M. Therese Lysaught

Docile Bodies: Transnational Research Ethics as Biopolitics

This essay explores the claim that bioethics has become a mode of biopolitics. It seeks to illuminate one of the myriad of ways that bioethics joins other institutionalized discursive practices in the task of producing, organizing, and managing the bodies-of policing and controlling populations-in order to empower larger institutional agents. The focus of this analysis is the contemporary practice of transnational biomedical research. The analysis is catalyzed by the enormous transformation in the political economy of transnational research that has occurred over the past three decades and the accompanying increase in the numbers of human bodies now subjected to research. This essay uses the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his notion of docile bodies, to analyze these changes. Two loci from the bioethics literature are explored-one treating research in the United States and one treating research in developing countries. In the latter, we see a novel dynamic of the new biopolitics: the ways in which bioethics helps to create docile political bodies that will police themselves and who will, in turn, facilitate the production of docile human bodies for research.

Physician-assisted suicide

Preface Part I. Historical Interpretations 1. The Significance of Inaccurate History in Legal Considerations of Physician-Assisted Suicide/ Darrell W. Amundsen 2. Doctors and the Dying of Patients in American History/ Harold Y. Vanderpool Part II. Ethical Assessments and Positions 3. Self-Extinction: The Morality of the Helping Hand/ Daniel Callahan 4. Physician-Assisted Suicide is Sometimes Morally Justified/ Dan W. Brock Part III. Medical Practices and Perspectives 5. Physician-Assisted Suicide is Not an Acceptable Practice for Physicians/ Ira R. Byock 6. Assisting in Patient Suicides Is an Acceptable Practice for Physicians/ Howard Brody Part IV. Potentially Vulnerable Patients 7. Physician-Assisted Death in the Context of Disability/ Kristi L. Kirschner, Carol J. Gill, and Christine L. Cassel 8. Physician-Assisted Suicide, Abortion, and Treatment Refusal: Using Gender to Analyze the Difference/ Susan Wolf Part V. Public-Policy Options and Recommendations 9. Considerations of Safeguards Proposed in Laws and Guidelines to Legalize Assisted Suicide/ Steven Miles, Demetra M. Pappas, and Robert Koepp 10. Physician-Assisted Suicide: Evolving Public Policy/ William J. Winslade Appendixes 1. People v. Kevorkian, Supreme Court of Michigan, 1994 2. Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 1996 3. Quill v. Vacco, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1996 Contributors Index

Treatment of asthma exacerbations with the human-powered nebuliser: a randomised parallel-group clinical trial

Background:Nebulisers aid the treatment of respiratory diseases, including asthma, but they require electricity and are often cost-prohibitive for low- and middle-income countries.Aims:The aim of this study was to compare a low-cost, human-powered nebuliser compressor with an electric nebuliser compressor for the treatment of mild to moderate asthma exacerbations in adults and children.Methods:This was a non-blinded, parallel-group, equivalence study, with 110 subjects between 6 and 65 years of age, conducted in the emergency department of a district hospital in Ilopango, El Salvador. Participants were assigned by random allocation to receive a 2.5-mg dose of salbutamol from the experimental human-powered nebuliser or the electric nebuliser control. All assigned participants completed treatment and were included in analysis. The study was not blinded as this was clinically unfeasible; however, data analysis was blinded.Results:The mean improvement in peak flow of the experimental and control groups was 37.5 (95% confidence interval (CI) 26.7–48.2) l/min and 38.7 (95% CI, 26.1–51.3) l/min, respectively, with a mean difference of 1.3 (95% CI, −15.1 to 17.7) l/min. The mean improvement in percent-expected peak flow for the experimental and control groups was 12.3% (95% CI, 9.1–15.5%) and 13.8% (95% CI, 9.8–17.9%), respectively, with a mean difference of 1.5% (95% CI, −3.6 to 6.6%).Conclusions:The human-powered nebuliser compressor is equivalent to a standard nebuliser compressor for the treatment of mild-to-moderate asthma. (Funded by the Opus Dean’s Fund, Marquette University College of Engineering; ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01795742.)

Geographies and Accompaniment: Toward an Ecclesial Re-ordering of the Art of Dying

This article identifies three geographical shifts that have altered the relative social, spatial and temporal locations of dying, church and health care, and axiology causally contributing to our culture’s deformed dying processes. It proposes an alternative script for a new art of dying drawing upon the early church’s practice of the order of widows.

The Last Shall Be First: Human Potential in Genetic and Theological Perspectives

Abstract The notion of “human potential” provides a fruitful window through which to explore the competing conceptual frameworks of contemporary genetics and Christianity. The contemporary cultural frame of genetics conceives of human potential in a broadly positive manner: the source of personal and societal flourishing is located within individual bodies, waiting to be identified and unleashed by genetic science and medicine for the good of persons and society. In the Judeo-Christian narrative, human individual, biological potential is far less relevant—and, in fact, may be construed as an impediment to the achievement of personal and social flourishing. Implications for the dialogue between genetics and religion are discussed.