations, summarized below, was formulated for the Regional Office, the Member States and for individuals.* Advocacy for genomics and biotechnology for political leadership;* Networking between member states to share information, expertise, training, and regional cooperation in biotechnology; coordination of national surveys for assessment of health biotechnology innovation systems, science capacity, government policies, legislation and regulations, intellectual property policies, private sector activity;* Creation in each member country of an effective National Body on genomics, biotechnology and health to:- formulate national biotechnology strategies- raise biotechnology awareness- encourage teaching and training of biotechnology- devise integration of biotechnology within national health systems. CONCLUSION: The recommendations provide the basis for a road map for EMR to take steps to harness biotechnology for better and more equitable health. As a result of these recommendations, health ministers from the region, at the 50th Regional Committee Meeting held in October 2003, have urged Member States to establish national bodies of biotechnology to formulate a strategic vision for developing biotechnology in the service of the region's health. These efforts promise to raise the profile of genomics in EMR and increase regional cooperation in this exciting new field.
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ItemWhat do hospital decision-makers in Ontario, Canada, have to say about the fairness of priority setting in their institutions?(BMC, 2005-01-21)BACKGROUND: Priority setting, also known as rationing or resource allocation, occurs at all levels of every health care system. Daniels and Sabin have proposed a framework for priority setting in health care institutions called 'accountability for reasonableness', which links priority setting to theories of democratic deliberation. Fairness is a key goal of priority setting. According to 'accountability for reasonableness', health care institutions engaged in priority setting have a claim to fairness if they satisfy four conditions of relevance, publicity, appeals/revision, and enforcement. This is the first study which has surveyed the views of hospital decision makers throughout an entire health system about the fairness of priority setting in their institutions. The purpose of this study is to elicit hospital decision-makers' self-report of the fairness of priority setting in their hospitals using an explicit conceptual framework, 'accountability for reasonableness'. METHODS: 160 Ontario hospital Chief Executive Officers, or their designates, were asked to complete a survey questionnaire concerning priority setting in their publicly funded institutions. Eight-six Ontario hospitals completed this survey, for a response rate of 54%. Six close-ended rating scale questions (e.g. Overall, how fair is priority setting at your hospital?), and 3 open-ended questions (e.g. What do you see as the goal(s) of priority setting in your hospital?) were used. RESULTS: Overall, 60.7% of respondents indicated their hospitals' priority setting was fair. With respect to the 'accountability for reasonableness' conditions, respondents indicated their hospitals performed best for the relevance (75.0%) condition, followed by appeals/revision (56.6%), publicity (56.0%), and enforcement (39.5%). CONCLUSIONS: For the first time hospital Chief Executive Officers within an entire health system were surveyed about the fairness of priority setting practices in their institutions using the conceptual framework 'accountability for reasonableness'. Although many hospital CEOs felt that their priority setting was fair, ample room for improvement was noted, especially for the enforcement condition.
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ItemNanotechnology and the developing world.(Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2005-05)How nanotechnology can be harnessed to address some of the world's most critical development problems
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ItemGlobal health challenges: The need for an expanded discourse on bioethics(PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2005-07-01)Benatar and colleagues argue that the world has changed profoundly since the birth of modern bioethics in the 1960s, and that bioethics needs to address today's global health problems.
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ItemTop 10 health care ethics challenges facing the public: views of Toronto bioethicists.(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2005-06-26)BACKGROUND: There are numerous ethical challenges that can impact patients and families in the health care setting. This paper reports on the results of a study conducted with a panel of clinical bioethicists in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the purpose of which was to identify the top ethical challenges facing patients and their families in health care. A modified Delphi study was conducted with twelve clinical bioethicist members of the Clinical Ethics Group of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. The panel was asked the question, what do you think are the top ten ethical challenges that Canadians may face in health care? The panel was asked to rank the top ten ethical challenges throughout the Delphi process and consensus was reached after three rounds. DISCUSSION: The top challenge ranked by the group was disagreement between patients/families and health care professionals about treatment decisions. The second highest ranked challenge was waiting lists. The third ranked challenge was access to needed resources for the aged, chronically ill, and mentally ill. SUMMARY: Although many of the challenges listed by the panel have received significant public attention, there has been very little attention paid to the top ranked challenge. We propose several steps that can be taken to help address this key challenge.
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ItemThe Bohol School of Painting: An Analytical and Archival study of five panel paintings from the Philippines(Archetype Publications, 2005)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWondrous monsters: Representing conjoined twins in early sixteenth-century German broadsheets(Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2005-01-01)In sixteenth-century Europe widely circulated broadsheets regularly reported the birth of physically monstrous children and animals, often regarded as signs of God's wrath and important heralds of misfortune. A negative understanding of these births has consequently dominated studies of the phenomenon. Yet a number of pre-Reformation publications represent such births, both textually and visually, in positive terms. Three cases of conjoined twins born in the German towns Worms, Ertingen, and Tettnang around 1500 demonstrate how children perceived as monstrous could nonetheless be viewed in a sympathetic light, interpreted as positive political omens, and even represented in the guise of the infant Christ.
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ItemBaby bitches from hell: monstrous little women in film(Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2005)The Surrealists were fascinated by what they perceived as the dual nature of the little girl, her propensity for innocence and evil. This theme has also proven an enduring one in the history of the cinema and provided the basis for many acclaimed films from The Innocents to Lolita. The view of the female child as particularly close to the non-material world of fantasy and the imagination was central to the beliefs of the Surrealists. They regarded childhood as "the privileged age in which imaginative faculties were still à l’état sauvage – sensitive to all kinds of impressions and associations which education would systematically 'correct'". "Dissecting mystery is like violating a child", Bunuel was fond of saying.' In the 1924 Manifesto, Breton claimed, "The spirit which takes the plunge into Surrealism exultantly relives the best of its childhood."
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ItemLucio Fontana: the post-Fascist masculine figure( 2005)The ‘cut’ paintings of the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899 – 1968) are intensely sexual objects. For many viewers, their rawly coloured surfaces ruptured by deep vertical gashes strongly evoke female genitalia. Fontana’s violent cutting of the canvas has also been compared to the muscular gestures of male ‘action’ painters such as Jackson Pollock. What such interpretations fail to grasp, however, is the critique of gender identity, and in particular masculine identity, at the heart of Fontana’s work. However, as I will show, Fontana relied on an inversion of diametrically opposed notions of maleness and femaleness rather than any deconstruction of the opposition itself. As I outline in my paper, Fontana’s critique first emerges in the artist’s depictions of the male body immediately after Italy’s military defeat in WWII. Fontana’s limp and mangled clay warriors splashed with oozing layers of reflective glaze directly challenge the hard, ballistic ideal of the masculine body theorized in the proto-fascist writings of the Italian Futurist poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti. Drawing on the work of Hal Foster and Jeffrey Schnapp on the representation of fascist masculinity, I argue that Fontana developed an alternative model of maleness to that encountered in the official culture of Mussolini’s Italy. Accordingly, as I also demonstrate, his work gives insight into the extraordinary transformations in male body imagery that took place in avant-garde and official cultural circles in Italy during the first half of the 20th century.
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ItemWhen worlds collide: The contemporary museum as art gallery(Routledge, 2005-05-30)