When biological information about an individual is produced in healthcare or research settings, ethical questions may arise about whether the individual herself should be able to access it. This thesis argues that the individual’s identity-related interests warrant serious attention in framing and addressing these questions. Identity interests are largely neglected in bioethical, policy and legal debates about information access – except where information about genetic parentage is concerned. Even there, the relationship between information and identity, and the interests involved, remain unclear. This thesis seeks to fill this conceptual gap and challenge this exceptionalism. It does so by developing a normative account of the roles that a wide range of information about our health, bodies and biological relationships – ‘personal bioinformation’ – can play in the construction of our self-conceptions. This account is developed in two steps. First, building on existing philosophical theories of narrative self-constitution, this thesis proposes that personal bioinformation has a critical role to play in the construction of identity narratives that remain coherent and support us in navigating our embodied experiences. Secondly, drawing on empirical literature reporting individuals’ attitudes to receiving three categories of personal bioinformation (about donor conception, genetic disease susceptibility, and neuroimaging-based psychiatric diagnoses), the thesis seeks to illustrate, demonstrate the plausibility of, and to refine this theoretically-based proposition. From these foundations, it is argued that we can have strong identity-related interests in whether and how we are able to access bioinformation about ourselves. The practical implications of this conclusion are then explored. It is argued that identity interests are not reducible to other interests (for example, in health protection) commonly weighed in information disclosure decisions. They, therefore, warrant attention in their own right. An ethical framework is developed to guide delivery of this. This framework sets out the ethical responsibilities of those who hold bioinformation about us to respond to our identity interests in information disclosure practices and policies. The framework is informed by indications from the illustrative examples that our interests engaged as much by how bioinformation is communicated as whether it is disclosed. Moreover, these interests are not uniformly engaged by all bioinformation in all circumstances and there is potential for identity detriment as well as benefit. The ethical framework highlights the opportunities for and challenges of responding to identity interests and the scope and limits of potential disclosers’ responsibilities to do so. It also makes recommendations as to the principles and characteristics of identity-supporting disclosure practices.

O direito à verdade frente a graves violações de direitos humanos foi criado recentemente e tem um significado jurídico que permanece incerto em diversos aspectos relevantes. As divergências em torno do seu conceito, que ainda está em formação, geram problemas práticos quando se busca tornar esse direito efetivo. A tese analisa a questão que está na base do debate jurídico-dogmático sobre esse direito, a saber, o significado que o termo verdade adquire ao se tornar o seu objeto. É feita uma investigação sobre a forma como este tema é abordado pelos estudos sobre justiça de transição e sobre como se deu a emergência e o desenvolvimento do direito à verdade no direito internacional dos direitos humanos, nas esferas universal e interamericana. O objetivo é, depois, buscar compreender o que, de um ponto de vista teórico, fez com que surgisse na história e no pensamento político-jurídico a necessidade de sua criação e passou a alimentar o esforço para a sua conceituação. Essa análise aponta que a verdade almejada com o direito em estudo tem outras dimensões para além da busca de informações desconhecidas sobre casos individuais de violações a direitos humanos. Como o tema da verdade, sabidamente, é de enorme extensão no campo filosófico, o presente trabalho faz uso de temas de reflexão de Hannah Arendt, que para essa temática tem tido grande repercussão inclusive em sede doutrinária, com o fim de, por meio de um desenvolvimento extensivo, examinar as diferentes dimensões do problema. / The right to the truth concerning gross human rights violations was created recently, and has a legal meaning that remains uncertain in many relevant aspects. The disagreements about its concept, which is still in development, cause practical problems when one tries to make this right effective. The thesis analyses the issue that underlies the legal-dogmatic debate about this right, i.e., the meaning of the term truth when it becomes its object. An investigation is undertaken on how this theme is addressed by studies on transitional justice and also on the emergence and development of the right to the truth in international human rights law, in the universal and in the inter-American systems. The goal is then to try to understand what, from a theoretical point of view, led to the emergence in history and political-legal thought of the need for its creation, and began to feed the effort to its conceptualization. This analysis indicates that the truth sought with the right examined here has dimensions other than the search for unknown information about individual cases of human rights violations. The theme of truth being, as known, a subject of enormous extension in the philosophical field, the present study makes use of topics of reflection by Hannah Arendt, which have had a great repercussion on this subject even in legal dogmatic thought, in order to examine, through an extensive development, the different dimensions of the problem. By doing so, it is intended to shed light on the way the conceptualization of the right to the truth is being consolidated and on the difficulties it faces.

