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Biomedical subjects

Chris MacDonald

Publications and source records attributed to Chris MacDonald.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2004

Business Ethics 101 for the biotech industry.

Biotechnology companies face ethical challenges of two distinct types: bioethical challenges faced on account of the nature of work in the life sciences, and corporate ethical challenges on account of their nature as commercial entities. The latter set of challenges has received almost no attention at all in the academic literature or media. This paper begins to remedy that lacuna, examining ethical issues that arise specifically on account of the status of biotech companies as commercial entities. The focus here is on three representative issues: product safety, corporate social responsibility, and corporate governance. It is argued that each of these issues poses particular ethical challenges for companies in the biotech sector. In the area of product safety, it is noted that biotech companies face particular challenges in determining what counts as a "safe" product, given the contentious nature of what might count as a "harm" in the biotech field. In the area of corporate social responsibility, the adoption of a "stakeholder approach" and an attempt to manage the social consequences of products pose special challenges for biotech companies. This is due to the enormous range of groups and individuals claiming to have a stake in the doings of such companies, and the trenchant controversies over just what the social consequences of various biotechnologies might be. In the area of corporate governance, biotech companies need to seek out and follow best practices regarding the ways in which information, authority, and influence flow between a company's shareholders, managers, and Board of Directors, if they are to avoid duplicating the ethical and financial scandal that brought down ImClone. An important meta-issue, here--one that renders each of these corporate ethical challenges more vexing--is the difficulty of finding the appropriate benchmarks for ethical corporate behavior in a field as controversial, and as rapidly evolving, as biotechnology. Three programmatic suggestions can be made: Firstly, scholars and others interested in the ethical performance of the biotech sector must seek out and build opportunities for richer interdisciplinary collaboration. Secondly, companies within the biotech sector must seek out expertise and build capacity and competency in dealing with the corporate ethical issues that arise in their sector. Finally, companies in the biotech sector should explore the opportunities for collective problem solving afforded by the existence of local, national, and international industry associations such as the Biotechnology Industry Organization, BIOTECanada, and EuropaBio.

Benchmarking↗
PubMed2003

Will the "secular priests" of bioethics work among the sinners?

In this paper I explore briefly the "secular priesthood" metaphor often applied to bioethicists. I next ask: if, despite our discomfort with the metaphor, we were to embrace the best aspects of the priesthood(s)--which I identify as the missionaries' willingness to work among sinners and lepers, at their own peril--would we be able to live up to that standard of bravery? I then draw a parallel with the fears of contagion currently be voiced (by Carl Elliott and others), with regard to bioethicists working in or near coporate settings. I argue that such fears may themselves have a number of deleterious effects, and I suggest several possible positive steps in response to that fear.

Bioethics↗
PubMed2002

Temporal order memory in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and medial temporal amnesia.

Two groups of patients with global amnesia resulting either from Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) or from medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage were compared with groups of matched healthy control subjects on a list discrimination paradigm. Item recognition memory was matched across the amnesic and control groups in order to determine whether KS, but not MTL amnesics are disproportionately impaired on list discrimination as predicted by Parkin's [Functional significance of etiological factors in human amnesia. In: Squire LR, Butters N, editors. Neuropsychology of memory, 2nd ed. New York: The Guilford Press, 1992] hypothesis. However, both patient groups were impaired disproportionately on the temporal order memory task, which is inconsistent with Parkin's hypothesis. It remains possible that the KS patients are more disproportionately impaired than those with MTL damage because both patient groups performed at floor on the list discrimination task. The results are consistent with theories that postulate a critical role for the hippocampus in the kind of associative memory which underlies memory for temporal order, but not in recognition of single items or arbitrary associations between items of similar kinds.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Implications of organizational ethics to healthcare.

Organizational ethics is an emerging field concerned with the study and practice of the ethical behaviour of organizations. For effective application to healthcare settings, we argue that organizational ethics requires attention to organizations' special characteristics combined with tools borrowed from the fields of business ethics and bioethics. We identify and discuss several implications of this burgeoning field to healthcare organizations, showing how organizational ethics can facilitate policy making, accountability, self-evaluation, and patient and business perspectives. In our conclusion, we suggest an action plan for healthcare organizations to help them respond appropriately to their ethical responsibilities.

