Introducing the new Schiller

Introducing the New Schille

Kant and Schiller on Pure Ethics: Why Philosophers Should Concern Themselves with German Literature (and vice versa)

In his book Kant's Impure Ethics, Robert Louden has definitively invalidated the traditional interpretation of a narrowly purist reading of Kant's ethics, assessing «the numerous pitfalls» associated with the very notion of  "empirical ethics" in Kantian philosophy, «with the aim of clarifying the meaning, role and status» of impure ethics and the importance of moral anthropology.

Challenges and opportunities for conducting a vaccine trial during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented challenges for healthcare systems worldwide. It has also stimulated research in a wide range of areas including rapid diagnostics, novel therapeutics, use of technology to track patients and vaccine development. Here, we describe our experience of rapidly setting up and delivering a novel COVID-19 vaccine trial, using clinical and research staff and facilities in three National Health Service Trusts in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. We encountered and overcame a number of challenges including differences in organisational structures, research facilities available, staff experience and skills, information technology and communications infrastructure, and research training and assessment procedures. We overcame these by setting up a project team that included key members from all three organisations that met at least daily by teleconference. This group together worked to identify the best practices and procedures and to harmonise and cascade these to the wider trial team. This enabled us to set up the trial within 25 days and to recruit and vaccinate the participants within a further 23 days. The lessons learned from our experiences could be used to inform the conduct of clinical trials during a future infectious disease pandemic or public health emergency