Doctor can I buy a new kidney? I've heard it isn't forbidden: what is the role of the nephrologist when dealing with a patient who wants to buy a kidney?

Organ trafficking is officially banned in several countries and by the main Nephrology Societies. However, this practice is widespread and is allowed or tolerated in many countries, hence, in the absence of a universal law, the caregiver may be asked for advice, placing him/her in a difficult balance between legal aspects, moral principles and ethical judgments. In spite of the Istanbul declaration, which is a widely shared position statement against organ trafficking, the controversy on mercenary organ donation is still open and some experts argue against taking a negative stance. In the absence of clear evidence showing the clinical disadvantages of mercenary transplantation compared to chronic dialysis, self-determination of the patient (and, with several caveats, of the donor) may conflict with other ethical principles, first of all non-maleficence. The present paper was drawn up with the participation of the students, as part of the ethics course at our medical school. It discusses the situation in which the physician acts as a counselor for the patient in the way of a sort of “reverse” informed consent, in which the patient asks advice regarding a complex personal decision, and includes a peculiar application of the four principles (beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and autonomy) to the donor and recipient parties

Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins

The three-pillar conception of (social, economic and environmental) sustainability, commonly represented by three intersecting circles with overall sustainability at the centre, has become ubiquitous. With a view of identifying the genesis and theoretical foundations of this conception, this paper reviews and discusses relevant historical sustainability literature. From this we find that there is no single point of origin of this three-pillar conception, but rather a gradual emergence from various critiques in the early academic literature of the economic status quo from both social and ecological perspectives on the one hand, and the quest to reconcile economic growth as a solution to social and ecological problems on the part of the United Nations on the other. The popular three circles diagram appears to have been first presented by Barbier (Environ Conserv 14:101, doi: 10.1017/s0376892900011449, 1987), albeit purposed towards developing nations with foci which differ from modern interpretations. The conceptualisation of three pillars seems to predate this, however. Nowhere have we found a theoretically rigorous description of the three pillars. This is thought to be in part due to the nature of the sustainability discourse arising from broadly different schools of thought historically. The absence of such a theoretically solid conception frustrates approaches towards a theoretically rigorous operationalisation of ‘sustainability’

Effects of open access and articles‑in‑press mechanisms on publishing lag and first‑citation speed: a case on energy and fuels journals

[[abstract]]Since the birth of first ever one in 1665, academic journals have long been recognized as one of the important formal channels for scholarly communication. Followed by the introduction of electronic journal, scholarly communication with significant reformation steps into a brand new era after singing the same old tune for hundreds years. It is therefore interesting to see how the electronic format affects time efficiency of communication via academic journals. In this study, differences on the time of communication between articles published under the open access (OA) model and in the article in press (AIP) format will be analyzed based on the characteristics of publication lag and first-citation speed. The correlation of publication lag and first-citation lag to the journal evaluation indicators will also be explored. A total of 24,176 journal articles collected from 64 journals indexed in the JCR Energy and Fuel field, one of the hot research topics recently, are selected as research objects. Publication and first-citation lags of these articles are calculated separately based on the submission date, revised date, accepted date, publication date, and month of the first-citation occur. Results demonstrate that the OA mechanism can influence the lag of publication, but it does not form a citation advantage. The AIP mechanism affects citation speed but is not significantly related to publication lag. It can be seen that OA and AIP mechanisms contribute to the efficiency of scholarly communication at different stages.[[notice]]補正完