Tom Kerns

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Dr. Tom Kerns is emeritus professor of philosophy at Seattle College and is the founder and director of Environment and Human Rights Advisory. His work brings human-rights norms to bear on environmental issues, especially on the climate crisis. He was co-organizer of the 2018 international Permanent Peoples' Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change. Among Tom’s publications are Environmentally Induced Illnesses: Ethics, Risk Assessment and Human Rights and Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change with Kathleen Dean Moore. His most recent book is Youth Climate Courts: How You Can Host a Human Rights Trial for People and Planet. More details at https://www.youthclimatecourts.org/founder-director-page/
Address: Yachats, Oregon, United States

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Brigham Young University

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IIT Kanpur

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University of Tennessee Knoxville

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Papers by Tom Kerns

The fundamental principles of Jacques Maritain' s integral humanism

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Real Risks

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

Smallpox and Guinea Worm Disease as Metaphors

Protecting Individual Subjects

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

Herein lies the importance of Ethics Review Committees for human subjects research.

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Motivations to Volunteer

If research sponsors must avoid undue inducement in order to avoid the problem of invalidating “f... more If research sponsors must avoid undue inducement in order to avoid the problem of invalidating “free consent,” then another question begins to surface: why would anyone choose to volunteer as a subject in these vaccine studies? The risks involved would seem to provide good reasons for some potential volunteers to decline participation. In addition, general feelings of distrust toward government agencies (who would probably be co-sponsoring such studies) is hardly a peculiarity of Western societies. In the US, the history of ethically questionable medical experimentation, such as the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in black men, as well as numerous instances of government insensitivity toward persons of color, has made it exceptionally difficult for vaccine researchers to recruit black volunteers.1 Researchers in some AIDS Vaccine Evaluation Units around the US, for example, have had a difficult time convincing members of the black community that this time, in this research, for this sexually transmitted disease, the government is going to treat them fairly and ethically. A study of 1160 gay men in Denver, San Francisco and Chicago found that 86 per cent of them had serious misgivings about how much the government could be trusted, or had “a real fear about the government.”2

Still More Questions

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

As if the questions we have been asking so far have not been problematic enough, still more quest... more

Criteria of Effectiveness

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

What should be considered the standard or criterion of a successful preventive HIV vaccine? Or to... more What should be considered the standard or criterion of a successful preventive HIV vaccine? Or to phrase the question a bit differently, what exactly is it that we want a vaccine to accomplish? The simple answer is that what we want from a vaccine is for it to protect us from contracting a certain disease. But how exactly do we want it to protect us from that disease, and how will we determine whether it has accomplished that? What criteria will we use to determine whether we have a successful vaccine or not? Four possible criteria have been considered:

Human Trials

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

How does a Youth Climate Court work?

Routledge eBooks, Sep 29, 2021

Which specific human rights?

Routledge eBooks, Sep 29, 2021

What are human rights?

Routledge eBooks, Sep 29, 2021

Altered States of Consciousness: A Philosophical Analysis of Their Psychological, Ontological, and Religious Significance

Data from Unethical Experiments?

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

These ethical questions are given even more consequence by the concern about what to do with data... more These ethical questions are given even more consequence by the concern about what to do with data which has been garnered from experiments that are judged to be clearly unethical. This question has been an important one since the doctors’ trials at Nuremberg. We might imagine, for example, a researcher today, whose protocol had been declined by an ERC in the country of origin, simply deciding to take that same protocol to a different part of the world where there are no formal requirements for ethical review, or at least where there are much less strict requirements, and there simply conducting the research outside the purview of strict ethical oversight. In this situation, a protocol that has been formally judged ethically inadequate might still manage to be conducted and to gather some data. What should be done with the data garnered from that experiment?

Proxy Consent?

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

The Great Simple Solution

Our poor frustrated reader, now bewildered by such a large array of complex ethical quandaries, c... more Our poor frustrated reader, now bewildered by such a large array of complex ethical quandaries, can be forgiven for desiring, and hoping to find, a Great Simple Solution. Perhaps, hopes our struggling reader, there might be found some Great Simple Solution that only the practical minded person, the person with little learning but much good sense will be able to see, the Great Simple Solution that can be seen only by a simple person of great wisdom who is able to think more clearly than all the learned people and bureaucrats put together.

Is a Vaccine Possible?

Or, more precisely, the question is: if the economic disincentives can be overcome, will it be po... more

Where Stands the Pandemic Now?

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

The Thesis position urges that “In the face of so much growing personal tragedy associated with H... more The Thesis position urges that “In the face of so much growing personal tragedy associated with HIV infection, and in the face of such a rapidly expanding global pandemic, waiting any longer to initiate phase I and II trials for HIV vaccines would simply be wrong.” In order to have any notion of the full force of this claim, we will need to have some elementary understanding of the present scope and predicted future course of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The fundamental principles of Jacques Maritain's integral humanism

Ethical Principles

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

Coda

Routledge eBooks, Sep 29, 2021

The fundamental principles of Jacques Maritain' s integral humanism

Download

Real Risks

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

Smallpox and Guinea Worm Disease as Metaphors

Protecting Individual Subjects

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997