Menschenwürde: ein für die Medizinethik irrelevanter Begriff?

Zusammenfassung: Es wurde für die These argumentiert, dass der Begriff der Würde in der Medizinethik nutzlos sei und in den Fällen, in denen er verständlich verwendet wird, nichts anderes meint als den Respekt vor der Autonomie von Personen. In diesem Aufsatz soll gezeigt werden, dass diese These falsch ist. Es wird ein Begriff von Würde vorgestellt, der sich nicht auf den Begriff des Respekts vor der Autonomie von Personen reduzieren lässt. Anhand der Diskussion um ein Sterben in Würde soll auch deutlich werden, dass auf den Begriff der Würde auch in der Medizinethik nicht verzichtet werden kan

The Reason-Giving Force of Requests

How do we change the normative landscape by making requests? It will be argued that by making requests we create reasons for action if and only if certain conditions are met. We are able to create reasons if and only if doing so is valuable for the requester, and if they respect the requestee. Respectful requests have a normative force – it will be argued – because it is of instrumental value to us that we all have the normative power of creating reasons by making requests. The normative power has the potential for creating and shaping valuable interactions and relationships for the requester and the requestee. This potential could not be realized if we did not have the normative power of making requests. It will also be shown why this account of the normative force of requests should be preferred to the two alternative accounts of the reason-giving force of requests that have been put forward by James H.P. Lewis and David Enoch

Dient die Ethik einem öffentlichen Interesse?

The paper deals with the question of how moral philosophy could serve public interest. It accepts the view that moral philosophy does serve public interest. However, it rejects the reasons that are typically provided for such a position. It rejects the claim that the beneficial role of moral philosophy is due to moral philosophers’ expertise which allows them to provide the public with the right answers to moral questions. Instead, it holds that the benefits are to be found elsewhere. Moral experts, the paper argues, differ from experts on non-normative issues. One should not act on the judgements of moral philosophers. This is not because moral philosophers are unlikely to get it right in moral matters, but because one only has reasons to follow their judgements if one has a moral understanding of the practical issues in question. And in this respect, it is argued, moral philosophy can indeed serve a public interest, namely by improving people’s moral understanding

Human Rights and Human Dignity: A Reply to Doris Schroeder

According to Doris Schroeder, the view that human rights derive from human dignity should be rejected. She thinks that this is the case for three different reasons: the first has to do with the fact that the dominant concept of dignity is based on religious beliefs which will do no justificatory work in a secular society; the second is that the dominant secular view of dignity, which is the Kantian view, does not provide us with a justification of human rights, i.e. rights all humans have; and the third reason has to do with the fact that dignity is understood in too many different ways to provide us with a justification of human rights. It is argued in this paper that none of these reasons for separating human rights from human dignity is convincing. It is true, it will be argued, that some accounts of dignity will not be successful in justifying human rights. But there is no reason to assume that no account of human dignity is capable of doing this. In the final part of the paper a concept of human dignity is presented that could indeed provide us with a justificatory basis for human rights

Biophysical properties of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and their relationship with HOG pathway activation

Parameterized models of biophysical and mechanical cell properties are important for predictive mathematical modeling of cellular processes. The concepts of turgor, cell wall elasticity, osmotically active volume, and intracellular osmolarity have been investigated for decades, but a consistent rigorous parameterization of these concepts is lacking. Here, we subjected several data sets of minimum volume measurements in yeast obtained after hyper-osmotic shock to a thermodynamic modeling framework. We estimated parameters for several relevant biophysical cell properties and tested alternative hypotheses about these concepts using a model discrimination approach. In accordance with previous reports, we estimated an average initial turgor of 0.6 ± 0.2 MPa and found that turgor becomes negligible at a relative volume of 93.3 ± 6.3% corresponding to an osmotic shock of 0.4 ± 0.2 Osm/l. At high stress levels (4 Osm/l), plasmolysis may occur. We found that the volumetric elastic modulus, a measure of cell wall elasticity, is 14.3 ± 10.4 MPa. Our model discrimination analysis suggests that other thermodynamic quantities affecting the intracellular water potential, for example the matrix potential, can be neglected under physiological conditions. The parameterized turgor models showed that activation of the osmosensing high osmolarity glycerol (HOG) signaling pathway correlates with turgor loss in a 1:1 relationship. This finding suggests that mechanical properties of the membrane trigger HOG pathway activation, which can be represented and quantitatively modeled by turgor

Suizidbeihilfe ist nicht nur eine medizinische Frage

Ob jemand Zugang zu einem tödlichen Mittel erhält, ist eine grundsätzliche ethische Entscheidung. Sie obliegt dem Staat und nicht nur den Ärzten. In der Schweiz fehlt eine solche gesetzliche Regelung