The UN Cartagena Protocol onBiosafety adopted in Montreal, 29 January, 2000and opened for signature in Nairobi, 15–26 May,2000 will exert a profound effect oninternational trade in genetically modifiedorganisms (GMOs) and their products. In thispaper, the potential effects of variousarticles of the Protocol on international tradein GMOs are analyzed. Based on the presentstatus of imports of GMOs and domestic researchand development of biotechnology in China,likely trends in imports of foreign GM food andrelated products after China accedes to WTO (...) isexplored. Also, China's potentialcountermeasures to control and regulate importsof GMOs in line with implementation of theProtocol are discussed. China, in recent times,has increased its food and agricultural importssubstantially from USA and Canada. Chinaimported soybean 10.42 mill. tons in 2000 andabout 15 mill tons in 2001, of which majorityare from USA where GM soybean accounts for60%. The plantation of US Monsanto'stransgenic Bt cotton was increased to more than1 million ha in China in 2001. Though China haspaid great attention to develop biotechnology,it appears to have little scope to export GMOsand GM products. So China may consider a rangeof administrative measures to implement theCartagena Protocol and to regulate its importof GMOs and GM agricultural products.Consequently, the Regulation on Safety ofAgri-GMOs was issued on June, 2001 and followedthree detailed rules issued in Jan. of 2002,with a priority to limit foreign GMOs importingby safety certification and labeling system.These were outlined taking into accountpolicies adopted in Western countries such asgreen barriers to international trade. (shrink)

Through a discursive and organizational analysis we seek to understand the Biosafety Protocol and the place of socioeconomic regulation of agricultural biotechnology in it. The literature on the Protocol has been fairly extensive, but little of it has explored debates over socioeconomic regulation during the negotiation process or the regulatory requirements specified in the final document. This case is especially important at a time when the spread of neoliberalism is increasingly associated with deregulation, because it sheds light (...) on the conditions under which circumvention of the market is deemed legitimate and socio-economic regulation of agricultural technology is possible. (shrink)

Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 islands separated for hundreds of thousands of years making both the biodiversity and culture diverse. Strong connection between people and biodiversity form a vast array of traditional knowledges retaliated to the conservation and use of biological diversity. During the last 3 decades, tremendous advancement on science and technology has been able to uncover the intrinsic value of biodiversity. Many lead chemical compounds have been isolated and identified, and has opened up huge opportunities in developing (...) new business based on biodiversity. International cooperation between Japan and Indonesia successfully isolated more than 1,000 species of actinomycetes from diverse ecosystems and more than 30% are new species. This group of microbe is important for future pharmaceutical industries. The consciousness on intrinsic value of biodiversity is, however, only being understood by countries having high science and technology capacity. The intrinsic value of biodiversity remains abstract to most of the people in the developing and less developed nations. The Convention on Biological Diversity (UN-CBD), Cartagena and Nagoya Protocol are legal documents to ensure conservation, sustainable use and sharing of the benefit from the utilization of biodiversity and its components. There is a high demand for the developed nations on access to biodiversity to uncover its benefit. The mechanism on access, fair and equitable sharing of the benefit from the utilization of biodiversity and its component are certainly full of ethical dilemma. For this, there is a great need for the developing country having rich biodiversity find the most appropriate way to manage biodiversity and traditional knowledge for their prosperity. Trust between countries rich in biodiversity and countries having high science and technology capacity is a crucial factor. Greater transparency and the recognition on comprehensive rights of people providing biodiversity is a key element in maintaining trust. Ethical standards cannot depend solely on rules or guidelines. (shrink)

