L. Johnson

The topic, timing and type of anonymous consults arriving to our ethics consultation service over the years compelled consideration of their purpose and function. The service-focused goal and role of ethics consultation is maximised through interactions with consult requesters for clarity and human connection. Ethics consultants should consider means to deidentify requests as part of ethics processes and remain transparent when this is not feasible. Authoritative guidance cautions against leveraging anonymous consults. This paper offers a trifold approach to the topic of anonymous ethics consultations: elucidation of argument and counterarguments; a summation of public-facing description of anonymous consult availability from 20 national healthcare settings; and reflections from our own institutional experiences. We theorise that the nature of anonymous consults risks the inability for the ethics consultation team to engage in a functionally equivalent ethics process as for consults with named requesters. We uphold the good of confidential consultations as an alternative to anonymous consults. As anonymous consults may be fulfilling a health system gap, any decision to remove mechanisms to place anonymous consult should practically identify and connect requesters to the right door for these concerns and proactively engage preventive ethics principles to bolster organisational ethics.

Entrepreneurial activitiesEntrepreneur/entrepreneurialactivities are considered the de facto for value creation in economies. Evolving knowledge shows that factors responsible for productive entrepreneurship in a region do not occur in isolation, leading to the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept that argues that productive entrepreneurship results from a systemic interaction among various interdependent actors, factors, and institutions. The university, as a knowledge centre, is considered a major catalyst in the entrepreneurial processEntrepreneur/entrepreneurialprocess. Specifically, the university is also a sub-ecosystem that can support/constrain the creation of firms (spinoffs) through the interactive development that takes place among the various elements. In other words, the universityUniversity has what it takes to be an incubator for spinoffs based on the knowledge created through research and development and the systemic interactions among relevant stakeholders. In this chapter, we explore the cases of three thriving entrepreneurial universitiesEntrepreneur/entrepreneurialuniversities: one in Europe, one in Africa, and one in Nigeria. The chapter examines the major actors driving entrepreneurship in these tertiary institutions, the factors supporting or constraining the growth of university-based spinoffs, and the interactions of actors and factors to create a thriving entrepreneurial university. Exploring the three cases provides a wider context for understudying university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems. The implications for emerging university-based entrepreneurial ecosystemsEntrepreneur/entrepreneurialecosystem are discussed.

Sustainable entrepreneurshipSustainable entrepreneurship has emerged as a global key driver of economic growthEconomic growth, social development and environmental sustainabilityEnvironmental sustainability. It has transformed entrepreneurship from contributing to environmental and social issues to being the solution to these issues. In Nigeria, where environmental and socio-economic challenges are prevalent, sustainable entrepreneurship holds great potential for addressing these challenges while encouraging inclusive growth and development. However, the state of sustainable entrepreneurship in Nigeria remains understudied, awareness is low and there is limited empirical evidence on the barriers and opportunities for sustainable entrepreneurshipSustainable entrepreneurship. This exploratory study fills this research gap by conducting a comprehensive literature review of the state of sustainable entrepreneurship in Nigeria and synthesizing existing literature on sustainable entrepreneurship in Nigeria. This research identifies opportunities for sustainable entrepreneurship in Nigeria, barriers to its adoption, and how Nigeria can take a cue from more developed countries in promoting sustainable entrepreneurship. The study’s findings add to the current literature on sustainable entrepreneurship and inform policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders in Nigeria, while raising awareness about sustainable entrepreneurship in Nigeria. It aids the facilitation of the creation of effective policies, initiatives and strategies to encourage sustainable entrepreneurship and contribute to the country’s sustainable development goalsSustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible with Happy’s personhood.