nÃo hà / A presente pesquisa objetivou compreender o ambiente escolar e a relaÃÃo com o saber dos alunos numa turma de 9 ano do ensino fundamental regular da Escola de Ensino Fundamental Raimundo Sotero de Moura, no municÃpio de Pacajus, no CearÃ, à luz de suas narrativas. As narrativas trazidas pelos estudantes foram analisadas como instrumento histÃrico importante para o entendimento da representaÃÃo acerca da sala de aula, na medida em que se situaram como sujeitos pertencentes a tal espaÃo. Eis o critÃrio de entendimento da relaÃÃo que eles fazem com o saber e a sala de aula. A proposta de construÃÃo do significado do ambiente escolar demonstrou a elevaÃÃo do sentimento de pertencimento dos alunos à escola, na medida em que colaborou com o desenvolvimento da autoestima, por destacar sua condiÃÃo de protagonistas no processo de ensino-aprendizagem. Ao serem envolvidos numa atividade que propÃs a elaboraÃÃo de narrativas histÃricas de vida e de memÃria de tais discentes como parte integrante do processo escolar, foi possÃvel, por meio de tal procedimento, construir a representaÃÃo que fazem da escola. Admite-se que tal estudo seja oportuno para facilitar o processo de ensino-aprendizagem, na medida em que envolveu discentes e professores da escola como sujeitos participantes da investigaÃÃo ao ser narrada a histÃria de vida dos educandos, evidenciando-se o significado que elaboram da sala de aula, bem como a relaÃÃo com o saber.

Nowadays, anonymous sperm donation is indeed a globally discussed topic: the popularity of the use of assisted reproduction technology for the purpose of conception is directly proportional to increasing infertility and technological progress. Also, the duration of its use already started to show, with the first generation of opinionated anonymous donor children growing up. The aim of my work is to analyze what are the today's Western society's current ethical and legal views on the anonymous sperm donation and its alternatives, as well as what they should be, and to demonstrate these on the example of Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. In the first two chapters, I outline the context of ethical and legal thinking about anonymous sperm donation: I analyze the concept and implications of the infertility, as well as the development and types of methods of assisted reproduction. Further, I proceed from the basis of ethical reasoning and the determination whether the right to know one's origins, implying the right to know the circumstances of one's conception, exist, and its competition with the rights of parents and donors in the third chapter, to its legal grounds. First, in the fourth chapter, I deal with legislation on the right to know one's origins and other related rights in the international...

This dissertation explores the battle to democratize the national security state, 1970-1978. It examines the neo-progressive movement to institutionalize a new domestic policy regime, in an attempt to force government transparency, protect individual privacy from state intrusion, and create new judicial and legislative checks on domestic security operations. It proceeds chronologically, first outlining the state's overwhelming response to the domestic unrest of the 1960s. During this period, the Department of Justice developed new capacities to better predict urban unrest, growing a computerized databank that contained millions of dossiers on dissenting Americans and the Department of Defense greatly expanded existing capacities, applying cold war counterinsurgency and counterintelligence techniques developed abroad to the problems of protests and riots at home. The remainder of the dissertation examines how the state's secret response to unrest and disorder became public in the early 1970s. It traces the development of a loose coalition of reformers who challenged domestic security policy and coordinated legislative and litigative strategies to check executive power. / History

This study investigates, via the socio-rhetorical approach, how the Jewish-Christian conflict that occurred during the formative period of early Christianity, and the environment contemporary to the writing of John, took shape around three main questions to which the researcher's answers are given. The event described in John 9 is an historical and significant illustration of the conflict. Jesus is shown rhetorically, by the writer, as the Son of Man, in whom "divine reality" operates away from the temple or other traditionally sacred places like the synagogue, and finds a new locality in the persona of Jesus himself. From a polemical view, John endeavours to portray Jesus as holy man, the only one to mediate heavenly and earthly realities, and that is why Jesus is presented as the real locus of the encounter between God and human beings, a locus of the divine presence, or "the conduit for the transmission of the divine." / New Testament / MTH (NEW TESTAMENT)