This paper reviews the location of Responsible Research and Innovation approaches within the access and benefit sharing policy spaces of the Convention on Biological Diversity and Nagoya Protocol. We describe how a range of dialogues on ethical research practices found a home, almost inadvertently, within the ABS policy process. However, more recent RRI dialogues around emerging technologies have not been similarly absorbed into ABS policy, due in part to the original framing of ABS and associated definitional and scope issues. (...) Consideration is given to the challenges posed to these policy processes by the transformative and rapid nature of scientific and technological change today, including the emerging field of synthetic biology. Drawing on experiences from regulating ABS, we emphasize that the integration of RRI into policies for new, emerging, or poorly understood activities such as synthetic biology faces deficiencies such as limits to government capacity, jurisdictional confusion, shortages in funds, and an absence of strategic approaches. We conclude that a coordinated combination of diverse policy processes within the CBD might provide an invaluable space for RRI dialogues on social justice, sustainability, biosafety, and other issues raised by emerging technologies. (shrink)

This book examines the field of bioethics from an international and regional legal perspective. It focuses on major international law documents such as the United Nations Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and UNESCO declarations on human cloning and the human genome. Coverage of regional legal instruments includes the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (the Oviedo Convention) and its Protocols on cloning, transplantation, and research with human beings. Work on surrogacy issues by the Hague Conference (...) on Private International Law is also discussed, as are some African regional legal instruments on biosafety, and stem cell research. (shrink)

In Alfonso de Cartagena's 'Memoriale virtutum' (1422) María Morrás and Jeremy Lawrance offer a new edition from the manuscripts of a compilation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics addressed by the major Castilian intellectual of the day, bishop Alfonso de Cartagena, to the heir to the throne of Portugal, crown prince Duarte. The work was a speculum principis, an education for the future king in the virtues suitable to a statesman; Cartagena's choice of Aristotle was thus a significant index (...) of the advent of new Renaissance ideas. This edition shows how the "memorial" throws light on the ideological transformation of society those ideas would bring, setting new ethical guidelines for the ruling class at the crossroads between medieval feudalism and Renaissance absolutism. (shrink)

In her influential essay ‘Virtues and Vices,’ Philippa Foot argues that virtues are essentially corrective, moderating between two vicious extremes. She also contends that Aquinas champions this view, too. In contrast, I argue that Foot misreads Aquinas; that Aquinas's actual theory of virtue is incompatible with the corrective theory Foot defends; and that those who endorse Aquinas's Augustinian theology should side with his perfective theory of virtue rather than Foot's corrective one.

This paper raises an uncommon question: What can studying Thomas Aquinas and Critical Race Theory teach us about failures to promote mercy across the color-line? I answer this question in five stages. After locating Thomas’s teachings on mercy and its impediments within his masterwork, the Summa theologiae, I excavate Thomas’s account of mercy’s impediments. Next, I address the question “What is CRT?” Then I examine a foundational CRT text’s analysis of mercy’s impediments. Lastly, I offer a proposal for further Thomas-CRT (...) collaborations. (shrink)

The World Trade Organization has been the target of social justice activists since its inception in 1994, with many seeking to reshape or rescind the WTO agreements. This article instead explores possible interventions into WTO adjudication by compelling the reinterpretation of existing WTO documents. Such an approach can take several forms: mobilizing professional expertise, engaging technical standards, and constructing companion regimes. Using the recent United States/european Community genetically modified organisms case as a reference point, this article explores opportunities for implementing (...) the last two strategies. The Codex Alimentarius, an international food standards regime, seems to provide a particularly promising location for reconstructing WTO risk and governance procedures. The Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, an international environmental regime, deeply challenges narrow readings of WTO texts but may not have enough legal force in the WTO. These alternative locations for intervention hold promise and risks for activists seeking international justice in environment, food, and trade. (shrink)