Clinical research ethics consultation has emerged in the last 15 years as a service to those involved in the conduct of clinical research who face challenging issues for which more than one course of action may be justified. To respond to a growing field and need for opportunities to share knowledge and experience, the Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative, established in 2014, holds monthly webinars for its 90 members to present their most challenging cases to each other and engage in substantive discussion. Every year, the group selects the four most interesting cases with accompanying commentaries for publication in the American Journal of Bioethics. This timely book brings together these cases and commentaries under a range of common themes for the first time, creating a permanent collection in book format that encourages and supports readers to gain a better understanding of the ethical challenges that they may face, and providing them with a convenient and reflective resource to reference in their own deliberations. Key Features- Comprehensive collection of cases and commentaries, chosen to reflect the range of issues faced by clinical researchers and oversight committees and illustrate the diversity of analysis that can arise. Supplemented by short introductions to each section. Focus on ethical rather than regulatory issues. Essential Reading for graduate students in bioethics and post-doctoral bioethics fellows, and useful for all participants in training grants that are funded by either NIH or NSF Presenting challenging cases to stimulate reflection, the book provides invaluable guidance to clinicians in training and in practice and to investigators, bioethics consultants, regulators, and oversight bodies.

As humanity grapples with its significant global footprint in this era, there is a growing fascination with delving into the experiences and viewpoints of other animal species. This juncture offers an opportune moment to delve into the aesthetics of non-human animals by using diverse interdisciplinary methods and viewpoints. Insights of feminist aesthetics demonstrate how traditional understanding of aesthetics and aesthetic experience are heavily influenced by cultural assumptions about gender. Aesthetics as a humanistic discipline has determined the portrayal of non-human animals as beings with no capacity for aesthetic sensibility. In this thesis, I aim to bring to emergence the connection between human exceptionalist assumptions about aesthetics and the production of scientific knowledge about non-human animals. I defend the necessity of recognizing birds as beings with surprising and complex aesthetic sensibilities. Currently most scientists favor the adaptationist idea that the perception of beauty is influential in non-human animal lives only insofar as it serves to advertise fitness, and favor the reproduction and survival of the species. By weaving together insights from feminist philosophy of science and post-humanist studies of the human-animal bond, I present a framework capable of challenging human exceptionalist accounts of aesthetics. Particularly, I promote a methodology sensitive to the construction of gender in scientific portrayals of birds and their aesthetic preferences. I intertwine feminist critiques to pinpoint and challenge adumbrations of androcentrism in both animal sciences and aesthetics. Finally I examine, through an ungendered framework, instances of bowerbird behavior, and pinpoint aesthetic agency as an ability that we share in orchestration with other non-human animals. I conclude by proposing new avenues for research of non-human animal aesthetics.

A survey was administered during fall 2013 to 163 self-identified adult ethical vegans and/or ethical vegetarians in the United States to determine whether the respondents+ beliefs meet the definition of religion according to U.S. federal law. The data demonstrate that a majority of the surveyed group possesses beliefs concordant with the definition of "religion" according to federal statutes, federal judicial tests, and regulatory law. Since religion is a protected characteristic in U.S. law, and ethical veganism meets various definitions for religion, then ethical veganism should be recognized as a religion and a protected characteristic under U.S. law.

Future generations do not exist, and are not determinate in their make-up. The moral significance of future generations cannot be accounted for on the basis of a purely individualistic ethic. Yet future generations are morally significant. The Person-Affecting Principle, that (roughly) only acts which are likely to affect particular individuals are morally significant, must be augmented in such a way as to take into account the moral significance of Homo sapiens, a holistic entity which certainly does exist. Recent contributions to Environmental Values by Alan Carter and Ernest Partridge are criticised (but not entirely rejected)

The authors of this article are previous or current members of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs (CECA) Committee, a standing committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). The committee is composed of seasoned healthcare ethics consultants (HCECs), and it is charged with developing and disseminating education materials for HCECs and ethics committees. The purpose of this article is to describe the educational research and development processes behind our teaching materials, which culminated in a case studies book called A Case-Based Study Guide for Addressing Patient-Centered Ethical Issues in Health Care (hereafter, the Study Guide). In this article, we also enumerate how the Study Guide could be used in teaching and learning, and we identify areas that are ripe for future work.