RESPECTING AUTONOMY WITHOUT DISCLOSING INFORMATION

There is widespread agreement that it would be both morally and legally wrong to treat a competent patient, or to carry out research with a competent participant, without the voluntary consent of that patient or research participant. Furthermore, in medical ethics it is generally taken that that consent must be informed. The most widely given reason for this has been that informed consent is needed to respect the patient's or research participant's autonomy. In this article I set out to challenge this claim by considering in detail each of the three most prominent ways in which ‘autonomy’ has been conceptualized in the medical ethics literature. I will argue that whilst these accounts support the claim that consent is needed if the treatment of competent patients, or research on competent individuals, is to respect their autonomy, they do not support the claim that informed consent is needed for this purpose.     

A note on Yersinia enterocolitica in a swine farm watershed

Swine faeces from three pig farms in the La Crosse River watershed near La Crosse, Wisconsin, were sampled for Yersinia enterocolitica ; 19 presumptive isolates were recovered and biochemically confirmed as Y. enterocolitica. Simultaneously, during a 2mD2 cm rainfall, the confluences of runoff water flowing from the swine holding pens and of nearby streams also were sampled; a single isolate was obtained from one holding pen runoff-stream confluence. Biochemical analysis showed that the water isolate was a biotype identical with that of a swine isolate from the adjacent farm. These results demonstrate one possible mechanism for the introduction of Y. enterocolitica into water supplies; faecal material from swine, a suspected natural reservoir of the bacterium, is transported via runoff water to streams.     

A new Indo-Australian genus of Braconinae (Insecta, Hymenoptera, Braconidae)

Bicarinibracon gen.n. (type species Atanyco1us tricolor . Szépligeti from Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya). Bicarinibracon luteus gen. et. 3p.n. from India and Malaya and B. lepicius gen. et. sp.n. from Thailand and the Philippines are described and illustrated. A key to the specics of Bicarinibracon is provided and its systematic placement is discussed.     

NUTRITIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF ACETOBACTER SPECIES: INORGANIC AMMONIUM SALTS AS SOURCES OF NITROGEN

SUMMARY: Forty-six strains of Acetobacter , representing twenty species, have been compared on the basis of their respective abilities to proliferate in two defined inorganic media, in which either glucose or ethanol was the sole source of carbon and energy. Twenty-three strains, representing eleven species, grew in either inorganic medium when glucose was present and nine of these strains, representing five species, could grow also in either inorganic medium when ethanol was present. The remaining twenty-three strains, representing eleven species, failed to grow in either medium with either glucose or ethanol. Three organisms grew better with ethanol than with glucose and three were inhibited by ethanol in the presence of glucose.