The Convention on Biological Diversity opens the possibility to negotiate a legally binding Biosafety Protocol to assess and minimize risks in the field of transboundary transfer, handling, and use of organisms modified by genetic engineering. Two principles— the Precautionary Principle and the Principle of Familiarity—guiding the risk assessment as basis of import decisions on such organisms are discussed. Developing and European industrialized countries favor the Precautionary Principle. The U.S., Australia, Japan, and some others call for the Principle of (...) Familiarity. These two principles exhibit opposite effects on scientific progress in general and on scientific methodology of risk assessment in particular. With the example of risk assessment by the U.S. company Monsanto discussed below, it could be illustrated that the Principle of Familiarity opens the way for superficial evaluations based on citing arbitrary references while the Precautionary Principle is an incentive for developing and applying sound methodology in experimental risk assessment. on the transboundary transfer of such LMOs, for example, on the international exchange of and trade with transgenic seeds, grains, animals, or bacteria. The negotiations are based on Articles 19.3 and 8(g) of the Convention on Biological Diversity, elaborated during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, and on Decision II/5 of the Second Conference of the Parties to this Convention in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1995 (see the appendix; for more documents, see www.biodiv.org). Until the Fourth Conference of the Parties in 1998, 172 states ratified this convention. This conference decided to finish the Biosafety Protocol in February 1999. In 1998, transgenic crops were allowed to be planted in eight (75%) countries of the world. As the country with the largest acreage of transgenic crops and as the main trader of LMOs, the United States cannot become a member of the protocol until it has ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. (shrink)

The developments along the Mekong River, including in Cambodia, have boomed. There were 755 dams. Of these, 537 have been completed, and 152 have been planned or proposed. Of these, 52 were under construction, and 14 have been canceled or suspended. Of these dams, 392 were hydropower, 337 were irrigation, and 26 were other types (CGIAR, 2015). Even though some officials saw economic development as a result of the hydropower dam, the negative impacts of hydropower dams were seen by many (...) local experts and NGOs. The negative impacts include reduced fishing stocks and exacerbated socio-economic issues (Asia and the Pacific Policy Society, 2022). Experts have conducted some research on ecosystems and livelihoods, but there has been a lack of studies conducted by local communities to investigate their cross-border impacts as a result of the hydropower dam, despite the fact that local communities have been facing issues as a result of the Mekong Development. The community research protocol was developed to improve local communities' understanding of their local contexts and their confidence in negotiating with decision-makers and policymakers to address and respond to their needs and the findings of studies on local planning for sustainable community development. The paper aims to guide community leaders and staff in conducting community research on transboundary impacts on fisheries resources, ecosystems, and the livelihoods of local communities using their knowledge. (shrink)

Examining the language and paradigms of science as rhetorical, that is, arising from the sociocultural forces that shape ideology, reveals androcentric assumptions that tend to thwart democratic public policy as well as effective methodology. This paper applies some recent feminist critiques of the biological sciences to the current research on the possible hormonal and genetic factors contributing to homosexuality, clarifying how this research perpetuates hierarchical binaries and suggesting ways to reconceptualize human sexuality through revised research protocols.

OBJECTIVES: To review the characteristics and performance of research ethics committees in Spain in the evaluation of multicentre clinical trial drug protocols. DESIGN: A prospective study of 100 applications. SETTING: Forty-one committees reviewing clinical trial protocols, involving 50 hospitals in 25 cities. MAIN MEASURES: Protocol-related features, characteristics of research ethics committees and evaluation dynamics. RESULTS: The 100 applications involved 15 protocols (of which 12 were multinational) with 12 drugs. Committees met monthly (except one). They had a mean number of (...) 12 members, requested a mean of six complete dossiers and nine additional copies of the protocol with a mean deadline of 14 days before the meeting. All applications were approved except three (two of the three were open-label long-term safety trials rejected by the same committee), which were approved by the other committees involved. The mean time from submission to approval was 64 days. The mean time from submission to arrival of the approval document at our offices was 85 days. Twenty-five committees raised queries for 38 of the 97 finally approved applications. Impact of evaluation fee, number of members, queries raised and experience of committees on timings were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Obtaining ethical approval is time-consuming. There is much diversity in the research ethics committees' performance. A remarkable delay (> 20 days) exists between the decision and the arrival of the written approval, suggesting administrative or organisational problems. (shrink)

