Anne Gerdes

Oral Contraceptives and Breast Cancer Risk in the International BRCA1/2 Carrier Cohort Study: A Report From EMBRACE, GENEPSO, GEO-HEBON, and the IBCCS Collaborating Group

PURPOSE Earlier studies have shown that endogenous gonadal hormones play an important role in the etiology of breast cancer among BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. So far, little is known about the safety of exogenous hormonal use in mutation carriers. In this study, we examined the association between oral contraceptive use and risk of breast cancer among BRCA1/2 carriers. PATIENTS AND METHODS In the International BRCA1/2 Carrier Cohort study (IBCCS), a retrospective cohort of 1,593 BRCA1/2 mutation carriers was analyzed with a weighted Cox regression analysis. Results We found an increased risk of breast cancer for BRCA1/2 mutation carriers who ever used oral contraceptives (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 1.47; 95% CI, 1.16 to 1.87). HRs did not vary according to time since stopping use, age at start, or calendar year at start. However, a longer duration of use, especially before first full-term pregnancy, was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers (4 or more years of use before first full-term pregnancy: HR = 1.49 [95% CI, 1.05 to 2.11] for BRCA1 carriers and HR = 2.58 [95% CI, 1.21 to 5.49] for BRCA2 carriers). CONCLUSION No evidence was found among BRCA1/2 mutation carriers that current use of oral contraceptives is associated with risk of breast cancer more strongly than is past use, as is found in the general population. However, duration of use, especially before first full-term pregnancy, may be associated with an increasing risk of breast cancer among both BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers.

Cytogenetic abnormalities in an in situ ductal carcinoma and five prophylactically removed breasts from members of a family with hereditary breast cancer

SummaryShort-term cultures of tissue samples from three bilateral prophylactic mastectomies and onein situ ductal carcinoma from four women belonging to a family with hereditary breast cancer were cytogenetically analyzed. Clonal chromosome abnormalities were detected in five of the six prophylactically removed breasts, all of which had the histologic diagnosis epithelial hyperplasia without atypia, and in thein situ carcinoma. The same karyotypic imbalance, a loss of 3p12–14, was detected in thein situ carcinoma as well as in one of the hyperplasias, indicating that these bands may harbor a pathogenetically relevant gene in this breast cancer family. The finding of chromosome aberrations in clonal proportions in the prophylactically removed breasts indicates that a neoplastic process was already present, lending support to the view that prophylactic bilateral mastectomy in these high-risk individuals prevented the development of breast carcinoma.

Revealing preconditions for trustful collaboration in CSCL

This paper analyses preconditions for trust in virtual learning environments. The concept of trust is discussed with reference to cases reporting trust in cyberspace and through a philosophical clarification holding that trust in the form of self-surrender is a common characteristic of all human co-existence. In virtual learning environments, self-surrender might fail, due to a setting that affords strategic communication and impression management. To obtain the kind of unconditional commitment necessary for learning, one might benefit from the insights from open-source communities, in which self-articulation of goals and volunteerism promote productivity. Balancing free will in connection with study initiatives with inquiry teaching methods might encourage a practice which favours mastery-oriented learning strategies and the seeking of knowledge for its own sake.

The issue of moral consideration in robot ethics

This paper discusses whether we should grant moral consideration to robots. Contemporary approaches in support of doing so centers around a relational appearance based approach, which takes departure in the fact that we already by now enter into ethical demanding relations with (even simplistic) robots as if they had a mind of their own. Hence, it is assumed that moral status can be viewed as socially constructed and negotiated within relations. However, I argue that a relational turn risks turning the as if into if at the cost of losing sight of what matters in human-human relations. Therefore, I stick to a human centered framework and introduce a moral philosophical perspective, primarily based on Kants Tugendlehre and his conception of duties as well as the Formula of Humanity, which also holds a relational perspective. This enables me to discuss preliminary arguments for moral considerations of robots.

