The future of FemTech ethics & privacy - a global perspective.

We discuss the concept of women's empowerment in FemTech, considering cultural and legal differences, ethical concerns, and legal consequences. We claim that it is crucial to prioritize privacy, a fundamental right, especially in the case of changes in laws related to women's health, such as Roe v. Wade in the US.

Moral sensitivity in business: A revised measure.

In order to manage ethical challenges in organizations and the workplace, moral sensitivity (MS)-the ability to identify and ascribe importance to moral issues when they arise in the workplace-is seen as the key prerequisite by researchers and professionals. However, despite the importance of MS, satisfactory reliable and valid measures to assess this competence are to date lacking. The present research tests the psychometric qualities of a revised MS measure for the business domain (R-MSB) that is designed to assess individual differences in moral and business-related value sensitivity. We present three different analyses with two heterogeneous samples of Swiss and German employees (total N = 1168). The first two studies provide good evidence of the measures' factorial structure, its construct, and criteria-related validity. The third study examines how affective and empathic responses are associated with MS and business sensitivity (BS). The results support the view that empathic responsiveness enhances MS. The instrument's theoretical and practical strengths, limitations, and avenues for future research are discussed. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01926-x.

Who is controlling whom? Reframing "meaningful human control" of AI systems in security.

Decisions in security contexts, including armed conflict, law enforcement, and disaster relief, often need to be taken under circumstances of limited information, stress, and time pressure. Since AI systems are capable of providing a certain amount of relief in such contexts, such systems will become increasingly important, be it as decision-support or decision-making systems. However, given that human life may be at stake in such situations, moral responsibility for such decisions should remain with humans. Hence the idea of "meaningful human control" of intelligent systems. In this opinion paper, we outline generic configurations of control of AI and we present an alternative to human control of AI, namely the inverse idea of having AI control humans, and we discuss the normative consequences of this alternative.

Privacy, Data Sharing, and Data Security Policies of Women's mHealth Apps: Scoping Review and Content Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Women's mobile health (mHealth) is a growing phenomenon in the mobile app global market. An increasing number of women worldwide use apps geared to female audiences (female technology). Given the often private and sensitive nature of the data collected by such apps, an ethical assessment from the perspective of data privacy, sharing, and security policies is warranted. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this scoping review and content analysis was to assess the privacy policies, data sharing, and security policies of women's mHealth apps on the current international market (the App Store on the Apple operating system [iOS] and Google Play on the Android system). METHODS: We reviewed the 23 most popular women's mHealth apps on the market by focusing on publicly available apps on the App Store and Google Play. The 23 downloaded apps were assessed manually by 2 independent reviewers against a variety of user data privacy, data sharing, and security assessment criteria. RESULTS: All 23 apps collected personal health-related data. All apps allowed behavioral tracking, and 61% (14/23) of the apps allowed location tracking. Of the 23 apps, only 16 (70%) displayed a privacy policy, 12 (52%) requested consent from users, and 1 (4%) had a pseudoconsent. In addition, 13% (3/23) of the apps collected data before obtaining consent. Most apps (20/23, 87%) shared user data with third parties, and data sharing information could not be obtained for the 13% (3/23) remaining apps. Of the 23 apps, only 13 (57%) provided users with information on data security. CONCLUSIONS: Many of the most popular women's mHealth apps on the market have poor data privacy, sharing, and security standards. Although regulations exist, such as the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, current practices do not follow them. The failure of the assessed women's mHealth apps to meet basic data privacy, sharing, and security standards is not ethically or legally acceptable.

The use of artificial intelligence applications in medicine and the standard required for healthcare provider-patient briefings-an exploratory study.

Introduction: Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) are currently being funneled through legacy regulatory processes that are not adapted to the unique particularities of this new technology class. In the absence of adequate regulation of DHTs, the briefing of a patient by their healthcare provider (HCP) as a component of informed consent can present the last line of defense before potentially harmful technologies are employed on a patient. Methods: This exploratory study utilizes a case vignette of a machine learning-based technology for the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease that is presented to a group of medical students, physicians, and bioethicists. What constitutes the necessary standard and content of the HCP-patient briefings is explored using a survey (N = 34). Whether participants actually provide a sufficient HCP-patient briefing is evaluated based on audio recordings. Results and Conclusions: We find that participants deem artificial intelligence use in medical context should be declared to patients and argue that the explanation should currently follow the standard required of other experimental procedures. Further, since our study provides indications that implementation of HCP-patient briefings lacks behind the identified standard, opportunities for incorporation of training on the use of DHTs into medical curricula and continuous training schedules should be considered.

Highway to (Digital) Surveillance: When Are Clients Coerced to Share Their Data with Insurers?

