According to the biological definition of death, a human body that has not lost the capacity to holistically organize itself is the body of a living human individual. Reasonable doubt against the conclusion that it has lost the capacity exists when the body appears to express it and no evidence to the contrary is sufficient to rule out reasonable doubt against the conclusion that the apparent expression is a true expression (i.e., when the conclusion that what appears to be holistic organization is in fact holistic organization remains a reasonable explanatory hypothesis in light of the best evidence to the contrary). This essay argues that the evidence and arguments against the conclusion that the signs of complex bodily integration exhibited in ventilated brain dead bodies are true expressions of somatic integration are unpersuasive; that is, they are not adequate to exclude reasonable doubt against the conclusion that BD bodies are dead. Since we should not treat as corpses what for all we know might be living human beings, it follows that we have an obligation to treat BD individuals as if they were living human beings.

In a 61-year-old man with known poroma of right lower abdomen, malignant transformation to porocarcinoma was suspected and confirmed by biopsy. PET/CT was requested for tumor staging, which revealed high FDG uptake in the known skin nodules located in the right side of abdominal and chest wall and identified further some adenopathy in the right axillary. All nodules and axillary lymph nodes were removed, and diagnosis of eccrine porocarcinoma was confirmed. The primary tumor and secondary lesions of porocarcinoma show a high glucose metabolism; thus, PET/CT could be useful for staging, follow-up, and detection of recurrence of patients with eccrine porocarcinoma.

Debate exists over whether fetuses feel pain, and if so what to do about it. Because they cannot provide self-report, certitude on the question cannot be reached. The essay argues that a presumption of reasonable doubt is adequate to inform moral behavior. It looks at the most recent evidence from fetal anatomical, neurochemical, physiological and behavioral research and concludes that a reasonable doubt exists that fetuses from 20 to 23 weeks do not feel pain. It proposes that where abortion is legal, providers should be legally required both to provide full disclosure of the possibility of fetal pain starting at 20 weeks and to offer pain-relief measures to suppress fetal pain to all women seeking an abortion.

The December 2008 White Paper (WP) on "Brain Death" published by the President's Council on Bioethics (PCBE) reaffirmed its support for the traditional neurological criteria for human death. It spends considerable time explaining and critiquing what it takes to be the most challenging recent argument opposing the neurological criteria formulated by D. Alan Shewmon, a leading critic of the "whole brain death" standard. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate and critique the PCBE's argument. The essay begins with a brief background on the history of the neurological criteria in the United States and on the preparation of the 2008 WP. After introducing the WP's contents, the essay sets forth Shewmon's challenge to the traditional neurological criteria and the PCBE's reply to Shewmon. The essay concludes by critiquing the WP's novel justification for reaffirming the traditional conclusion, a justification the essay finds wanting.

The concept of human nature as an enduring set of capacities and mechanisms capable upon observation and reflection of being understood and facilitated in their proper function is basic to understanding the assumptions upon which clinical psychology rests. Clinical psychology assumes there is sufficient stability in the underlying capacities of human nature to test observations, draw generalized conclusions and reliably predict behavior. This essay's aim is to make a case for the importance of articulating a normative account of human nature for clinical psychology; and then to set forth a concise account of the basic constituents and capacities of human nature. The account takes the form of a set of descriptive premises that together constitute a concise philosophical conception of the human person that the authors think can serve as a normative theoretical and abstract foundation for reasoning in the field of clinical psychology.