The ethical implications of human clones have been much alluded to, but have seldom been examined with any rigour. This paper examines the possible uses and abuses of human cloning and draws out the principal ethical dimensions, both of what might be done and its meaning. The paper examines some of the major public and official responses to cloning by authorities such as President Clinton, the ...

I would like to state, briefly and bluntly, why I think the various "Doomsday Models" are worthless as science and as guides to public policy. I hope it will not be deduced that I believe the problems of population control, environmental degradation, and resource exhaustion to be unimportant, or that I think an adequate response to them is a vague confidence that something will turn up. They ar...

Scientists increasingly find themselves at the center of contentious public policy debates over issues such as chemical regulation and climate change. The general public and politicians often expect scientific advisors to be purely objective. However, a new commentary in this issue of EHP asserts that scientific research is intrinsically inf luenced by value judgments and that researchers shoul...

Engaging communities of color in the genetics public policy conversation is important for the translation of genetics research into strategies aimed at improving the health of all. Implementing model public participation and consultation processes can be informed by the Communities of Color Genetics Policy Project, which engaged individuals from African American and Latino communities of divers...

Latin America is probably the region with greater social inequality, contrary to the amount of rights enshrined in their constitutions. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the area resulted in significant changes to democratization and constitutional changes. Through low-key public policy, political leaders activated participation in the culture of human rights. The struggle for social...

 A rapidly growing public policy concern facing the United States is whether future generations of retired Americans, particularly those in the Baby Boomer and Gen X cohorts, will have adequate retirement incomes. There have been several policy studies in recent years that suggest that the decreasing relevance of defined benefit (DB) plans relative to defined contribution plans (such as 401(k)...

The scope of this article is to present and analyze data from Brazilian foster care services for children / adolescents from the perspective of family reintegration. It also seeks to support the implementation of public policies in order to provide effective reintegration in accordance with the differing local contexts. It uses data from 1,157 municipalities that have foster care services. The ...

The last four decades have seen the emergence and flourishing of the field of bioethics and its incorporation into wide-ranging aspects of society, from the clinic or laboratory through to public policy and the media. Yet considerable debate still exists over what bioethics is and how it should be done. In this paper I consider the question of what makes good bioethics. Drawing on historical an...

Trade and investment liberalisation in tobacco products oVers no benefits for tobacco control. Thus, if trade and investment liberalisation—as embodied in international agreements or viewed as an economic process—may harm tobacco control, as we believe it might, then trade and investment liberalisation in tobacco is an unhealthy and inappropriate public policy. We support the resolution of the ...

Social capital has been a key framework in conceptualizing the place of social ties in quality of life. Families have not been among groups of interest in social capital research. