The somatic integration definition of the beginning of life

The somatic integration definition of life is familiar from the debate on the determination of death, with some bioethicists arguing that it supports brain death while others argue that some brain‐dead bodies exhibit sufficient somatic integration for biological life. I argue that on either interpretation, the somatic integration definition of life implies that neither the preimplantation embryo nor the postimplantation embryo meet the somatic integration threshold condition for organismal human life. The earliest point at which a somatic integration determination of life could be made would be the beginning of the fetal stage, 9 weeks postfertilization. Bioethical implications are considered, specifically with respect to the moral status of the postimplantation embryo in embryo research and abortion.     

Brain death and brain life: rethinking the connection

The connection between brain life and brain death is neither as simple nor as defensible as it might at first appear. The problem rests with the two dominant competing definitions of death:...the loss of that which is necessary for the organism to continue to function as a whole;....the loss of that which is essentially significant to the nature of the organism... If death is understood as the loss of that which is necessary for the continued functioning of the organism as whole, then the apparent symmetry breaks down. If...death could be understood as the loss of that which is essentially significant to the nature of the organism....consciousness, then the symmetry would hold. However, that definition of death is indefensible. Therefore...statements about the status of anencephalic infants and early human embryos based upon a connection between brain death and brain life are unfounded.     

The debate about death: an imperishable discussion?

In this concise review we discuss some of the complex edges of the concept of death that arose after the notorious advances in science and medicine over the last 50 years, in which the classical cardio-pulmonary criteria have led to the neurological criteria of death. New complicated questions like the definition of death and the operational criteria for diagnosing it have arisen and we think that they are far from being adequately and satisfactorily solved. A number of important issues--like the reliability and differences between cardio-pulmonary versus brain based criteria of death, if death is an event or a process, the meaning of integration and irreversibility--have not yet received sufficient attention. Here we have approached the death problem from two (biological) complex system perspectives: the organism level and the cellular-molecular level. We also discuss issues from a third systemic approach, that is, the entire society, thus involving legal, religious, bioethical and political aspects of death. Our aim is to integrate new perspectives in order to promote further discussion on these critical yet frequently neglected issues.     

Postmodern personhood: a matter of consciousness

The concept of person is integral to bioethical discourse because persons are the proper subject of the moral domain. Nevertheless, the concept of person has played no role in the prevailing formulation of human death because of a purported lack of consensus concerning the essential attributes of a person. Beginning with John Locke's fundamental proposition that person is a 'forensic term', I argue that in Western society we do have a consensus on at least one necessary condition for personhood, and that is the capacity for conscious experience. When we consider the whole brain formulation of death, and the most prominent defense of it by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, we can readily identify the flaws that grow out of the failure to define human death as the permanent loss of the capacity for conscious experience. Most fundamental among these flaws is a definition of human death that reduces persons to the capacity of the brain to regulate purely physiological functioning. Such a formulation would, in theory, apply to any member of the animal kingdom. I suggest that an appropriate concept of death should capture what it is about a particular living being that is so essential to it that the permanent loss of that thing constitutes death. What is essential to being a human being is living the life of a person, which derives from the capacity for conscious experience.     

Postmodern Personhood: A Matter of Consciousness

The concept of person is integral to bioethical discourse because persons are the proper subject of the moral domain. Nevertheless, the concept of person has played no role in the prevailing formulation of human death because of a purported lack of consensus concerning the essential attributes of a person. Beginning with John Locke's fundamental proposition that person is a 'forensic term', I argue that in Western society we do have a consensus on at least one necessary condition for personhood, and that is the capacity for conscious experience. When we consider the whole brain formulation of death, and the most prominent defense of it by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, we can readily identify the flaws that grow out of the failure to define human death as the permanent loss of the capacity for conscious experience. Most fundamental among these flaws is a definition of human death that reduces persons to the capacity of the brain to regulate purely physiological functioning. Such a formulation would, in theory, apply to any member of the animal kingdom. I suggest that an appropriate concept of death should capture what it is about a particular living being that is so essential to it that the permanent loss of that thing constitutes death. What is essential to being a human being is living the life of a person, which derives from the capacity for conscious experience.     

Evolution,reproduction and definition of life

Synthetic theory of evolution is a superior integrative biological theory. Therefore, there is nothing surprising about the fact that multiple attempts of defining life are based on this theory. One of them even has a status of NASA’s working definition. According to this definition, ‘life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution’ Luisi (Orig Life Evol Bios 28:613–622, 1998); Cleland, Chyba (Orig Life Evol Bios 32:387–393, 2002). This definition is often considered as one of the more theoretically mature definitions of life. This Darwinian definition has nonetheless provoked a lot of criticism. One of the major arguments claims that this definition is wrong due to ‘mule’s problem’. Mules (and other infertile hybrids), despite being obviously living organisms, in the light of this definition are considered inanimate objects. It is strongly counterintuitive. The aim of this article was to demonstrate that this reasoning is false. In the later part of the text, I also discuss some other arguments against the Darwinian approach to defining life.     

Reproduction humaine: le point de vue du philosophe

This article discusses and essential aspect of the link between ethics and life, as expressed in the concept of bioethics. It discusses the various issues related to human reproduction from “the philosopher’s point of view”. This discussion is limited to the principles of this field. The author starts by justifying a philosophical approach to ethical problems in the context of medicine in general and reproduction in particular, a field which specialists, theoreticians or practitioners of medicine and legal medicine in particular, appear to have ignored. This leads to a discussion of the human aspects of reproduction, from questions concerning the nature of living beings (individuals and species) to the relationship between nature and culture (symbol and freedom). Although man “reproduces” and “procreates”, he is also technically able to “produce himself”. This shift from biological reproduction to procreation must take into account problems related to technological science in medicine (technical control of living material and so-called “neutrality” of the technique). The main bioethical issues involving an ethics of decision-making in the field of human reproduction (contraception, abortion, status of the embryo, medically-assisted procreation, desire to master the “form” of the “reproduced” human, or even the “product”, cloning) are then discussed. Finally, the author proposes elements of a “philosophy of point of view”, requiring responsibility for each decision in the context of an “ethics of discussion”.     

The Dying Animal

The study of animal death is poised to blossom into an exciting new interdisciplinary field—and one with profound relevance for bioethics. Areas of interest include the biology and evolution of death-related behavior in nonhuman animals, as well as human social, psychological, cultural, and moral attitudes toward and practices related to animal death. In this paper, I offer a brief overview of what we know about death-related behavior in animals. I will then sketch some of the bioethical implications of this emerging field of research.     

The beginning of life of a new human being from the scientific biological perspective and its bioethical implications

The issue of when the human life begins is a very important subject since it has a significant impact on the decisions that we have to take in relation to human beings in development, particularly human embryos. In this article we discuss some of the more relevant biological evidence supporting the fact that beginning human life begins unquestionably at fertilization and the bioethical consequences.     

Learning developmental biology has priority in the life sciences curriculum in Singapore

Singapore has embraced the life sciences as an important discipline to be emphasized in schools and universities. This is part of the nation's strategic move towards a knowledge-based economy, with the life sciences poised as a new engine for economic growth. In the life sciences, the area of developmental biology is of prime interest, since it is not just intriguing for students to know how a single cell can give rise to a complex, coordinated, functional life that is multicellular and multifaceted, but more importantly, there is much in developmental biology that can have biomedical implications. At different levels in the Singapore educational system, students are exposed to various aspects of developmental biology. The author has given many guest lectures to secondary (ages 12-16) and high school (ages 17-18) students to enthuse them about topics such as embryo cloning and stem cell biology. At the university level, some selected topics in developmental biology are part of a broader course which caters for students not majoring in the life sciences, so that they will learn to comprehend how development takes place and the significance of the knowledge and impacts of the technologies derived in the field. For students majoring in the life sciences, the subject is taught progressively in years two and three, so that students will gain specialist knowledge in developmental biology. As they learn, students are exposed to concepts, principles and mechanisms that underlie development. Different model organisms are studied to demonstrate the rapid advances in this field and to show the interconnectivity of developmental themes among living things. The course inevitably touches on life and death matters, and the social and ethical implications of recent technologies which enable scientists to manipulate life are discussed accordingly, either in class, in a discussion forum, or through essay writing.     

Redefining viruses: lessons from Mimivirus

Viruses are the most abundant living entities and probably had a major role in the evolution of life, but are still defined using negative criteria. Here, we propose to divide biological entities into two groups of organisms: ribosome-encoding organisms, which include eukaryotic, archaeal and bacterial organisms, and capsid-encoding organisms, which include viruses. Other replicons (for example, plasmids and viroids) can be termed 'orphan replicons'. Based on this suggested classification system, we propose a new definition for a virus--a capsid-encoding organism that is composed of proteins and nucleic acids, self-assembles in a nucleocapsid and uses a ribosome-encoding organism for the completion of its life cycle.     

Cybernetic formulation of the definition of life

A definition of life (a living individual) in cybernetic terms is proposed. In this formulation, life (a living individual) is defined as a network of inferior negative feedbacks (regulatory mechanisms) subordinated to (being at service of) a superior positive feedback (potential of expansion). It is suggested that this definition is the minimal definition, necessary and sufficient, for life to be distinguished from inanimate phenomena and, as such, it describes the essence of life. Subsequently, a quantitative expression for the amount of the biologically relevant ("purposeful") information (as opposed to the amount of information in the thermodynamic sense) is proposed. This is followed by the application of the formulated approach to different phenomena of a dubious status existing presently on the Earth as well as to the process of origination of life on our planet.     

How death shapes life during development

The formation of an adult animal from a fertilized embryo involves the production and death of cells. Surprisingly, many cells are produced during development with an ultimate fate of death, and defects in programmed cell death can result in developmental abnormalities. Recent studies indicate that cells can die by many different mechanisms, and these differences have implications for proper animal development and disorders such as cancer and autoimmunity.     

