Xenotransplantation: consent, public health and charter issues

There is a growing body of literature and commentary analyzing the ethical and public policy concerns associated with xenotransplantation. While this technology holds great promise to provide an almost limitless supply of organs for transplantation, there remains grave concern about possible public health ramifications. As a result, it has been recommended that patients who undergo xenotransplantations will need to agree, inter alia, to a lifetime of close health monitoring, participation in an international database and autopsy upon death. It has been suggested that this agreement would transform the nature of informed consent into a "binding contract." Though such draconian measures are understandable given the magnitude of the risks involved, would existing common law and legislation allow their implementation? This paper analyzes relevant Canadian consent and public health law in the context of the xenotransplantation. Canada is a country with a particularly rich body of informed consent jurisprudence--jurisprudence firmly rooted (rightly or not) in the ethical principle of autonomy. In this climate, many of the suggested monitoring strategies would find little support from Canadian law. Before xenotransplantations proceed, policy makers must be sensitive to the legal barriers which exist to the implementation [of] effective public health measures. Effective surveillance programs will require novel approaches to consent and the enactment of specific public health laws.     

A Chinese Medicine Convert

正I have a confession,and it’s one that I’m sure my Chinese colleagues will berate me for:When it came to Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM),I was a bit of a doubter.I didn’t doubt that Chinese medicine could be effective.I just wasn’t sure that in this age of modern medicine,where pharmacies have come to resemble Hogwarts Potions Labs,     

“The greenery of well-engineered factory complexes”: Fiji's garment-led export industrialization strategy

Abstract

In February 1990 Navitilai Naisoro, the Sussex University-educated permanent secretary to the Fiji Ministry of Trade and Commerce, outlined to students at the University of the South Pacific in Suva his vision for Fiji's future. “My hope,” he said, “is that one day instead of seeing the greenery of sugar cane fields, we see the greenery of well-engineered factory complexes.” In 1990 he had every reason to believe that his dream was well on its way to fruition. As one of the self-proclaimed “New Fijian” economic managers appointed following the 1987 military coups, Naisoro had been at the forefront of a radical redirection in Fiji's economic policies. The coups had precipitated a massive currency devaluation of 35 percent, 12 percent inflation (unofficial estimates placed inflation at 26 percent), a new wage freeze, an upsurge in unemployment, and growing levels of poverty and destitution. Investment capital had dried up and the economy contracted, affecting Fiji's predominant import substitution industries in a way that high protective barriers could not assist.     

Policing: Fundamental principles in a Canadian context

This article provides an introduction to the place of Canada's police in the public service. It identifies what makes Canada's police services distinct from other parts of the public service, considers the principles under which policing is expected to operate in democratic systems, and reviews current policing challenges. Public understanding of police and police work may not be accurate, since perceptions may be overly influenced by fictional depictions of law enforcement and by police themselves. Incomplete understandings can influence public policy making, including funding decisions, to the detriment of good policing. Finally, the article observes that there may be insufficient research on policing given its aggregate cost and importance to a successful civil society.     

Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Humanoid Robots and the Posthuman Family

ABSTRACT

Japan accounts for nearly 52 percent of the world's share of operational robots and leads the postindustrial world in the development of humanoid robots designed and marketed specifically to enhance and augment human society. Innovation 25, Prime Minister Abe's visionary blueprint for remaking Japanese society by 2025, with the aim of reversing the declining birthrate and accommodating the rapidly aging population, emphasizes the central role that household robots will play in stabilizing core institutions, like the family. In addition to exploring the cultural logic behind the development of autonomous, intelligent, evolutionary humanoid robots, I argue that new bio-and robot technologies are being deployed to reify old or “traditional” values, such as the patriarchal extended family and sociopolitical conservatism.     

Intelligence requirements for the 1980s

Roy Godson (ed.), Intelligence Requirements for the 1980's (series title), Volumes 1–5 published by the National Strategy Information Center but distributed by Transaction Books, New Brunswick. Volumes 6 and 7 published by Lexington Books, Lexington MA.).

Volume One: Elements of Intelligence, 1979. Pp. 124; $4.99; substantially revised and with a new essay, 1983. Pp.148; $6.00.

Volume Two: Analysis and Estimates, 1980. Pp.223; $7.50.

Volume Three: Counter‐intelligence, 1980. Pp.339; $7.95.

Volume Four: Covert Action, 1981. Pp.243; $7.50.

Volume Five: Clandestine Collection, 1982. Pp.231; $8.50.

Volume Six: Domestic Intelligence, 1986. Pp.290; $14.95 (hardback); $10.95. (paperback)

Volume Seven: Intelligence and Policy, 1986. Pp.192; $14.95 (hardback); $11.95 (paperback).     

Exception to Excess: Tactical Use of the Law by Outgroups in Bias Crime Legislation

US bias crime jurisprudence follows the discrimination model and ejects “hate” from scrutiny. It is suggestive of improvements that should be made to Canadian law insofar as it also better tracks the enactment of discrimination against difference occasioned in the everyday. Criminal law, however, remains weak at preventing crime. And where the law requires evidence of discrimination, it iterates the stereotypes and social backdrop of hate crime. But this view on law and culture underestimates how outgroups may produce countermeanings and influence the law. Turning to the more material basis of identity, neoconservatism has given the law a broad ambit whereby coercion as opposed to investment in human capacities is promoted as the means to social order. Where scholars argue that discursive collaboration with retributionist policy requires outgroups to pursue cultural revalorization, given the decreasing freedom under the contemporary authoritarian paradigm, I argue that they must also pursue distributional justice.