Applying a Precautionary Approach to Mobile Contact Tracing for COVID-19: The Value of Reversibility.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents unprecedented challenges to public health decision-making. Specifically, the lack of evidence and the urgency with which a response is called for, raise the ethical challenge of assessing how much (and what kind of) evidence is required for the justification of interventions in response to the various threats we face. Here we discuss the intervention of introducing technology that aims to trace and alert contacts of infected persons-contact tracing (CT) technology.

[Covid-19: An ad hoc public health ethics consultation].

In this paper we describe the process and content of our ad hoc public health ethics consultation for a Bavarian health authority in relation to Covid-19.

Does encouraging a belief in determinism increase cheating? Reconsidering the value of believing in free will.

A key source of support for the view that challenging people's beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work.

Six Propositions against Ageism in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19 and of dying from it increases with age. This statistical association has led to numerous highly problematic policy suggestions and comments revealing underlying ageist attitudes and promoting age discrimination. Such attitudes are based on negative stereotypes on the health and functioning of older adults.

Does It Matter How We Die? Ethical and Legal Issues Raised by Combining Euthanasia and Organ Transplantation.

If, in jurisdictions with legalized euthanasia, obtaining organs for transplant from euthanized people is allowed, must their organs be taken only or should be allowed to be performed of vital organs? Asked another way, if "Donation after Death" is practiced, why not "Death by Donation?" The article addresses two questions. First, "What issues does connecting euthanasia and organ donation raise?" They include dealing with uncertainty regarding the definition of death, defining what constitutes conscientiously objecting healthcare professionals' involvement in euthanasia, and whether connecting euthanasia and transplantation makes conflicts of interest for healthcare professionals unavoidable. Additional issues raised by death donation include breach of the "dead-donor rule"; what would constitute informed consent to it; and what impact its acceptance would have on important foundational societal values, especially respect for human dignity and human life.

The American and Canadian wartime godmothers of Belgian soldiers. Joseph de Dorlodot's Correspondence and Documentation Office (1915-1919).

Lieutenant Joseph de Dorlodot (1871-1941), a Belgian aristocrat and philanthropist, was the Director of the Belgian Correspondence and Documentation Office in Folkestone, England. This article uses the 'Joseph de Dorlodot' archive collection (Archives Générales du Royaume de Belgique, Bruxelles) to investigate the emotional support provided by the Correspondence Office during the First World War. Throughout the conflict, its mission was to facilitate the sending of mail between Belgians, to provide them with legal advice and to offer humanitarian assistance to those who were in material and emotional distress.

Farmers' perceptions and knowledge of natural enemies as providers of biological control in cider apple orchards.

While the importance of biological control for crop production is widely acknowledged, research on how farmers perceive on-farm natural enemies remains scarce. This paper examines cider-apple farmers' perceptions and knowledge of the concept of biological control and the specific organisms underpinning its provision (i.e.

Screening for multi-drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria: what is effective and justifiable?

Effectiveness is a key criterion in assessing the justification of antibiotic resistance interventions. Depending on an intervention's effectiveness, burdens and costs will be more or less justified, which is especially important for large scale population-level interventions with high running costs and pronounced risks to individuals in terms of wellbeing, integrity and autonomy. In this paper, we assess the case of routine hospital screening for multi-drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (MDRGN) from this perspective.

Feminist perspectives on the history of humanitarian relief (1870-1945).

Taking a Feminist perspective as a starting point, this introductory piece seeks not only to integrate women as the main agents within the history of humanitarian relief, but also to understand their assistance to victims, from the Franco-Prussian War to WWII, as a type of situated knowledge which was broadly associated with the notion of care through the implementation of practices such as dressing wounds, vaccinating, feeding and clothing vulnerable populations. This political and epistemological position allows us to analyse the agency of women humanitarians as a caring power involving strong gender, class, religious and colonial power relations within the history of Western Empires. Furthermore, our Feminist approach enables us to deconstruct the essentialist vision through which women humanitarians have frequently been depicted as compassionate mothers or loving angels, as well as to contextualize their contrasting experiences of complicity with Western Empires and resistance to male delegates and political and medical representatives.

Correction to: Decision-making at the limit of viability: differing perceptions and opinions between neonatal physicians and nurses.

After publication of our article [1] it was brought to our attention that we did not have permission to reproduce the questionnaire in Additional File 1.

A female genealogy of humanitarian action: compassion as a practice in the work of Josephine Butler, Florence Nightingale and Sarah Monod.

Taking the Second Conference of the International Abolitionist Federation as a starting point, this article reconstructs a female genealogy of humanitarian action by shedding light on the transnational connections established by Josephine Butler, Florence Nightingale and Sarah Monod between the abolitionist cause against the state regulation of prostitution and the nursing movement. By using gender and emotion histories as the main methodologies, their letters, journals and drawings are analysed in order to question their alleged natural compassion towards the unfortunate by examining this emotion as a practice performed according to gender, class, religious and ethnic differences. As an expression of maternal imperialism, this essentialist vision provided them with an agency while taking care of victims.

Results dissemination of registered clinical trials across Polish academic institutions: a cross-sectional analysis.

