Suchergebnisse

Das Buch der Professorin in Wien und London und Beraterin der EU-Kommission zur Ethik neuer Technologien ist eine umfassende soziologische, stark ethisch und philosophisch geprägte Darstellung, die entschieden für das bedingungslose Grundeinkommen (BGE) plädiert. In Zeiten der Covid-19-Krise zeige sich, dass völlig unverschuldeter Einkommensverlust jeden treffen könne. Ausserdem stehe unsozialerweiser ein extremer Reichtum einzelner der gröe︢ren Armut vieler gegenüber. In einigen aufgeführten Beispielen werden die bisherigen positiven Erfahrungen mit dem BGE in Experimenten aufgezeigt, ohne kritischen Fragen (u.a.: "Macht es faul?"; "Lohnt sich Leistung dann noch?"; "Wer soll das bezahlen?") auszuweichen. Betont wird der Wert des Menschen sowie die Menschenwürde und die Bedeutung sinnerfüllter Arbeit, die keineswegs immer bezahlt werden muss (z.B. in Ehrenamt oder Familie). - Hochinteressant ist das konkrete Durchrechnen von Finanzierungsbeispielen in Bezug auf Österreich mitsamt einzelner Vor- und Nachteile. Ein wichtiger, durch zahlreiche statistische Einschübe sachlich begründeter Debattenbeitrag. (2)

This short article discusses how the COVID-19 crisis has affected solidarity. It starts by defining solidarity in such a way that it can be distinguished from other types of support and pro-social practice, and by arguing that solidarity can manifest itself at three different levels: at the inter-personal level, the group level, or at the level of legal and contractual norms. Drawing upon findings from two ongoing studies on personal and societal effects of the COVID-19 crisis, I then go on to argue that, while forms of inter-personal solidarity have been shifting even during the first weeks and months of the crisis, the importance of institutionalized solidarity is becoming increasingly apparent. The most resilient societies in times of COVID-19 have not been those with the best medical technology or the strictest pandemic containment measures, but those with good public infrastructures and other solidaristic institutions.

Along with the proliferation of digital technologies and the datafication of wider areas of people's bodies and lives, the meaning of Personalised Medicine has shifted. In contemporary Personalised and 'Precision' Medicine, openness typically features in terms of calls for data sharing to ensure the availability of the very data sets required for the personalisation of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. But there are other, more fundamental ways of considering openness in the context of Personalised and Precision Medicine that set different goals for public policy: (1) in an ontological sense, pertaining to the openness of the category of the 'person' in Personalised and Precision Medicine; (2) in a pluralistic sense, regarding the plurality of personal and societal perspectives and values in healthcare; and (3) in an emancipatory sense, counteracting concentrations of power around corporate actors—including consumer tech companies—in the health domain. The enhancement of public benefit and social justice and the protection of privacy are key goals for public policy in this context.

This new way of thinking about health and disease has tangible implications for when and how health-care interventions are set in motion—and for how people are expected to manage their lives.

This article challenges a key tacit assumption underpinning legal and ethical instruments in health care, namely, that people are ideally bounded, independent, and often also strategically rational individuals. Such an understanding of personhood has been criticized within feminist and other critical scholarship as being unfit to capture the deeply relational nature of human beings. In the field of medicine, however, it also causes tangible problems. I propose that a solidarity-based perspective entails a relational approach and as such helps to formulate new solutions to complex ethical and regulatory questions, ranging from caring for people at the end of their lives to improving policies for organ donation and better governance of health data. It also underscores the importance of universal health care. Although a solidarity-based perspective does not require health to be seen as an individually enforceable right, it does influence our understanding of individual rights: it draws attention to how their meaning is shaped by shared social practices. I conclude by arguing that, in light of current pressures for medicine to become more personalized, using a relational understanding of personhood to shape policies and practices is a much needed endeavor.

"Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage nach, wie Internet-Genomtests in vielen Ländern Europas und Nordamerikas zu Politikproblemen werden konnten, obwohl ihre Bedeutung - gemessen an der Zahl der Personen, die weltweit einen solchen Test gemacht haben - sehr gering ist. Es wird argumentiert, dass interpretative Zugänge es uns erlauben, die tieferen Herausforderungen zu sehen, welche Internet-Genomtests für die grundsätzlichen Organisationskategorien medizinischer Systeme darstellen. So symbolisieren Internet-Gentests etwa die teilweise Umkehrung der Rangordnung zwischen denen, die in der medizinischen Domäne traditionell als 'ExpertInnen' gesehen werden und jenen, denen bisher hauptsächlich die Rolle der 'Laien' zukam; und die Verwischung der Trennlinie zwischen dem, was wir unter medizinischer und nicht-medizinischer Information verstehen. Letztendlich zeigt die Anwendung eines interpretativen Ansatzes, der sich darauf konzentriert, wie AkteurInnen Konzepte, Klassifikationen und Kategorien verwenden und herausfordern, dass die Kontroverse über Internet-Genomtests in enger Verbindung zu der Frage steht, wer dazu ermächtigt sein soll, autoritative Voraussagen über das Leben anderer zu treffen. Dies stellt eine der Kernaussagen über die Verteilung von Macht im sozialen Raum dar. Es ist diese Neuverteilung der Macht, die einen Politikwandel in diesem Feld als notwendig erscheinen lässt." (Autorenreferat)

This paper discusses how online genome-wide DNA tests that are marketed direct-to-consumer (DTC) have become policy challenges in many European and North American countries -- despite the small number of people who have taken such tests world-wide. It is argued that interpretive approaches are uniquely placed to help us understand the deeper challenge to the very categories underpinning the delivery of medical care that online personal genomics (PG) services seem to pose. For example, these online tests symbolise the part-reversal of the hierarchy between those traditionally been seen as 'experts' and 'lay people', and the blurring of the boundaries between the medical and the non-medical. Ultimately, the employment of an interpretive approach, which focuses on how actors use and challenge labels, classifications, and categories, shows that the controversy over DTC genome tests concerns the question of who should be allowed to make authoritative predictions about other people's lives -- a core statement about the distribution of power. It is a redistribution of power in this respect that seems to necessitate policy change in the field of PG. Adapted from the source document.