Clients may feel trapped into sharing their private digital data with insurance companies to get a desired insurance product or premium. However, private insurance must collect some data to offer products and premiums appropriate to the client's level of risk. This situation creates tension between the value of privacy and common insurance business practice. We argue for three main claims: first, coercion to share private data with insurers is pro tanto wrong because it violates the autonomous choice of a privacy-valuing client. Second, we maintain that irrespective of being coerced, the choice of accepting digital surveillance by insurers makes it harder for the client to protect his or her autonomy (and to act spontaneously and authentically). The violation of autonomy also makes coercing customers into digital surveillance pro tanto morally wrong. Third, having identified an economically plausible process involving no direct coercion by insurers, leading to the adoption of digital surveillance, we argue that such an outcome generates further threats against autonomy. This threat provides individuals with a pro tanto reason to prevent this process. We highlight the freedom dilemma faced by regulators who aim to prevent this outcome by constraining market freedoms and argue for the need for further moral and empirical research on this question.

Ethical Considerations Associated with "Humanitarian Drones": A Scoping Literature Review.

The use of drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UVAs) in humanitarian action has emerged rapidly in the last decade and continues to expand. These so-called 'humanitarian drones' represent the first wave of robotics applied in the humanitarian and development contexts, providing critical information through mapping of crisis-affected areas and timely delivery of aid supplies to populations in need. Alongside these emergent uses of drones in the aid sector, debates have arisen about potential risks and challenges, presenting diverse perspectives on the ethical, legal, and social implications of humanitarian drones. Guided by the methodology introduced by Arksey and O'Malley, this scoping review offers an assessment of the ethical considerations discussed in the academic and gray literature based on a screening of 1,188 articles, from which we selected and analyzed 47 articles. In particular, we used a hybrid approach of qualitative content analysis, along with quantitative landscape mapping, to inductively develop a typology of ethical considerations associated with humanitarian drones. The results yielded 11 key areas of concern: (1) minimizing harm, (2) maximizing welfare, (3) substantive justice, (4) procedural justice, (5) respect for individuals, (6) respect for communities, (7) regulatory gaps, (8) regulatory dysfunction, (9) perceptions of humanitarian aid and organizations, (10) relations between humanitarian organizations and industry, and (11) the identity of humanitarian aid providers and organizations. Our findings illuminate topics that have been the focus of extensive attention (such as minimizing risks of harm and protecting privacy), traces the evolution of this discussion over time (i.e., an initial focus on mapping drones and the distinction of humanitarian from military use, toward the ethics of cargo drones carrying healthcare supplies and samples), and points to areas that have received less consideration (e.g., whether sustainability and shared benefits will be compromised if private companies' interest in humanitarian drones wanes once new markets open up). The review can thus help to situate and guide further analysis of drone use in humanitarian settings.

Trolley dilemma in the sky: Context matters when civilians and cadets make remotely piloted aircraft decisions.

Crews operating remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs) in military operations may be among the few that truly experience tragic dilemmas similar to the famous Trolley Problem. In order to analyze decision-making and emotional conflict of RPA operators within Trolley-Problem-like dilemma situations, we created an RPA simulation that varied mission contexts (firefighter, military and surveillance as a control condition) and the social "value" of a potential victim. We found that participants (Air Force cadets and civilian students) were less likely to make the common utilitarian choice (sacrificing one to save five), when the value of the one increased, especially in the military context. However, in the firefighter context, this decision pattern was much less pronounced. The results demonstrate behavioral and justification differences when people are more invested in a particular context despite ostensibly similar dilemmas.

Susceptibility of domain experts to color manipulation indicate a need for design principles in data visualization.

Color is key for the visual encoding of data, yet its use reportedly affects decision making in important ways. We examined the impact of various popular color schemes on experts' and lay peoples' map-based decisions in two, geography and neuroscience, scenarios, in an online visualization experiment. We found that changes in color mappings influence domain experts, especially neuroimaging experts, more in their decision-making than novices. Geographic visualization experts exhibited more trust in the unfavorable rainbow color scale than would have been predicted by their suitability ratings and their training, which renders them sensitive to scale appropriateness. Our empirical results make a strong call for increasing scientists' awareness for and training in perceptually salient and cognitively informed design principles in data visualization.

Development and validation of a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humility.

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model's cross-cultural generalizability.

Measuring value sensitivity in medicine.

BACKGROUND: Value sensitivity - the ability to recognize value-related issues when they arise in practice - is an indispensable competence for medical practitioners to enter decision-making processes related to ethical questions. However, the psychological competence of value sensitivity is seldom an explicit subject in the training of medical professionals. In this contribution, we outline the traditional concept of moral sensitivity in medicine and its revised form conceptualized as value sensitivity and we propose an instrument that measures value sensitivity. METHODS: We developed an instrument for assessing the sensitivity for three value groups (moral-related values, values related to the principles of biomedical ethics, strategy-related values) in a four step procedure: 1) value identification (n = 317); 2) value representation (n = 317); 3) vignette construction and quality evaluation (n = 37); and 4) instrument validation by comparing nursing professionals with hospital managers (n = 48). RESULTS: We find that nursing professionals recognize and ascribe importance to principle-related issues more than professionals from hospital management. The latter are more likely to recognize and ascribe importance to strategy-related issues. CONCLUSIONS: These hypothesis-driven results demonstrate the discriminatory power of our newly developed instrument, which makes it useful not only for health care professionals in practice but for students and people working in the clinical context as well.

