<p>The risk assessment process and the subsequent risk management measures need tobe constantly evaluated, updated and improved. This thesis contributes to that workby considering, and suggesting improvements, regarding aspects like userfriendliness,transparency, accuracy, consistency, data reporting, data selection anddata evaluation.The first paper in this thesis reports from an empirical investigation of themotivations, intentions and expectations underlying the development andimplementation of a voluntary industry owned environmental classification systemfor pharmaceuticals. The results show that the purpose of the classification systemis to provide information, no other risk reduction measures are aimed for.The second paper reports from an evaluation of the accuracy and the consistency ofthe environmental risk assessments conducted within the classification system. Theresults show that the guideline recommendations were not followed in several casesand consequently alternative risk ratios could be determined for six of the 36pharmaceutical substances selected for evaluation in this study. When additionaldata from the open scientific literature was included the risk ratio was altered formore than one-third of the risk assessments. Seven of the 36 substances wereassessed and classified by more than one risk assessor. In two of the seven cases,different producers classified the same substance into different classificationcategories.The third paper addresses the question whether non-standard ecotoxicity data couldbe used systematically in environmental risk assessments of pharmaceuticals. Fourdifferent evaluation methods were used to evaluate nine non-standard studies. Theevaluation result from the different methods varied at surprisingly high rate and theevaluation of the non-standard data concluded that the reliability of the data wasgenerally low.</p> / QC 20100929

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In this reading a notion of the human is developed through an engagement with the work of French philosopher Emanuel Levinas. The argument is that, with the help of Levinas, it is possible for the idea of the human to be understood anew, for the notion to be ‘resaid’. This resaying of the human is performed in a critical appropriation of the philosophical tradition: Levinas’s work is shown not to be a new variation of the complacent ideology of humanism; the idea of the human is instead interpreted to be the bearer of the very movement of critique. This movement is articulated in terms of a transcendence of a discursive ‘economy of violence’. Critique does not establish a permanent position outside of violence, but is a movement that must constantly be renewed. Here Levinas is offered as a modern thinker of particular relevance for contemporary discussions surrounding the nature both of the political and of Human Rights. In addition one finds a systematic analysis of the major works of Levinas, unraveling how a notion of the human develops from within his philosophy. Levinas’s thought is placed alongside philosophical figures of his time, such as Heidegger, Sartre, Bataille, Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault and Derrida, as well as more recent political thinkers, for example, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière.

<p>In this thesis the scope and limits of reprogenetic choices - refering to reproductive applications of genetics made in the medical context - is adressed.</p><p>Through posing four analytical questions concerning who should cecide about what in reprogenetics an analysis of possible answers is made. The method consists of an analysis of texts of ethicists Robertson, Strong, Davis, Murray, Peters and Buchanan et al, chosen to reflect a diversity concerning the scope of reproductive autonomy and what values that need to be taken into consideration.</p><p>The most justified position found, concerning a possible policy of reprogenetic choices, is that there are several good reasons for leaving the reprogenetic choices with the parents, foremost since reproduction indeed is central to individuals identity, dignity and meaning of life. There are also good reasons to avoid governmental steering. This for instance since steering risks promoting perfectibilism, which would threaten human dignity. But also the reprogenetic choices cannot be left unrestricted. It is then argued that restrictions of parental reproductive autonomy should serve to protect the childs right to an open future, and that choices that reflect a search for perfectibilism should be cautioned. Autonomous reprogenetic choices should mean qualified choices - where relevant information is given and also an opportunity to make more than one choice is fostered.</p>

<p>An application of biotechnology that has been rapidly matured under the last ten years is genetically modified food. The deliberative release of GMO faces the challenge of complying with sustainable development and implies a precautionary approach to all possible risk involved. This study purpose is to investigate the problems of risks concerning deliberative release of GMO and to define the question of responsibility. These two themes, risk and responsibility, are discussed in relation to society, citizens, corporations andscience. A more profound understanding of the relation between risk and responsibility in the GMO context could contribute to the sensitivity and deliberation in bio-politics, so it better can cope with democratic governance, public debate and risk deliberations.</p><p>Politicians and other decisions-makers have a responsibility to assure that they have sufficient knowledge and understanding for the issue at hand before taking any decision. A responsible bio-politics departs from the precautionary principle in decisions making, gaining knowledge in dialogue with concerned GMO actors and tries to correspond to sustainable development. Hence, knowledge and understanding is needed which are reached in dialogue with other parties in order to allowed values, attitudes and knowledge to be deliberate more extensively.</p>

<p>Human reproductive cloning came to the public´s attention when Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland in 1997. This news quickly spread around the world causing both excitements at the possibilities of what cloning techniques could offer, as well as apprehension about the ethical, social and legal implications should human reproductive cloning become possible. Many international organisations and governments were concerned about the impact of human reproductive cloning on human health, dignity and human rights. To this day, many institutions have drafted resolutions, protocols and position statements outlining their concerns. This paper outlines some of the major ethical issues surrounding human reproductive cloning and the position towards this novel technique taken by three important international organisations - Council of Europe, World Health Organization, and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization - expressed in different regulatory frameworks. Proponents of human cloning occasionally point out that cloned humans are already among us in the form of twins - people with identical sets of DNA - so what is the problem? Besides avoiding the fact that natural twins are always siblings, whereas a clone could be the twin of a parent or grandparent, this observation ignores a crucial moral difference: natural twins arrive as rare creations, not as specifically designed products. Instead of being an uncontrolled, self-regulated evolutionary process, creation of man through reproductive cloning are shifting from being natural to a state of instrumentality where parental interests constitutes what is important. This shift will inevitably lead to the child being a means for some other end (parental interests). However, this is not the same as being subdued into genetic determinism, but the point brought forward is the child´s lack of freedom caused by the interests of the parents. In this sense the clone´s genome constitutes a heavy backpack because of our pre-knowledge of its physical building blocks - or in other words its potentiality. Even though the argument of genetic determinism is a weak one, our subconscious"forces"us to create hopes upon the child because of its potentiality. No longer is the evolution the creator with the dices of randomness. A new gambler is in town and this time the dices are equilateral.</p>

