Search results

The objective of this chapter is to discuss how different techniques in Regional Science and Peace Science and the emerging techniques in Management Science can be used in analysing Disaster Management and Global pandemic with special reference to developing countries. It is necessary for me to first discuss the subjects of Disaster Management, Regional Science, Peace Science and Management Science. The objective of this chapter is to emphasise that the studies of Disaster Management should be more integrated with socioeconomic and geographical factors. The greatest disaster facing the world is the possibility of war, particularly nuclear war, and the preparation of the means of destruction through military spending.

Bioethics and environmental ethics have been largely separated, in principle. However, the two types of ethics do overlap when dealing with significant issues such as human embryos, animal experimentation, and responsibility to future generations. In this paper, the possibility of synthesizing these two ethics through the concept of care is considered. Accordingly, the range of the object of the concept of care is similarly broadened. Moreover, after considering the serious defects of care-based theory, a care-based position, which regards human rights or their substitute as a complement to care, is advanced. This position can be said to be a Japanese approach to bioethics.

If you go running in Chicago in the early morning, as the first light glances and reflects on Lake Michigan, you can hear the great flocks of wild geese stirring and calling before you can see them. They have come down from the Arctic, where the winter comes to the Midwest just as the flu season begins. They crowd in the cove with the gulls and the dogs run toward them, and they scatter and fill the air. They will land at the high school in town, in the farms along the interstate, and in the City Zoo, with the ducks and the pigeons.

This chapter conceives social entrepreneurship as acts of solidarity to unpack new patterns of social interaction and novel outcomes that ensue from lowering of societal barriers and inclusive participation immediately following a disaster. As members of the affected community unite against a common threat, we see different types of social enterprises born out of cooperation across social or religious divisions, attenuation of preexisting power differentials, and relaxation of traditional class barriers. Social enterprises as acts of solidarity function to meet critical and noncritical needs, increase persistence of authentic cohesion, promote community resilience, and help cope with disaster-induced stress.

This chapter explored the community resilience among the river bank erosion affected people of the coastal area in Bangladesh. This chapter particularly looked at the affected people’s opinions and participation in the governmental organization (GO) and non-governmental organizations’ (NGO) relief and recovery process. This study employed a mixed-method approach, where a multimethod data collection procedure was used and data were from three Upazilas (sub-divisions) of the Bhola District in Bangladesh. Quantitative data were collected using a structured interview schedule from 371 household heads, while the qualitative data were generated from 30 relevant participants through in-depth case interviews, focus group discussions and key informants’ interviews. Results showed that a higher number of affected people did not get government relief and services though they were happy with the government’s permanent measures, that is, building embankment. The affected people gave a negative impression about the GO and NGOs’ initiatives in the recovery process such as awareness building, needs assessment and formation of community-based organizations. Most of the affected households did not participate in the decision-making process of the recovery and construction planning and programmes that were controlled by the local power politics. Findings would be an important guideline to the policy-makers, disaster managers and development practitioners.

Historically, it has been common practice for doctors and parents to withhold the diagnosis from their minor intersex patients. This study seeks to integrate intersex youth experiences into the growing body of literature on diagnosis disclosure for intersex patients.

Using gender structure theory as a model, 16 intersex youth were given in-depth surveys regarding their experiences with their intersex identity in individual, interactional, and institutional contexts.

Participants more positively experience intersex than the earlier generations of intersex people. They were not deeply troubled by their diagnosis as doctors have historically feared, and they are open about their diagnosis with their non-intersex peers and teachers. They also find peer support valuable.

Data was collected from a single event and cannot represent all intersex youth. Future research must continue to engage with intersex youth experiences both inside of and beyond activist and support group networks.

These findings are strong exploratory evidence for the importance of diagnosis disclosure for intersex youth. Policies of withholding intersex diagnoses in clinical and familial contexts should be reevaluated in light of the experiences of intersex youth.

Diagnosis disclosure for intersex youth creates the potential for increased medical decision-making participation and increased capacity for activism and community building around intersex issues.

Our results encourage future studies that center the experiences of intersex youth, for we conclude that theorizing the lived experiences of intersex people is incomplete without their perspectives.

Matthew Wynia and his co-authors and Charmers Clark, in their two chapters, take on thorny issues concerning the moral responsibilities of physicians – and, by implication, all health care professionals – regarding preparation for and response to epidemics (Clark, 2006; Wynia, Kurlander, & Green, 2006). Their chapters are especially timely, inasmuch as they address ethical challenges associated with bioterrorism, which, should it occur, could create an epidemic of catastrophic proportions, at least for the locality or localities in which the bioterrorism occurs. In this commentary, I provide a critical assessment of their chapters. I begin with a review of the foundational concept of the Wynia et al. chapter, social-trustee professionalism, and of the Clark chapter, a covenant of public trust. I then take up four issues: the moral demands of social-trustee professionalism and how the social-contract theory of medical ethics advocated by the framers of the 1847 American Medical Association Code of Ethics (American Medical Association, 1847) should be understood; social-role related obligations as ethically-justified limits on fiduciary responsibility in bioterrorism events and how such obligations should be addressed in a preventive ethics fashion by health care organizations; legitimate self-interests as ethically-justified limits on fiduciary responsibility and how such interests should be distinguished from mere self-interests and be addressed in a preventive ethics fashion by health care organizations; and the nature and limits of the standard of care in the large-scale emergencies that bioterrorism events could create.