Human Rights and Human Experience in Eating Disorders

Over the last quarter century, hospital admissions for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa have continued to rise. During that same period, the law pertaining to food-refusal has generated new challenges. New legal principles have come to prominence in the ongoing effort to introduce robust human rights protections in care settings. And we are seeing a subtle but important shift in the legal framework within which cases of persistent food-refusal are adjudicated. An earlier legal approach could focus narrowly on questions of whether, for example, anorexia nervosa is a mental disorder, whether a particular person living with anorexia presents a “danger to self or others,” and whether involuntary hospital treatment is effective. By contrast, the emerging legal approach explicitly requires attention to the decision-making processes at work in food-refusal, and to the “beliefs and values” that inform a person’s “will and preferences” – both as regards food and as regards treatment. The old questions were hard. The new questions are harder, and they call for new forms of investigation into the phenomenology and psycho-social dynamics of food-refusal

Løgstrup's Unfulfillable Demand

In his pioneering work of moral phenomenology, K. E. Løgstrup offered a phenomenological articulation of a central moment of ethical life: the experience in which “one finds oneself with the life of another more-or-less in one’s hands” (cf. EF p. 58/ED p. 46). In such circumstances we encounter what Løgstrup calls simply the ethical demand. Løgstrup’s preferred formulation of the content of that demand is taken from the Bible: Love thy neighbor. This neighborly love is expressed in the form of spontaneous, selfless care for the other. We shall have occasion in what follows to return to the content that Løgstrup associates with the ethical demand, but my primary focus here is not its content but its distinctive modality. Løgstrup specifies that modality in a fourfold analysis: the ethical demand is radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. My concern in what follows will be with the fourth element in this analysis – or what I shall refer to simply as Løgstrup’s unfulfillability thesis. My discussion addresses three specific questions: (1) Is it coherent to suppose that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? (2) Why does Løgstrup hold that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? (3) What kind of response is appropriate in the face of an unfulfillable ethical demand

Authenticity, Insight and Impaired Decision-Making Capacity in Acquired Brain Injury

We respond to commentaries from Barton Palmer and John McMillan on our research findings concerning the assessment of decision-making capacity after brain injury. We found much to agree with and it is striking how so many of the issues relating to decision-making capacity (DMC) assessment find resonances outside of an English jurisdiction. California and New Zealand are clearly grappling with a very similar set of issues and the commentaries speak to the international nature of these discussions

Assessing Decision-Making Capacity after Brain Injury: A Phenomenological Approach

The assessment of decision-making capacity in patients with brain injuries presents a range of clinical and legal challenges. Existing guidance on the conduct of such assessments is often generic; guidance specific to patients with brain injury is sparse and coarse-grained. We report on an interview-based study of decision-making capacity in patients suffering from acquired brain injury and organic personality disorder. We identify challenges associated with the assessment of DMC in this patient population, review three bodies of relevant research from cognitive neuropsychology and neurophysiology, and draw on phenomenological analysis to identify three distinct abilities that play a role in decision-making, but which can be compromised in patients with organic personality disorder. We address the challenge of translating clinical findings into legally attestable results

Life inside and out: making and breaking protein disulfide bonds in Chlamydia

© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Disulphide bonds are widely used among all domains of life to provide structural stability to proteins and to regulate enzyme activity. Chlamydia spp. are obligate intracellular bacteria that are especially dependent on the formation and degradation of protein disulphide bonds. Members of the genus Chlamydia have a unique biphasic developmental cycle alternating between two distinct cell types; the extracellular infectious elementary body (EB) and the intracellular replicating reticulate body. The proteins in the envelope of the EB are heavily cross-linked with disulphides and this is known to be critical for this infectious phase. In this review, we provide a comprehensive summary of what is known about the redox state of chlamydial envelope proteins throughout the developmental cycle. We focus especially on the factors responsible for degradation and formation of disulphide bonds in Chlamydia and how this system compares with redox regulation in other organisms. Focussing on the unique biology of Chlamydia enables us to provide important insights into how specialized suites of disulphide bond (Dsb) proteins cater for specific bacterial environments and lifecycles

Violent States and Existential-Therapeutic Work in Mexican Ex-Voto Painting

This paper undertakes an analysis of the distinctive forms of self-consciousness, self-representation and existential-therapeutic work characteristic of the ex-voto paintings in Mexican folk art, and examines the appropriation thereof in Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: The OtherSide of Group Support Systems

That Group Support Systems (GSS) can enhance group performance appears to be the case. However, GSS research has drawn heavily from a rational perspective, one that may not be able to comprehend the full range of phenomena at play in group meetings. Although a social perspective may provide greater explanatory power, little has been done to investigate GSS phenomena from this viewpoint. This paper considers more fully the social impacts of GSS by varying levels of GSS restrictiveness and assessing the effect that this may have on group cohesiveness. We find that groups in the more restrictive treatment experienced lower perceived cohesiveness than did those in the non-restrictive treatmen