Currently, research ethics committees (RECs) in the UK meet behind closed doors-their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a significant tension between this current practice and a broader societal presumption of openness. As a form of public institution, the REC system exists to oversee research from the perspective of society gene...

The concepts of tolerability and reasonableness are at the core of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) system of radiological protection. Tolerability allows the definition of boundaries for implementing ICRP principles, while reasonableness contributes to decisions regarding adequate levels of protection, taking into account the prevailing circumstances. In the 1970s...

Abstract This short essay aims at discussing the opposition between two different views on limits in legal interpretations: I will call them (i) “no-limits option” and (ii) “pro-limits option”. As for (i), it is based a widely diffused understanding of individual freedom: that an unceasing breaking all limits. idea involves nowadays not only number once accepted moral limits, nor material or so...

BACKGROUND Because the demand for health services outstrips the available resources, priority setting is one of the most difficult issues faced by health policy makers, particularly those in developing countries. However, there is lack of literature that describes and evaluates priority setting in these contexts. The objective of this paper is to describe priority setting in a teaching hospital...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164201.].

1The influence of the Greek heritage (Hellenism) on human civilization is both indelible and undeniable. One major component of this heritage is the systematic employment of the mind in the pursuit of knowledge, both theoretical and practical –sometimes described as the “rational” or “rationalist” (as opposed to “mythical”) approach of trying to understand the world and to dealing with it. By t...

The necessity calculus is a familiar adjuvant to the possibility calculus and an uncertain inference tool in its own right. Necessity orderings enjoy a syntactical relationship to some probability orderings similar to that displayed by possibility. In its adjuvant role, necessity may be viewed as bringing possibility closer to achieving the quasi-additive normative desideratum advocated by de F...