Identity leadership (IL) describes that the effectiveness of a leader will depend upon his capacity to represent a given group, to make the group go forward, to create a group identity, and to make the group matter. An identity leader may increase commitment among his followers by increasing the perception of shared identity and giving more weight in the decision process to his followers. We aim to explore the mechanisms through which a leader who creates a shared group identity can (...) increase organizational commitment. In the first study, we plan to conduct a cross-cultural correlational study where we aim to test if the relationship between IL and organizational commitment is mediated by team identification and mediated-moderated by participation in decision making (PDM) and collective efficacy. In the second study, we aim to explore the direction of the causality between IL and PDM. To test this hypothesis, we will conduct an experimental study in which (1) we will manipulate IL to test its influence on the perception of PDM and (2) we will manipulate PDM to test its influence on the perception of IL. Thus, we will be able to identify the role of IL and the perception of PDM on organizational commitment. (shrink)

While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept “in the loop” of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions (...) to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working “in his loop,” but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be “programmed into” their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all. (shrink)

Personality traits describe dispositions influencing individuals' behavior and performance at work. However, in the context of personnel selection, the use of personality measures has continuously been questioned. To date, research in selection settings has focused uniquely on predicting task performance, missing the opportunity to exploit the potential of personality traits to predict non-task performance. Further, personality is often measured with self-report inventories, which are susceptible to self-distortion. Addressing these gaps, the planned study seeks to design new personality measures to be (...) used in the selection context to predict a wide range of performance criteria. Specifically, we will develop a situational judgment test and a behavior description interview, both assessing Big Five personality traits and Honesty-Humility to systematically compare these new measures with traditional self-report inventories regarding their criterion-related validity to predict four performance criteria: task performance, adaptive performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior. Data will be collected in a simulated selection procedure. Based on power analyses, we aim for 200 employed study participants, who will allow us to contact their supervisors to gather criterion data. The results of this study will shed light on the suitability of different personality measures to predict an expanded range of performance criteria. (shrink)

Adolescents who believe that their parents treat them differently from their siblings have poorer psychosocial well-being than otherwise. This phenomenon, which is known as parental differential treatment or PDT occurs in up to 65% of families. Past studies have examined socio-demographic variables (e.g., child gender, age, and birth order) as predictors of PDT, but these immutable characteristics do little to inform interventions and help these adolescents. Hence, this study extends past research by investigating links among parent empathy, parent perception of (...) PDT, child perception of PDT, child perception of fairness and child well-being (self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and trust in the relationship with parents). Furthermore, this study tests whether adolescent personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), child empathy, and child perception of fairness moderate these links. This study will utilize a two-wave longitudinal design with a one-year lapse. Data will be collected from 760 Chinese adolescents studying from Secondary One to Secondary Three in 18 schools in Hong Kong and from their parents. We test our theoretical model via a multilevel structural equation model. This study both addresses (a) theoretical debates about relations among empathy, PDT, fairness, and psychosocial well-being and (b) focuses on modifiable factors and behaviors, to inform future interventions, such as parent education. (shrink)

Judge Christian Byk renders service to the Steering Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe (CDBI) by proposing a draft of the protocol destined to fill in a gap in international law on the status of the human embryo. This proposal, printed in a previous issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics deserves nevertheless to be questioned on important points. Is Christian Byk proposing to legalise research on human embryos not only in vitro but also in utero?

By exhibiting a violation of a novel form of the Bell-CHSH inequality, \.{Z}ukowski has recently established that the quantum correlations exploited in the standard perfect teleportation protocol cannot be recovered by any local hidden variables model. Allowing the quantum channel state in the protocol to be given by any density operator of two spin-1/2 particles, we show that a violation of a generalized form of \.{Z}ukowski's teleportation inequality can only occur if the channel state, considered by itself, violates (...) a Bell-CHSH inequality. On the other hand, although it is sufficient for a teleportation process to have a nonclassical fidelity---defined as a fidelity exceeding $2/3$---that the channel state employed violate a Bell-CHSH inequality, we show that such a violation does \emph{not} imply a violation of \.{Z}ukowski's teleportation inequality or any of its generalizations. The implication does hold, however, if the fidelity of the teleportation exceeds $2/3(1+1/2\sqrt{2})\approx .90$, suggesting the existence of a regime of nonclassical values of the fidelity, less than $.90$, for which the standard teleportation protocol can be modelled by local hidden variables. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only on the (...) living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