Decision Making, Organizational↗
PubMed2002

Ethics and genetics: susceptibility testing in the workplace.

Genetic testing in the workplace is a technology both full of promise and fraught with ethical peril. Though not yet common, it is likely to become increasingly so. We survey the key arguments in favour of such testing, along with the most significant ethical worries. We further propose a set of pragmatic criteria, which, if met, would make it permissible for employers to offer (but not require) workplace genetic testing.

Employment↗
PubMed2002

Treatment resistance in anorexia nervosa and the pervasiveness of ethics in clinical decision making.

Clinical efforts to treat anorexia nervosa (AN) are constantly resisted by patients. Although the primacy of patient autonomy is a cornerstone of modern medical ethics, clinicians will nonetheless often be justified in pursuing particular interventions despite such resistance, give the reduced competency of patients suffering from this multifactorial psychiatric illness. While a literature exists on the ethical justification for imposing treatment, that literature has focused exclusively on situations in which patients refuse treatment outright. When patients resist rather than refuse treatment, clinicians are faced with the ethical challenge of deciding whether particular interventions constitute justified infringements upon patient autonomy. Given the fact that treatment resistance is endemic to AN, we see that ethical decision making must also be a continual part of the disorder's treatment. This paper argues that the treatment of AN merely constitutes a particularly clear example of what is in fact a general phenomenon: ethical decision making pervades all clinical practice.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Nurse autonomy as relational.

This article seeks an improved understanding of nurse autonomy by looking at nursing through the lens of what recent feminist scholars have called 'relational' autonomy. A relational understanding of autonomy means a shift away from older views focused on individuals achieving independence, towards a view that seeks meaningful self-direction within a context of interdependency. The main claim made here is that nurse autonomy is, indeed, relational. The article begins with an explanation of the notion of relational autonomy. It then explains both the collective and the individual application of the term 'professional autonomy'. Finally, it argues that both senses of professional autonomy are best understood as relational, and suggests some implications of this conclusion.

Feminism↗
PubMed1997

Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Oxo-Bridged Dinuclear and Hydroxo-Bridged Trinuclear Chromium(III) Assemblies.

The structural and spectroscopic properties of a novel dinuclear chromium-oxo and a trinuclear chromium-hydroxo complex are reported. The dinuclear assembly, [Cr(2)(&mgr;-O)(2)(&mgr;-O(2)CMe)(bpy)(2)(H(2)O)(2)]ClO(4).bpy.[bpyH]ClO(4) (1), crystallizes in the monoclinic space group Cc with a = 16.8259(8) Å, b = 21.9622(11) Å, c = 14.6056(8) Å, beta = 122.1830(10) degrees, V = 4568.0(4) Å(3), and Z = 4. The structure was refined with 4378 observed reflections having F > 2.0sigma(F), giving final R factors of 0.0721 and 0.1305 for R and R(w2), respectively. The [Cr(2)(&mgr;-O)(2)(&mgr;-O(2)CMe)](+) core is structurally akin to those of recently reported isoelectronic [Mn(2)(&mgr;-O)(2)(&mgr;-O(2)CMe)](3+) complexes. The trinuclear assembly, [Cr(3)(&mgr;-OH)(2)(&mgr;-O(2)CMe)(4)(O(2)CMe)(2)(bpy)(2)]ClO(4) (2).5CHCl(3) crystallizes in the triclinic space group P&onemacr; with a = 16.104(5) Å, b = 17.623(5) Å, c = 12.236(3) Å, alpha = 93.33(1) degrees, beta = 92.81(1) degrees, gamma = 64.84(1) degrees, V = 3136.68 Å(3), and Z = 2. The structure was refined with 6732 observed reflections having F > 2.33sigma(F), giving final R factors of 0.0602 and 0.0616 for R and R(w), respectively. Results of electronic, (1)H and (2)H NMR, and EPR spectroscopy, fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry, and variable-temperature magnetic susceptibility studies of these materials and the use of Cr-oxo assemblies as isoelectronic models of the photosynthetic manganese assembly in high-S states are discussed.

Journal Article↗