Objectives: To establish the rates of publication and reporting of results for interventional clinical trials across Polish academic medical centres (AMCs) completed between 2009 and 2013. We aim also to compare the publication and reporting success between adult and paediatric trials.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

An EAPC white paper on multi-disciplinary education for spiritual care in palliative care.

Background: The EAPC White Paper addresses the issue of spiritual care education for all palliative care professionals. It is to guide health care professionals involved in teaching or training of palliative care and spiritual care; stakeholders, leaders and decision makers responsible for training and education; as well as national and local curricula development groups.

Methods: Early in 2018, preliminary draft paper was written by members of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) spiritual care reference group inviting comment on the four core elements of spiritual care education as outlined by Gamondi et al.

Attitudes towards animal study registries and their characteristics: An online survey of three cohorts of animal researchers.

Objectives: Prospective registration of animal studies has been suggested as a new measure to increase value and reduce waste in biomedical research. We sought to further explore and quantify animal researchers' attitudes and preferences regarding animal study registries (ASRs).

Design: Cross-sectional online survey.

Publication rates in animal research. Extent and characteristics of published and non-published animal studies followed up at two German university medical centres.

Non-publication and publication bias in animal research is a core topic in current debates on the "reproducibility crisis" and "failure rates in clinical research". To date, however, we lack reliable evidence on the extent of non-publication in animal research. We collected a random and stratified sample (n = 210) from all archived animal study protocols of two major German UMCs (university medical centres) and tracked their results publication.

Experimental infections in humans-historical and ethical reflections.

Vaccine efficacy and prophylactic treatment of infections are tested best when the vaccinated or treated individual is challenged through deliberate infection with the respective pathogen. However, this trial design calls for particular ethical caution. Awareness of the history of challenge trials is indispensable, including trials that were problematic or even connected to abuse.

Feasibility and long-term efficacy of a proactive health program in the treatment of chronic back pain: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: To facilitate access to evidence-based care for back pain, a German private medical insurance offered a health program proactively to their members. Feasibility and long-term efficacy of this approach were evaluated.

Methods: Using Zelen's design, adult members of the health insurance with chronic back pain according to billing data were randomized to the intervention (IG) or the control group (CG).

Palliative Caregivers' Spirituality, Views About Spiritual Care, and Associations With Spiritual Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Spiritual care is integral to palliative care. It engenders a sense of purpose, meaning, and connectedness to the sacred or important and may support caregiver well-being.

Aim: To examine caregivers' spirituality, religiosity, spiritual well-being, and views on spiritual/religious support.

Protestant Christian attitudes to ART.

Study Question: How do Christian religious beliefs affect attitudes to ART?

Summary Answer: Attitudes to ART depend on the religiosity of the respondent, and although the majority of those that had successfully used ART were positive or moderately positive in their views, the acceptability of procedures fell when damage to the marriage relationship or the embryo was a potential outcome.

What Is Known Already: Religion can impact views on ART. Sanctity of marriage and sanctity of the embryo are major concerns for some Christians, but details are unclear.

Lethal privacy: Quantifying life years lost if the right to informational self-determination guides genetic screening for Lynch syndrome.

Genetic relatives of hereditary colorectal cancer patients with Lynch syndrome (LS) are at risk of cancer. Testing both colorectal cancer patients and relatives of mutation carriers for LS allows targeted prevention. However, this could mean disclosing sensitive health data to family members.

Patients' and Caregivers' Contested Perspectives on Spiritual Care for Those Affected by Advanced Illnesses: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

Context: Spiritual care refers to practices and rituals addressing spiritual/religious concerns. It supports coping with loss and finding hope, meaning, and peace. Although integral to palliative care, its implementation is challenging.

Effects of Seclusion and Restraint in Adult Psychiatry: A Systematic Review.

Determining the clinical effects of coercion is a difficult challenge, raising ethical, legal, and methodological questions. Despite limited scientific evidence on effectiveness, coercive measures are frequently used, especially in psychiatry. This systematic review aims to search for effects of seclusion and restraint on psychiatric inpatients with wider inclusion of outcomes and study designs than former reviews.

Pellegrino, MacIntyre, and the internal morality of clinical medicine.

There has been significant debate about whether the moral norms of medical practice arise from some feature or set of features internal to the discipline of medicine. In this article, I analyze Edmund Pellegrino's conception of the internal morality of medicine, and situate it in the context of Alasdair MacIntyre's influential account of "practice." Building upon MacIntyre, Pellegrino argued that medicine is a social practice with its own unique goals-namely, the medical, human, and spiritual good of the patient-and that the moral norms that govern medical practice are derived from these goals.

Result dissemination from clinical trials conducted at German university medical centers was delayed and incomplete.

Objectives: Timely and comprehensive reporting of clinical trial results builds the backbone of evidence-based medicine and responsible research. The proportion of timely disseminated trial results can inform alternative national and international benchmarking of university medical centers (UMCs).

Study Design And Setting: For all German UMCs, we tracked all registered trials completed between 2009 and 2013.

Nature's contributions to people in mountains: A review.

Mountains play a key role in the provision of nature's contributions to people (NCP) worldwide that support societies' quality of life. Simultaneously, mountains are threatened by multiple drivers of change. Due to the complex interlinkages between biodiversity, quality of life and drivers of change, research on NCP in mountains requires interdisciplinary approaches.