Introduction: Ellul returns
Many nineteenth century thinkers, convinced of the Enlightenment premise that both nature and society were intelligible, and carried away by the growing prestige of the sciences, saw progress as a natural human development and believed that rational criteria guided societal choices. Biological evolution also appeared to provide a model for change applicable to history. An associated triumphalism in modernity dominated European popular culture until the outbreak of World War I and the post-war rise of dictatorial regimes. Yet even then a positive view of science remained largely intact. Even after World War II, the Shoah, saturation bombings of civilians, and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the industrialization of science proceeded at an ever faster pace, assisted by an increasing involvement of state power. The United States science adviser Vannevar Bush (1945) went so far as to present post-World War II science as an “endless frontier” and font of social benefits in healthcare, economic development, and military defense.
Regeln für den Menschenpark
Editores Medicorum Helveticorum Die Basler Elmauer-Rede vom Menschengehege hat Peter Sloterdijk viel Arger eingebracht. Dabei hat er nur vor einem Fachpublikum uber Heidegger und Plato nachgedacht, uber die Zahmung der menschlichen Natur und das Ende des gymnasialen Literaturkanons als Mittel einer humanistischen Erziehung. Also nichts fur die Boulevardpresse, die seine kurzen Bemerkungen zur optionalen Geburt und pranatalen Selektion mit den Worten des Autors zur «Massenpsychose der Simplifikation» aufbauschte. Wenn Ethikkommissionen zum Hegen und Pflegen Regeln entwerfen und dabei, wie die Schweizerische Akademie Medizinischer Wissenschaften (SAMW), uber die Zukunft nachdenken, werden sie Provokateure und Aussenseiter brauchen konnen, weil gemass Sloterdijk die Domestikation des Menschen, und davon handelt die moderne-praventive Medizin, das grosse Ungedachte sei, was einzusehen schon genuge, um in tiefes Wasser zu geraten.
Cultural constraints on the delivery of HIV/AIDS prevention in Ireland.
HIV appeared in Ireland following an opiate epidemic in the early 1980s. Initially, however, the gay community mounted the only response to the spread of the virus while the implementation of early actions by the government was hampered by the constructions of the disease within Irish society. This paper considers the influence of the religious hierarchy in both the development of AIDS policy and in the shaping of public perceptions of the disease and those affected. A qualitative methodology is used to examine the role of such cultural constraints in an evaluation of the social context within which the prevention of HIV infection occurs. Three key issues pertinent to the policy context in Ireland are explored in depth. These are the role of the Catholic Church, the influences on health education programmes, particularly information giving, and the development of services and other interventions. These findings are discussed within the social and political contexts in which health policy is formulated.