The Pittsburgh protocol relies heavily on traditional moral distinctions, particularly the principle of double effect, to justify "managing" the dying process of a prospective organ donor in order to yield viable organs for transplantation. These traditional moral distinctions can be useful, particularly in casuistic or case-specific moral analysis, but their invocation here is unpersuasive, and potentially dangerous. The protocol relies on elaborate apologetics to avoid a candid confrontation with the moral challenge it poses—society's willingness to bring about the (...) death of one patient (in isolation and with potential discomfort) in order to benefit another patient. Not only will this protocol fail to solve the problem it purports to address, it threatens to undermine the delicate social accommodations by which we distinguish the living from the dead, permissible "allowings to die" from impermissible killings, and those from whom organs may be removed from those whose bodies must remain inviolate. (shrink)

Two theories on the origins of COVID-19 have been widely circulating in China and the West respectively, one blaming the United States and the other a highest-level biocontainment laboratory in Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the pandemic. Both theories make claims of biological warfare attempts. According to the available scientific evidence, these claims are groundless. However, like the episodes of biological warfare during the mid-twentieth century, the spread of these present-day conspiracy theories reflects a series of longstanding and damaging trends (...) in the international scene which include deep mistrust, animosities, the power of ideologies such as nationalism, and the sacrifice of truth in propaganda campaigns. Also, the threats associated with biological warfare, bioterrorism, and the accidental leakage of deadly viruses from labs are real and growing. Thus, developing a better global governance of biosafety and biosecurity than exists at present is an urgent imperative for the international community in the broader context of a looming Cold War II. For such a governance, an ethical framework is proposed based upon the triple ethical values of transparency, trust, and the common good of humanity. (shrink)

The Kyoto Protocol became law in February 2005—eight years after its conception as a framework for reducing emissions and a full four years after the United States abandoned it. But while President George W. Bush embarrassed much of the scientific community by challenging the veracity of the greenhouse effect, and thus the impetus for Kyoto, officials elsewhere expressed far different concerns. _Reading the Kyoto Protocol_ explores their qualms and objections to everything from Kyoto's controversial policies on emissions trading to (...) the question of a "post-Kyoto era." Contributors include internationally known philosophers, researchers, and environmentalists. (shrink)

The Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems (ETS 189) was opened for signature in Strasbourg, France, on 28 January 2003. In the light of the 20th anniversary of this Protocol since its opening for signature in January 2023, it was decided to prepare the present good practice study on the implementation of this treaty. The overall objective of this study is to facilitate (...) implementation of and increased membership in this Protocol by: ▪ underlining the relevance of this Protocol given increasing hate speech and hate crime online; ▪ documenting good practices by Parties to this Protocol and other States; ▪ explaining key issues and concepts; ▪ promoting synergies between this Protocol and related instruments, tools and initiatives. (shrink)

The use of remember–know judgments to assess subjective experience associated with memory retrieval, or as measures of recollection and familiarity processes, has been controversial. In the current study we had participants think aloud during study and provide verbal reports at test for remember–know and confidence judgments. Results indicated that the vast majority of remember judgments for studied items were associated with recollection from study , but this correspondence was less likely for high-confidence judgments . Instead, high-confidence judgments were more likely (...) than remember judgments to be associated with incorrect recollection and a lack of recollection. Know judgments were typically associated with a lack of recollection , but still included recollection from the study context . Thus, although remember judgments provided fairly accurate assessments of retrieval including contextual details, know judgments did not provide accurate assessments of retrieval lacking contextual details. (shrink)