The role of credibility in the design of mobile solutions to enhance the social skill‐set of teenagers diagnosed with autism

Purpose – Helping Autism‐diagnosed teenagers navigate and develop socially (HANDS) is an EU research project in progress. The aim of HANDS is to investigate the potential of persuasive technology as a tool to help young people diagnosed, to whatever degree, as autistic. The HANDS project set out to develop mobile ICT solutions to help young people with autism become more fully integrated into society and the purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the design behind the HANDS toolset.Design/methodology/approach – The topic of credibility is approached from an analytical, as well as an ethical, angle in order to address issues of credibility in relation to designing assistive technological tools. In addition, the authors set out to explore possible ways in which credibility can be evaluated. The paper presents a preliminary method for the evaluation of credibility; but which requires further refinement, as well as empirical support in order to inform us about issues of system credibility. Therefo...

A Privacy Preserving Design Framework in Relation to an Environmental Scanning System for Fighting Organized Crime

This paper represents preliminary recommendations regarding the development of a privacy preserving system design framework related to the EU project, ePOOLICE, which aims at developing an environmental scanning system for fighting organized crime by providing law enforcement agencies opportunities for strategic proactive planning in response to emerging organized crime threats. The environmental scanning is carried out on a variety of sources, focusing on early warning and the disclosure of crime trends, not on individuals. Consequently, personal data are not relevant in the information context of ePOOLICE, and therefore the system will not make use of any kind of sensitive information. Particular attention are paid to the environmental scanning of data streams from social networking sites; based on the assumption that ethical and privacy issues with regard to social media scanning represent a significant challenging scenario to meet in developing a privacy preserving framework for ePOOLICE.

Issues in robot ethics seen through the lens of a moral Turing Test

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore artificial moral agency by reflecting upon the possibility of a Moral Turing Test (MTT) and whether its lack of focus on interiority, i.e. its behaviouristic foundation, counts as an obstacle to establishing such a test to judge the performance of an Artificial Moral Agent (AMA). Subsequently, to investigate whether an MTT could serve as a useful framework for the understanding, designing and engineering of AMAs, we set out to address fundamental challenges within the field of robot ethics regarding the formal representation of moral theories and standards. Here, typically three design approaches to AMAs are available: top-down theory-driven models and bottom-up approaches which set out to model moral behaviour by means of models for adaptive learning, such as neural networks, and finally, hybrid models, which involve components from both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the modelling of moral agency. With inspiration from Allen and Wallace (2009, 2000...

Issues of Security and Informational Privacy in Relation to an Environmental Scanning System for Fighting Organized Crime

This paper clarifies privacy challenges related to the EU project, ePOOLICE, which aims at developing a particular kind of open source information filtering system, namely a so-called environmental scanning system, for fighting organized crime by improving law enforcement agencies opportunities for strategic proactive planning in response to emerging organized crime threats. The environmental scanning is carried out on public online data streams, focusing on modus operandi and crime trends, not on individuals. Hence, ethical and technical issues --- related to societal security and potential privacy infringements in public online contexts --- are being discussed in order to safeguard privacy all through the system design process.

Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and Responsibility Gaps

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Big Data—Fighting Organized Crime Threats While Preserving Privacy

This chapter deals with the challenge of balancing privacy and national security in the context of big data -driven sense-making systems for crime fighting , which aim at improving law enforcement agencies opportunities for strategic, proactive planning in response to emerging organized crime threats, specifically by employing environmental scanning. It is stressed that democratic societies are faced with the challenge of striking a balance between two sides of security, formulated as absence of organized crime threats and preservation of the freedom and integrity of the individual as important presumptions for democracy. Consequently, it is argued that crime fighting technologies ought to be designed in a way that balance data utility and data privacy and hence ensure that informational harm will not occur, which might otherwise endanger citizens’ trust in law enforcement authorities and undermine police legitimacy.