No human cloning: a social ethics perspective

This Essay addresses the negative impact of human cloning on the family, and argues further that market incentives to develop and implement cloning techniques exploit and exacerbate socioeconomic inequities. It suggests that cloning should be prohibited internationally and examines possible routes to that aim. To begin with, it offers some reflections on the nature of moral argument, and on the role of religion in public debate.     

No iceberg in sight: on the absence of WTO disputes challenging fossil fuel subsidies

The empirical record of dispute settlement cases under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on energy subsidies consists only of cases against renewable energy (RE) subsidies, whereas WTO members have not challenged others’ much larger and environmentally harmful fossil fuel subsidies. Yet, the WTO agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures would at first sight seem to create possibilities to forestall environmentally harmful subsidization. In this article, we assess possible explanations for the skewed distribution of energy subsidies dispute settlement complaints at the WTO. We argue that differences in legally relevant characteristics of fossil fuel subsidies, on the one hand, and RE subsidies, on the other hand, largely explain this observation. In the case of RE subsidies, in particular, the disputes filed to date have targeted a much narrower set of measures than the whole range of RE subsidies currently in place, namely those incorporating a local content requirement component. Although this finding is not new, we have probed into this question more systematically, both by widening the scope of the empirical analysis from actual to potential WTO disputes on energy-related policies the European Union and the USA might have initiated, and by systematically assessing the plausibility of alternative explanations.     

Recent developments in the transracial adoption debate.

This article places the controversy over transracial adoption (TRA) in its historical context and analyzes recent developments in the law governing TRA policy. Because unfounded "authority" from the field of mental health infuses current debate, the authors alert psychiatrists to two powerful forces that improperly influence today's legal arena: community preference for same-race families and biased professional norms of mental health professionals.     

论刑法修正案对刑法第168条的修正

修正后的刑法第 16 8条 ,扩大了犯罪主体的范围 ,改变了犯罪行为和犯罪结果 ,并且加重了法定刑。这对于保护国有资产 ,完善刑事立法 ,都有重大意义。但修正后的刑法第16 8条仍然存在着主体过于扩大、犯罪行为规定得不严谨、罪状规定得不全面、语言稍显累赘等缺陷。     

An end to a rumour

Mardin, is a city in the southeastern part of Turkey where people from different cultures and religions have been living together peacefully for centuries. The province hosted many valuable historical constructions representing different civilizations. Kasimiye Medresse, one of the most important educational centers of its times, has a sacred value for people in Mardin. The reason is that the stain on the wall of Kasimiye Medresse is considered to be Sultan Kasim's blood. Our study aims to analyze if the stain in question is blood. Serological tests are performed by using "Kastle-Meyer" and "Luminol" reactives on the scrapped samples taken from stained and unstained parts of the wall. At the end of the analysis, the stain is turned out to be a dye made of herbal roots ending the rumour of centuries.     

秘鲁第27811号法案（官方公报“秘鲁人报”2002年8月10日公布）

(官方公报“秘鲁人报”2002年8月10日公布)为原住民建立源于生物资源的集体知识保护制度的法律第一章承认原住民对其集体知识的权利第一条权利确认秘鲁政府承认原住民和社区拥有依照其视为合适的方式处理其集体知识的权利。第二章定义第二条定义在本法中:(a“)原住民”指其权利在秘鲁政府建立之前业已存在,保留有自有文化,占据特定地域并也如是认为的土著住民。他们包括自愿隔绝(于外界)或(外界)尚未与其建立联系的土著住民,也包括农村或土著社区。“本土的”这个术语应包括,且可被用作“原生的”“、传统的“”、种族的“”、祖先的”“、…     

The forensic taxonomic debate on Cannabis: semantic hokum.

It has been asserted that there are legal species of marihuana plants, and this contention has generated frequent court challenges of criminal prosecutions involving marihuana. Invariably the claim is made that the name C. sativa used in legislation is insufficiently comprehensive to proscribe all forms of marihuana. The maneuver being used, alarmingly, is potentially applicable to innumerable other materials, but its success is based on a failure to appreciate the subjective nature of taxonomy and the little-known but critical ambiguities which are inherent in scientific names. The complex principles and operational conventions of biological nomenclature are presented in elementary fashion. Despite important technical constraints on the use of scientific names, some facts are clear: these names are used subjectively, they may be highly ambiguous, the consensus on use of these names is liable to change with time and, most important, quite permissibly they may have substantially different meanings to different users. The claim that there are legal species of Cannabis merely amounts to a semantic ploy in which certain of the variants of Cannabis that have customarily been understood to be denoted by the species name C. sativa, and which are clearly understood to be proscribed, are simply arbitrarily redefined as different species. This ploy has proven unsuccessful in all cases where scientific evidence was adequately presented by the state and in all important court cases where the issue was critically examined.