The Protection of Geographical Indications After Doha: Quo Vadis?

During the last twenty years the international protection ofgeographical indications (GIs) has experienced a worldwide resurgencespurred by both the greater need and the additional opportunitiesoffered by the global marketplace for the diversification ofagricultural products and foodstuffs. The Doha Ministerial Declarationlends support to developing countries that are seeking formsof knowledge less than high technology that they have the capacityto exploit. June 2005 saw the European Communities submit aradical proposal, designed to also meet the needs of developingcountries that would amend the Trade-Related Aspects of IntellectualProperty (TRIPS) Agreement in favour of a mandatory multilateralsystem of registration for all products. Yet, World Trade Organization(WTO) Members are as divided over their capacity to take advantageof GI protection no less than they are as to the means of regulation.To date, no ready solution to the further global harmonizationof GIs has been found. This paper examines the two major regulatorymodels advanced by the European Union and the United Statesof America for the protection of GIs. In the light of the DohaDevelopment Agenda, the authors argue in favour of an incrementalapproach that would allow developing countries the flexibilityto adjust additional protection in accordance with their levelof economic development.     

Elemental analysis of human cremains using ICP-OES to classify legitimate and contaminated cremains

The Tri-State Crematory Incident in Nobel, GA (February 2001) revealed limitations in traditional human cremated remains (cremains) analytical methodology. The goal of this study was to develop a method for effectively classifying questionable sets of cremains as legitimate or contaminated. Eighty-eight samples of known human cremains, concrete, mixtures of the two, and questionable sets of cremains were acid digested and analyzed for 21 elements by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Variable cluster and principle component analyses identified the seven elements (Sb, B, Li, Mn, Sr, Tl, and V) used to develop discriminant functions to classify questionable sets into two groups: cremains and concrete. The discriminant analysis shows that at the 0.90 probability level, mixtures of 50% or less human content were classified as concrete. Mixtures with 90% human content classified as cremains. Sixty percent and 75% human content mixtures remained in the questionable classification, but as the concentration of human increased in the mixture, the probability of assignment to the known cremains group increased. Most of the questionable human samples classified as cremains. This is a pilot study and cannot yet satisfy Daubert standards for courtroom admissibility, but it indicates that it is possible to determine the legitimacy of cremains using elemental analysis by ICP-OES coupled with multivariate statistical analysis.     

Religious belief, perceptions of human suffering, and support for reproductive genetic technology

Reproductive genetic technologies are becoming more controversial as they become more ubiquitous. The opponents of these technologies are largely religious groups, a fact that leads to the question of why religious groups would be more opposed to these technologies than others. Since all of these technologies are justified by their ability to relieve suffering of some kind, it is hypothesized that the actively religious have a notion of suffering different from that of advocates for these technologies, and this different notion of suffering leads to opposition to the technologies. In this article I report on a qualitative interview study of the religiously active in the United States. I find that the religiously active do have views of suffering that are distinct from the medical consensus, and these views are related to people's conclusions about the advisability of reproductive genetic technologies.