What Bateson had in Mind About ‘Mind’?

G. Bateson believed that the scientific school of the future would be ‘ecology of mind’. The first aim of this paper is to understand what he meant by ‘mind’, and the other is to understand how this concept emerged in his thought, i.e., how its meaning would become more flexible throughout his life and work. Furthermore, we will approach the epistemological implications of ecology of mind for scientific education in the West. Bateson’s concept of mind emerged when he became aware (in 1926) of his own way of thinking, i.e., of his immense abductive capacity. This led him to search for patterns of similarity and difference between organisms (like in homology). Later, he identified this thought process as being abstract and formal, relating not just facts but also ideas. Afterwards, Bateson developed criteria for us to consider a system as being mental, with special emphasis on living and cybernetic systems.     

Origins of life: An operational definition

Two very different models are used for the scientific study of life's origins: in the Troland-Muller model, life is molecular and its defining characteristic is gene function; in the Oparin-Haldane model, life is cellular and its defining characteristic is metabolic function. While each of these models implicitly defines the living, neither provides criteria by which theemergence of life could be recognized in the laboratory.Anoperational definition of the living makes explicit the system logic of metabolic self-production: (1) that whatever form it may take, life is a function of its biochemical processes; (2) that no single biochemical process has integrity apart from an entire network of processes; (3) that a network of processes can have continuity only by being enclosed within a boundary structure, i.e., by the selective partition of a microenvironment as a domain for the bioenergetic-biosynthetic network; and (4) that life is a single phenomenon, distinct in its continuity of capture and storage of energy in such networks, driving the processes that produce its material constituents.This paper presentsautopoiesis as life-defining and discusses the utility of its criteria in our search for the origins of life on Earth. Enactment of the autopoietic criteria would result in aminimal cell and would demonstrate the experimental recapitulation of life's Archaean origins.     

Organisms in evolution

Organisms constitute one of the most remarkable features of our living world. However, they have not yet received any accepted characterization within the framework of the evolutionary theory. The reasons for this contrast between the saliency of organisms in the biological landscape and their theoretical status are multiple and they are analyzed in the first part of this paper. Starting from this contrast, I argue for a theoretically grounded concept of organism within the framework of evolutionary theory itself. To this effect I argue that the theory of major transitions in evolution (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995; Michod 1999) provides us with the theoretical basis for an understanding of the individuality of organisms and I propose a first characterization of organisms as evolutionary units structured by a division of reproductive labor among their parts. I also discuss one of the most important implications of this definition, namely that some colonial entities are to be counted as superorganisms. Finally, I show that though theoretically satisfying, this definition does not suffice in order fully to individuate the organisms and superorganisms in practice. To this end, physiology is needed, because it offers us some criteria for their individuation in ecological space. These criteria, however, are not immune to errors through misidentification and their shortcomings are discussed in the last section. In conclusion, I emphasize the positive implications of these criteria concerning the ecological significance of organisms.     

Ferguson and the death of Michael Brown on Twitter: #BlackLivesMatter, #TCOT,and the evolution of collective identities

Recent events related to police brutality and the evolution of #BlackLivesMatter provides an empirical case to explore the vitality of social media data for social movements and the evolution of collective identities. Social media data provide a portal into how organizing and communicating generate narratives that survive over time. We analyse 31.65 million tweets about Ferguson across four meaningful time periods: the death of Michael Brown, the non-indictment of police officer Darren Wilson, the Department of Justice report on Ferguson, and the one year aftermath of Brown’s death. Our analysis shows that #BlackLivesMatter evolved in concert with protests opposing police brutality occurring on the ground. We also show how #TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) has operated as the primary counter narrative to #BlackLivesMatter. We conclude by discussing the implications our research has for the #BlackLivesMatter movement and increased political polarization following the election of Donald Trump.     

Social life cycle assessment of palm oil biodiesel: a case study in Jambi Province of Indonesia

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the social implications of palm oil biodiesel via a case study using a life cycle assessment framework.

Methods

The case study was conducted in Jambi Province of Indonesia and involved several stakeholders, such as value chain actors, employees, local community members, government, and nongovernmental organization representatives related in palm oil industry. The assessment was carried out using social criteria developed by adopting the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry/United Nations Environment Programme Code of Practice, supplemented by an expert survey, and supported by literature review. Stakeholders’ perspectives were evaluated by determining the gaps between expected and perceived quality of each social criterion, which are gauged using seven-point Likert scale.

Results and discussion

Twenty-four social criteria were developed and aggregated into five social impact categories: human rights, working condition, cultural heritage, social–economic repercussion, and governance. These criteria have been weighted, useful for further application in multicriteria decision analysis. The results of the stakeholders’ survey reveal the critical social hotspots, which are the issues within the impact categories of working conditions and cultural heritage.

Conclusions

In order to achieve the social equitability of palm oil biodiesel, which is an important pillar to sustainability, efforts must be put to address these social hotspots through actions in various policy level.