Limb amputation and other disability desires as a medical condition.

Some people have a profound dissatisfaction with what is considered an able-bodied state by most others. These individuals desire to be disabled, by conventional standards. In this Review, we integrate research findings about the desire for a major limb amputation or paralysis (xenomelia). Neuropsychological and neuroimaging explorations of xenomelia show functional and structural abnormalities in predominantly right hemisphere cortical circuits of higher-order bodily representation, including affective and sexual aspects of corporeal awareness. These neural underpinnings of xenomelia do not necessarily imply a neurological cause, and a full understanding of the condition requires consideration of the interface between neural and social contributions to the bodily self and the concept of disability. Irrespective of cause, disability desires are accompanied by a disabling bodily dysphoria, in many respects similar to gender dysphoria, and we suggest that they should be considered a mental disorder.

Deep Brain Stimulation: In Search of Reliable Instruments for Assessing Complex Personality-Related Changes.

During the last 25 years, more than 100,000 patients have been treated with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). While human clinical and animal preclinical research has shed light on the complex brain-signaling disturbances that underpin e.g., Parkinson's disease (PD), less information is available when it comes to complex psychosocial changes following DBS interventions. In this contribution, we propose to more thoroughly investigate complex personality-related changes following deep brain stimulation through refined and reliable instruments in order to help patients and their relatives in the post-surgery phase. By pursuing this goal, we first outline the clinical importance DBS has attained followed by discussing problematic and undesired non-motor problems that accompany some DBS interventions. After providing a brief definition of complex changes, we move on by outlining the measurement problem complex changes relating to non-motor symptoms currently are associated with. The latter circumstance substantiates the need for refined instruments that are able to validly assess personality-related changes. After providing a brief paragraph with regard to conceptions of personality, we argue that the latter is significantly influenced by certain competencies which themselves currently play only a tangential role in the clinical DBS-discourse. Increasing awareness of the latter circumstance is crucial in the context of DBS because it could illuminate a link between competencies and the emergence of personality-related changes, such as new-onset impulse control disorders that have relevance for patients and their relatives. Finally, we elaborate on the field of application of instruments that are able to measure personality-related changes.

Ethics of emergent information and communication technology applications in humanitarian medical assistance.

New applications of information and communication technology (ICT) are shaping the way we understand and provide humanitarian medical assistance in situations of disaster, disease outbreak or conflict. Each new crisis appears to be accompanied by advancements in humanitarian technology, leading to significant improvements in the humanitarian aid sector. However, ICTs raise ethical questions that warrant attention. Focusing on the context of humanitarian medical assistance, we review key domains of ICT innovation. We then discuss ethical challenges and uncertainties associated with the development and application of new ICTs in humanitarian medical assistance, including avoiding harm, ensuring privacy and security, responding to inequalities, demonstrating respect, protecting relationships, and addressing expectations. In doing so, we emphasize the centrality of ethics in humanitarian ICT design, application and evaluation.

Analyzing 7000 texts on deep brain stimulation: what do they tell us?

The enormous increase in numbers of scientific publications in the last decades requires quantitative methods for obtaining a better understanding of topics and developments in various fields. In this exploratory study, we investigate the emergence, trends, and connections of topics within the whole text corpus of the deep brain stimulation (DBS) literature based on more than 7000 papers (title and abstracts) published between 1991 to 2014 using a network approach. Taking the co-occurrence of basic terms that represent important topics within DBS as starting point, we outline the statistics of interconnections between DBS indications, anatomical targets, positive, and negative effects, as well as methodological, technological, and economic issues. This quantitative approach confirms known trends within the literature (e.g., regarding the emergence of psychiatric indications). The data also reflect an increased discussion about complex issues such as personality connected tightly to the ethical context, as well as an apparent focus on depression as important DBS indication, where the co-occurrence of terms related to negative effects is low both for the indication as well as the related anatomical targets. We also discuss consequences of the analysis from a bioethical perspective, i.e., how such a quantitative analysis could uncover hidden subject matters that have ethical relevance. For example, we find that hardware-related issues in DBS are far more robustly connected to an ethical context compared to impulsivity, concrete side-effects or death/suicide. Our contribution also outlines the methodology of quantitative text analysis that combines statistical approaches with expert knowledge. It thus serves as an example how innovative quantitative tools can be made useful for gaining a better understanding in the field of DBS.