Motivation beskrivs som ett tillstånd som förklarar vilken benägenhet individen har att handla i en specifik situation. För att en individ ska ta ett beslut att studera på universitet eller högskola krävs det att denne är motiverad att göra detta. Motivation kan delas in i typerna, inre och yttre motivation. En ytterligare indelning kan göras i sex motivationsfaktorer; to know, toward accomplishment, to experience stimulation samt identified, introjected och external regulation. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka motivationsfaktorer som påverkar en individs val att studera på universitetet, och om motivationsfaktorerna i sin tur påverkar prestationen. Även eventuella skillnader mellan könen och mellan filosofisk och teknisk fakultet undersöktes. Data samlades in via en webbenkät, baserad på Academic Motivation Scale (Vallerand et al., 1992), där deltagarna fick skatta till vilken grad de ansåg sig ha motiverats av respektive påstående, i sitt val att studera. Resultatet visade att yttre motivationsfaktorer hade störst påverkan på valet att studera, där introjected regulation var den mest betydande motivationsfaktorn. För motivationsfaktorer och prestation noterades inget samband, förutom för faktorn to know. Ingen interaktion noterades mellan motivation och biologiskt kön eller fakultet. Kvinnor var dock mer motiverade än männen. / Motivation is described as a state that explains the propensity of the individual to act in a specific situation. In order for an individual to make a decision to study at university, he or she must be motivated to do so. Motivation can be divided into two types, internal and external motivation. An additional division can be made into six motivational factors; to know, towards achievement, to experience stimulation, identified, introjected and external regulation. The purpose of this study was to investigate wich motivational factors that influence an individual's choice to study at the university, and if this in turn affects performance. Possible differences between the sexes and between the Faculty of Philosophy and Engineering were also investigated. Data was collected via a web-based survey based on the Academic Motivation Scale (Vallerand et al.,1992), where the participants were asked to estimate to what extent they considered themselves motivated by each claim, in their choice to study. The result showed that external motivational factors had the greatest impact on the decision to study, where introjected regulation was the most significant motivational factor. For motivational factors and performance no relation was noted, except for the factor to know. No interaction was noted between motivation and biological gender or the faculties. However, women were more motivated than men.

This study investigates, via the socio-rhetorical approach, how the Jewish-Christian conflict that occurred during the formative period of early Christianity, and the environment contemporary to the writing of John, took shape around three main questions to which the researcher's answers are given. The event described in John 9 is an historical and significant illustration of the conflict. Jesus is shown rhetorically, by the writer, as the Son of Man, in whom "divine reality" operates away from the temple or other traditionally sacred places like the synagogue, and finds a new locality in the persona of Jesus himself. From a polemical view, John endeavours to portray Jesus as holy man, the only one to mediate heavenly and earthly realities, and that is why Jesus is presented as the real locus of the encounter between God and human beings, a locus of the divine presence, or "the conduit for the transmission of the divine." / New Testament / MTH (NEW TESTAMENT)

The therapeutic privilege is a defence in terms of which a doctor may withhold information from a patient if disclosure of such information could harm the patient. This study explores the defence of therapeutic privilege and provides a critical evaluation. A comparative investigation is undertaken, while arguments springing from a variety of disciplines are also incorporated. A number of submissions are made for limiting the ambit of the defence. The main submission is that the therapeutic privilege should comply with all the requirements of the defence of necessity. In addition, it should contain some of the safeguards afforded to the patient by the requirements of the defence of negotiorum gestio so that therapeutic privilege is out of the question if medical treatment is administered against the patient's will, or the doctor has reason to believe (or knows) that the patient will refuse to undergo an intended intervention once properly informed. / Jurisprudence / L.L.M. (Jurisprudence)

R I G H T T O R E S P E C T F O R P R I V A T E A N D F A M I L Y L I F E I N T H E C A S E - L A W O F T H E E U R O P E A N C O U R T O F H U M A N R I G H T S Abstract The aim of the thesis is to explain wording and application of the Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the Convention) from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights (the ECHR). The scope of Article 8, which guarantees the right to respect for private and family life, is very broad. For this reason the thesis especially deals with the issue of the right of the child to know his/her origin and information about his/her early childhood. In particular it attempts to outline the way how the ECHR deals with the conflict of the right to know one's origin with the right of the parent to stay anonymous. The thesis is divided into five chapters which illustrate the particular aspects of the application of Article 8. These chapters are linked through the judgements Gaskin, Mikulić, Odiévre, Jäggi and Phinirikadou which are related to the right of the child to know his/her origin. Chapter 1 provides with the general introduction to the protection of human rights at the European level and also analyses the Convention and the ECHR. The goal of chapter 2 is to outline the inner...