Reflecting on ethical and legal issues in wildlife disease

Disease in wildlife raises a number of issues that have not been widely considered in the bioethical literature. However, wildlife disease has major implications for human welfare. The majority of emerging human infectious diseases are zoonotic: that is, they occur in humans by cross-species transmission from animal hosts. Managing these diseases often involves balancing concerns with human health against animal welfare and conservation concerns. Many infectious diseases of domestic animals are shared with wild animals, although it is often unclear whether the infection spills over from wild animals to domestic animals or vice versa. Culling is the standard means of managing such diseases, bringing economic considerations, animal welfare and conservation into conflict. Infectious diseases are also major threatening processes in conservation biology and their appropriate management by culling, vaccination or treatment raises substantial animal ethics issues. One particular issue of great significance in Australia is an ongoing research program to develop genetically modified pathogens to control vertebrate pests including rabbits, foxes and house mice. Release of any self-replicating GMO vertebrate pathogen gives rise to a whole series of ethical questions. We briefly review current Australian legal responses to these problems. Finally, we present two unresolved problems of general importance that are exemplified by wildlife disease. First, to what extent can or should 'bioethics' be broadened beyond direct concerns with human welfare to animal welfare and environmental welfare? Second, how should the irreducible uncertainty of ecological systems be accounted for in ethical decision making?

Issues in training in clinical psychology in Australia: Interplay between training goals and legal standards of practice

Training models in clinical psychology vary across regions, as do the laws that regulate professional practice in psychology. Standards for practice and for entry into professional practice may endure past the point of utility in the face of changing health-care systems and evolving international considerations. Herein the authors review aspects of the Australian 4-year training model, including qualifications for entry to the profession, supervision, and the influence of the profession and the universities in maintaining and in changing to a new training model. Aspects of training in clinical psychology in Australia are also discussed, and the Australian and New Zealand accreditation models are contrasted. Suggestions on ways to move forward are offered.

New Treatments for Addiction: Behavioural, Ethical,Legal and Social Questions: Harwood & T. G. Myers eds (Book review)

This book is an exemplar of what the National Academy of Science does so well: to assemble a cast of very wellinformed and clever experts; to ask them to think hard and critically about an important issue over a substantial period of time; and to seek a consensus, if possible and failing that, to identify the critical issues on which wellinformed people disagree and to specify the evidence that has the greatest epistemic leverage in resolving disagreements.

Ethical issues in using a cocaine vaccine to treat and prevent cocaine abuse and dependence

A cocaine vaccine'' is a promising immunotherapeutic approach to treating cocaine dependence which induces the immune system to form antibodies that prevent cocaine from crossing the blood brain barrier to act on receptor sites in the brain. Studies in rats show that cocaine antibodies block cocaine from reaching the brain and prevent the reinstatement of cocaine self administration. A successful phase 1 trial of a human cocaine vaccine has been reported. The most promising application of a cocaine vaccine is to prevent relapse to dependence in abstinent users who voluntarily enter treatment. Any use of a vaccine to treat cocaine addicts under legal coercion raises major ethical issues. If this is done at all, it should be carefully trialled first, and only after considerable clinical experience has been obtained in using the vaccine to treat voluntary patients. There will need to be an informed community debate about what role, if any, a cocaine vaccine may have as a way of preventing cocaine addiction in children and adolescents.

Assisted reproductive technologies and equity of access issues

In Australia and other countries, certain groups of women have traditionally been denied access to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). These typically are single heterosexual women, lesbians, poor women, and those whose ability to rear children is questioned, particularly women with certain disabilities or who are older. The arguments used to justify selection of women for ARTs are most often based on issues such as scarcity of resources, and absence of infertility ( in lesbians and single women), or on social concerns: that it goes against nature''; particular women might not make good mothers; unconventional families are not socially acceptable; or that children of older mothers might be orphaned at an early age. The social, medical, legal, and ethical reasoning that has traditionally promoted this lack of equity in access to ARTs, and whether the criteria used for client deselection are ethically appropriate in any particular case, are explored by this review. In addition, the issues of distribution and just gatekeeping'' practices associated with these sensitive medical services are examined.