Can the Philanthropic Imperative Enhance International Health Care?

Elsewhere I have argued that, historically, the public and private funding of health care has been fueled primarily by four mixed motives, namely, the redemptive, the utilitarian, the prudential, and the charitable motives. In this paper, I further explore what I call the unifying moral force of the philanthropic imperative. The philanthropic imperative interfaces these four motives by potentially appealing to the consciences of wealthier Northern countries to provide medical resources to the sick and hurting in the typically poorer South. This, as a matter of our collective duty to others consistent with the teachings of Immanuel Kant, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Peter Singer, among others. Essentially, the philanthropic imperative states that we have a duty to reduce sickness and suffering and promote, as generously as possible, the health of our fellow human beings. The philanthropic imperative thus invites individuals and governments to ponder the related questions: How ought we proceed to effectively and sustainably relieve the suffering of others? And why ought we give away valuable medical resources to the hurting in foreign countries, resources that we may eventually need for the welfare of our own citizens at some future date? I conclude by confronting the twin objections from futility and from limited medical resources. At bottom, I indicate how the philanthropic imperative both transcends and overrides these objections and, in so doing, potentially strengthens the funding of both national and transnational public health care programs. Finally, the philanthropic imperative is shown to complement the environmental and public health goals of The Earth Charter

The Public Funding of Health Care: A Brief Historical Overview of Principles, Practices, and Motives

Nationally sponsored programs designed to fund health care for the general public are largely a twentieth century phenomenon. Yet a long glance backward at the medical and public health history of Western civilization, extending from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, reveals earlier periods when governments, religious institutions, and other groups provided some measure of medical relief for the sick, the poor, and the homeless. In this essay, I will provide not an exhaustive but rather an illustrative account of this oft forgotten fact. My objectives are threefold. First, to remind us that the active concern of society for the health of its citizens is hardly a new development arising full born, as it were, out of the biomedical revolution and refined moral sensibilities of our present age. As I will suggest, our current interest in public health, and the related question of how to allocate medical resources fairly, is part of a larger evolutionary social process. Second, to conjecture that the impulse of caring for the sick and injured, using public or private resources,1 is typically driven by a variety of sometimes overlapping motivations, both religious and secular in origin. Third, to indicate that no single monolithic philosophy of providing medical care for the masses emerges from the historical record. That is, no unified pattern of health care organization or individual or communal motivation can plausibly account for this seemingly altruistic behavior, behavior which is putatively aimed at promoting the common good of all members of society. Given the interdisciplinary scope of this discussion, my inquiry will weave together sociological, psychological, and philosophical strands of evidence. Constraints of length will limit us primarily to developments in Europe and the United States. In the end, a limited sampling of societal practices, individual or communal motivations, and philosophical considerations will indicate that no simple story can be told about the public or private funding of health care. Proceeding more or less chronologically, I will introduce evidence demonstrating that redemptive, utilitarian, prudential, and charitable impulses (among others) are at work in the humane decision to use public or private funds to provide medical care for the benefit of the sick or infirm. While I do not claim that these four motivations constitute a complete list, they do emerge as a recurring and significant typology — helping to solidify the emerging modern public health movement in England, the United States, and elsewhere in the West by the late nineteenth century

Deep Ecology and End-of-Life Care

Physicians and nurses caring for terminally ill patients are expected to center their moral concerns almost exclusively on the needs and welfare of the dying patient and the patients family. But what about the relationship of traditional medical ethics to the emerging new theories of environmental ethics, like deep ecology? As we glide into the twenty-first century, can anyone seriously doubt that the mounting global concerns of environmental ethics will eventually influence the ethics of medicine too? For example, suppose physicians were to integrate the core values of an ecocentric environmental ethic like deep ecology into contemporary North American norms of healthcare for the dying. How would this shift affect the attitudes and treatment decisions of caregivers toward the terminally ill? Specifically, would the medical community’s adoption of the deep ecology ethic help or hurt the interests of the dying and their families? [excerpt

A hierarchy of personal agency for people with life-limiting illness

The purpose of the study was to discover how individuals diagnosed with a life-limiting illness experienced themselves as agents, even in the face of death. In this qualitative, multiple case study design four female outpatient hospice patients with terminal illnesses received humanistic counselling to explore their experiences of themselves and their illness. A graded set of 8 levels of personal agency emerged from analyses of the texts of their sessions, ranging from a passive, objectified Non-agentic mode to an active, autonomous Fully Agentic mode, with multiple subcategories representing further gradations within levels. Our results are consistent with guidelines for supportive and palliative care with advanced cancer, which specify that dying patients’ needs be assessed and that they be involved in decisions about their care

Power-over-Tether UAS Leveraged for Nearly Indefinite Meteorological Data Acquisition In the Platte River Basin

The integration of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) has increased in the field of agriculture. These systems can provide data that was previously difficult to obtain to help increase efficiency and production. Typical commercial off the shelf (COTS) UASs have significant limitations in the form of small payloads, and short flight times which inhibit their ability to provide significant quantities of useful data. We present the development of a novel power-over-tether UAS that leverages the physical presence of the tether to integrate sensors at multiple altitudes along the tether. The UAS can acquire data nearly indefinitely to sense atmospheric conditions and gradients along the tether. We present the development of the prototyped system, along with the results of field experiments where we demonstrate 6 hours of continuous flight at 50 feet altitude, and a 1 hour flight at sunset to acquire atmospheric temperature from an array of sensors. An evaluation of the systems performance is presented along with a discussion of the systems future implications

Western European Architecture Studies

STEP Category: Education AbroadPresentation of 4-week summer session 1, "Maymester" study abroad for Western European Architecture Studies.The Ohio State University Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP)Academic Major: Architectur

Offshore Offerings by Foreign Entities: How Far Will the SEC Reach to Regulate?

Many countries\u27 regulatory regimes, including that of the United States, traditionally require registration of all investment services offers or securities sales to their citizens. Many have claimed that the Internet will make such financial regulation obsolete. With the advent of the new technology, regulatory bodies across the globe have been forced to redefine what constitutes an offer to purchase securities within their borders. They have come up with a variety of models for regulating cross-border capital flows. Even countries with similar legal traditions such as Britain, the US, and Australia have taken different approaches

Financial Economists, Financial Interests and Dark Corners of the Meltdown: It’s Time to Set Ethical Standards for the Economics Profession

Epstein and Carrick-Hagenbarth analyze the conflict of interest that exists when academic financial economists, acting in their roles as presumed objective experts in the media and academia on topics, such as financial regulation, fail to report their private financial affiliations. The authors analyze the linkages between academia, private financial institutions and public institutions of nineteen academic financial economists who are members of two groups who have put forth proposals on financial reform.<span> </span>In addition, they review media writings and appearances, as well as the academic papers of these economists between 2005 and 2009, to determine the portion of the time these economists identified their affiliations with private or public financial institutions when writing about or commenting on financial policy issues. The vast majority of the time, these economists did not identify these affiliations and possible conflicts of interest. In light of these and related findings the authors call for an economists’ code of ethics which would require academic economists to identify these connections in appropriate contexts.Professional Ethics, Financial Regulation, Academic Economists, Codes of Ethics, conflicts of interest