Synthetic biologists design and engineer organisms for a better and more sustainable future. While the manifold prospects are encouraging, concerns about the uncertain risks of genome editing affect public opinion as well as local regulations. As a consequence, biosafety and associated concepts, such as the Safe-by-design framework and genetic safeguard technologies, have gained notoriety and occupy a central position in the conversation about genetically modified organisms. Yet, as regulatory interest and academic research in genetic safeguard technologies advance, the implementation (...) in industrial biotechnology, a sector that is already employing engineered microorganisms, lags behind. The main goal of this work is to explore the utilization of genetic safeguard technologies for designing biosafety in industrial biotechnology. Based on our results, we posit that biosafety is a case of a changing value, by means of further specification of how to realize biosafety. Our investigation is inspired by the Value Sensitive Design framework, to investigate scientific and technological choices in their appropriate social context. Our findings discuss stakeholder norms for biosafety, reasonings about genetic safeguards, and how these impact the practice of designing for biosafety. We show that tensions between stakeholders occur at the level of norms, and that prior stakeholder alignment is crucial for value specification to happen in practice. Finally, we elaborate in different reasonings about genetic safeguards for biosafety and conclude that, in absence of a common multi-stakeholder effort, the differences in informal biosafety norms and the disparity in biosafety thinking could end up leading to design requirements for compliance instead of for safety. (shrink)

Otto Neurath's thesis concerning the structure of protocol sentences is central to the famous Protocol Sentence Debate in the Vienna Circle. However, its precise nature is far from easy to discern in Neurath's writings. So far, only Thomas Uebel has attempted a closer analysis of Neurath's contribution to the debate. I argue that Uebel's interpretation is problematic in some respects and propose a novel analysis, which hopefully brings into a clearer light Neurath's position in the Protocol Sentence (...) Debate as well as his relevance to contemporary philosophies of science. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to stimulate academic debate on embryo and fetal research from the perspective of the drafting of a protocol to the European Convention on Biomedicine. The Steering Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe was mandated to draw up such a protocol and for this purpose organised an important symposium on reproductive technologies and embryo research, in Strasbourg from the 16th to the 18th of December 1996.

AimsThis study evaluates a protocol for early, routine ethics consultation for patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to support decision-making in the context of clinical uncertainty with the aim of mitigating ethical conflict and moral distress.MethodsWe conducted a single-site qualitative analysis of EC documentation for all patients receiving ECMO support from 15 August 2018 to 15 May 2019. Detailed analysis of 20 ethically complex cases with protracted ethics involvement identifies four key ethical domains: limits of prognostication, bridge to nowhere, burden (...) of treatment and system-level concerns. There are three subthemes: relevant contextual factors, the role of EC and observed outcomes. Content analysis of transcripts from interviews with 20 members of the multidisciplinary ECMO team yields supplemental data on providers’ perceptions of the impact of the early intervention protocol.ResultsLimited outcome data for ECMO, unclear indications for withdrawal, adverse effects of treatment and an obligation to attend to programme metrics present significant ethical challenges in the care of this patient population. Upstream EC mitigates ethical conflict by setting clear expectations about ECMO as a time limited trial, promoting consistent messaging among multiple services and supporting surrogate decision-makers. When ECMO becomes a ‘bridge to nowhere’, EC facilitates decision-making that respects patient values yet successfully sets limits on non-beneficial use of this novel therapy.ConclusionData from this study support the conclusion that ECMO poses unique ethical challenges that necessitate a standardised protocol for early, routine EC—at least while this medical technology is in its nascent stages. (shrink)

This paper presents a communication protocol to reach consensus. In our setting, every player has asymmetric information and evaluates a fixed event on his information. According to the protocol, the sender sends non-partitional messages that he believes the event with a probability of at least his evaluation. We show that the posteriors for the event must be equal among the players after the communication. Journal of Economic Literature Classification: C62, C78.

