Difficult Decisions

Evaluating Evidence When Making Difficult Decisions

This paper presents the case for using the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and a derivative of it, to model the reasoning process in debates on difficult philosophical, theological and scientific questions. This gives a useful formal framework within which to enhance the debating process. A well-known theological debate and two scientific exemplars are given for illustration of the working a...

Difficult Intraoperative Decisions during Colic Surgery

One of the first major surgeries many equine surgical residents will log as a primary surgeon will be an emergency colic surgery. Being adequately prepared for this challenge and able to make correct intraoperative decisions is imperative for successful case outcome. Arguably the two greatest challenges faced during colic surgery are assessing bowel viability, and overall patient survivability ...

Choice processing in emotionally difficult decisions.

Choice conflicts between one's important values may cause negative emotion. This article extends the standard effort-accuracy approach to explaining task influences on decision processing by arguing that coping goals will interact with effort minimization and accuracy maximization goals for negatively emotion-laden decision tasks. These coping goals may involve both a desire to process in a tho...

Difficult decisions for long-term tube-feeding.

Difficult Decisions Liver transplantation and primary biliary cirrhosis

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a chronic cholestatic liver disease, autoimmune in 'nature', but ofunknown aetiology." 2 It often presents in middle-aged women with itching, jaundice, hepatomegaly or variceal bleeding.3 Increasingly the diagnosis is made in asymptomatic patients or those without symptoms referrable to the liver,4 often in association with other autoimmune diseases, on the ba...