Is race-based medicine good for us?: African American approaches to race, biomedicine, and equality

This article presents a preliminary framework for exploring the intersection of science and racial politics in the public debate about race-based pharmaceuticals, especially among African Americans. It examines the influence of three political approaches to race consciousness on evaluations of racial medicine and offers an alternative critique.     

Really Responsive Regulation

Really Responsive Regulation seeks to add to current theories of enforcement by stressing the case for regulators to be responsive not only to the attitude of the regulated firm but also to the operating and cognitive frameworks of firms; the institutional environment and performance of the regulatory regime; the different logics of regulatory tools and strategies; and to changes in each of these elements. The approach pervades all the different tasks of enforcement activity: detecting undesirable or non-compliant behaviour; developing tools and strategies for responding to that behaviour; enforcing those tools and strategies; assessing their success or failure; and modifying them accordingly. The value of the approach is shown by outlining its potential application to UK environmental and fisheries controls. Putting the system into effect is itself challenging but failing to regulate really responsively can constitute an expensive process of shooting in the dark.     

Development and usage of a NIST standard reference material for real time PCR quantitation of human DNA

National Institute of Standards and Technology SRM 2372 human DNA quantitation standard has been produced to support the need for a human-specific DNA quantitation standard in forensic casework and calibration of new quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays. The conventional DNA concentration has been assigned with one of the U.S. National Reference UV/Visible Spectrophotometers, assuming an absorbance of 1.0 at 260 nm equals 50 ng/μL of double stranded DNA. In addition, an interlaboratory study has been conducted, to verify that the SRM 2372 materials perform well in currently used DNA quantitation assays by the forensic DNA community. Each unit of SRM 2372 consists of three well-characterized DNA extracts. Component A is a single-source human male material derived from blood. Component B is a multiple-source human female material derived from blood. Component C was purchased as a purified unsheared genomic human DNA (Sigma-Aldrich Co., St. Louis, MO) obtained as a lyophilized human genomic extract and has both male and female donors. SRM 2372 is intended to enable the comparison of DNA concentration measurements across time and place. Manufacturers can use SRM 2372 to validate the values assigned to their own reference materials. Individual forensic laboratories can use SRM 2372 to validate DNA quantitation methods and to verify the assigned concentration of in-house or commercial DNA calibration standards.     

Modern Ethiopia

This address by the chairman of the Anglo-Ethiopian Societywas given at a joint meeting of the Royal African Society, theRoyal Commonwealth Society and the Anglo-Ethiopian Society onMay 3, 1962. Lt.-Col. Neil McLean, D.S.O., M.P., took the chair