Despite the (serious) global concerns about the safety and genetic stability of genetically modified organisms, the Malaysian National Biosafety Board (NBB) has recently approved the field testing for genetically modified (GM) male mosquitoes. With this development, bioethical issues, which in some respect could adversely impinge on the social, economic and environmental aspects of the society, have surfaced, and these concerns must be addressed by the authorities concerned. In reviewing this application, the National Biosafety Board has followed the requirements (...) of the Biosafety Act 2007, which was created to strike a balance between promoting biotechnology and at the same time protecting against its potential environmental and human health risks in Malaysia. However, the 2007 Act fails to adequately take into account any bioethical issues in spite of the inclusion of a provision on socio-economic consideration. As part of an ongoing doctoral research project, and by way of an instrumental critique of the 2007 Act, the present paper attempts to address the role and function of the Malaysia biosafety legal framework in governing bioethical concerns relating to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) within the current biotechnology background in Malaysia. Additionally, the paper suggests that the ambiguity of the provisions contained within the 2007 Act in governing such concerns, representing wider societal interests and welfare, in some ways might defeat the balancing role that this act was originally intended to fulfil. (shrink)

Information protocols (IP's) were developed to describe players who learn their social situation by their experiences. Although IP's look similar to colored multi-graphs (MG's), the two objects are constructed in fundamentally different ways. IP's are constructed using the global concept of history, whereas graphs are constructed using the local concept of edges. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for each theory to be captured by the other. We find that the necessary and sufficient condition for IP theory to be captured (...) by MG theory, which we call SE, excludes relevant game situations. Hence, we conclude that IP theory remains a vital tool and cannot be replaced by MG theory. (shrink)

This note comments on the paper ‘Dialogue protocols for formal fallacies’ by Kacprzak and Yaskorska (this issue). Points discussed include the use of the notions of ‘claiming’, ‘conceding’ and ‘commitment’, and the role of Lorenzen dialogues as a device for checking whether a proposition is a tautology.

General Practitioners (GPs) and allied healthcare professionals working in primary care are regularly required to make decisions with, for and on behalf of patients who lack capacity. In England and Wales, these decisions are made for incapacitated adult patients under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which primarily requires that decisions are made in the patient’s ‘best interests’. Regarding children, decisions are also made in their best interests but are done so under the Children Act 1989, which places paramount importance on (...) the welfare of the child. Decisions for children are usually made by parents, but a GP may become involved if he or she feels a parent is not acting in the best interests of the child. Internationally, including elsewhere in the UK, different approaches are taken. We hypothesise that, despite the legislation and professional guidelines, there are many different approaches taken by GPs and allied healthcare professionals in England and Wales when making these complex decisions with, for and on behalf of patients who lack capacity. To better understand what is known about how these decisions are made, we plan to undertake a scoping review and directed content analysis of the literature. While the majority of decisions made in primary care are made by GPs, for completeness, this review will include all allied healthcare professionals working in primary care. (shrink)

The ever‐increasing demand for organs led Spain, France, and other European countries to promote uncontrolled donation after circulatory determination of death (uDCDD). For the same reason, New York City has recently developed its own uDCDD protocol, which differs from European programs in some key ways. The New York protocol incorporates a series of technical and management improvements that address some practical problems identified in response to European uDCDD protocols. However, the more fundamental issue of whether uDCDD donors are (...) dead when organs are procured remains problematic for the New York City protocol and, indeed, for all uDCDD protocols. In the United States, two amendments to the legal criteria of death have been suggested to avoid a formal violation of the dead donor rule in DCDD protocols: first, replacing the requirement “irreversible” with the weaker term “permanent,” and second, using the term “circulatory” instead of “cardiac” to identify the key function that must be lost to declare death. While intended to facilitate controlled DCDD, these modifications create a problem for uDCDD protocols: if extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is introduced to preserve the organs, then circulation is restored after death is declared. In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Kevin Munjal and colleagues call for a new ethical construct and policy so that uncontrolled and controlled DCDD can coexist. (shrink)