<p>Denna studie har en kvalitativ ansats där observationer och intervjuer ligger till grund för resultatet. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur lärare arbetar och diskuterar om etik. Jag har använt mig av grundad teori, där teorier framträder ur det insamlade materialet. I analysen har försök gjorts till att identifiera och förstå etiska situationer utifrån lärarnas syn på elever. Lärarnas undervisning har kunnat kopplas till olika människosyner och därigenom tolkat hur de ser på elever och vad de ska lära sig. </p> / <p>This study has a qualitative attempt where the result has been based upon observations and interviews. The purpose of study was to inquire how teachers work with and discuss ethics. I have adopted grounded theory, where the theories appear from the gathered material. In the analysis, attempts have been made to identify and understand these ethical situations from the teachers’ view on students. The teachers’ education has been able to link to different views on mankind and thereby interpreted on how they perceive their students and what they should learn.</p>

<p>The development of software was considered until the beginning of the 1990th as a cathedral like product development in closed companies. This way of development changed in the last decade. Open source software (OSS) development challenged this consideration significantly. OSS is produced in co-operation by skilled people, distributed and used by many moral agents. The result, the software itself, can be studied and modified. Herein is the main incentive for people to develop the software. In such a mode of production the freedom to access knowledge and information (=source code) is a necessity to produce the artifact (software).</p><p>Software is a digital entity. The main difference in comparison to natural resources like oil, land, minerals is that it can be used and reproduced without losses. It lacks the capacity of getting naturally scarce. Contemporary intellectual property rights assume implicitly that goods might getting scarce one day. Imbedded in the term intellectual property is also an idea of "fencing" objects. In this thesis I will argue that anartificial"encing"of digital objects might cause unintentional bad consequences for the society. An other quality intellectual property rights are claimed to have is that they serve as an incentive for inventors/authors to produce new inventions and ideas. The practice of OSS development works without such an incentive provided by intellectual property rights.</p><p>The moral conflict, which I attempt to unravel in this work deals with the question to what extend the application of intellectual property rights in software is necessary and how restrictive particular property rights in digital objects should be - if there should be any at all. Knowledge as the factor of production is of the same value in knowledge societies as land was for agrarian societies. The difference is in the mode of production and the un-limitless availability of digitalized knowledge. I argue that the"protection"of knowledge, and software is knowledge, has to be carefully revised in so called knowledge societies.</p>

<p>The globalization of political and economic processes is a growing moral concern for theologians and political philosophers alike. My thesis aims to outline, analyze, and compare church studies of globalization with global theories of justice.</p><p>To do this, I draw upon recent studies of globalization made by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). The WCC and LWF are two global reaching church organizations. They have a common aim of uniting churches for ecumenical dialogue and are involved in social, economic, political, and ecological questions. The WCC and LWF analyze globalization by applying biblical and theological principles from the Christian tradition. Out of this analysis comes an invitation to resist globalization and seek economic alternatives. Their work forms a moral discourse about globalization from a theological ethical perspective.</p><p>In comparison, I consider theories of global justice by political philosophers in the liberal tradition (i.e., John Rawls). The two philosophers I draw upon are Thomas Pogge and Kok-Chor Tan. Their recent work forms a moral discourse that attempts to globalize Rawls’s liberal principles of political and economic justice. These principles challenge globalization and build an argument for greater global justice. This argument calls for a restructuring of today’s global political and financial institutions. In my thesis, this work also acts as lens for which to critically analyze the church studies.</p><p>Finally, I consider a potential and positive relationship between these two kinds of global moral discourses, between theological ethics and political philosophy. This relationship helps the church develop ethics for a realistic global citizenship. More importantly, this relationship creates a reasonable and broad based consensus for global justice. Such a consensus is demanded in a global context of plurality and secularity.</p>

<p>The paper contains comment, clarification and criticism, even constructive criticism, of some theses that have been put forward by Laurence Bonjour in his In Defense of Pure Reason.</p><p>It presents a concept of experience that deals with the relation between cognizer and object of experience that has a great similarity to that of Bonjour. Through analysis it is shown that the concept of a priori entails that Bonjour has two concepts of a priori, a narrow and a broad one. The narrow one is, in my own words: According to moderate rationalism a proposition p is a priori justified if and only if you apprehend that p must be true in every possible world. This doesn’t mean that Bonjour doesn’t believe in an epistemological, metaphysical and semantic realm. The broad one does not mention anything about possible worlds.</p><p>Casullo in his A priori justification rejects Bonjour’s argument against Quine’s coherentism. A defense is put forward with the concept ‘an ideal of science for apparent rational insights’. The concept of axiomatic system and foundationalism is used. If we assume that the colour proposition ‘nothing can be red all over and green all over at the same time’ has the meaning that we, in this very moment, are representing a property in the world, thus we have an argument of superposition for the correctness of the proposition. The ground for this argumentation relies on the identification of colours with superposing electromagnetic waves.</p>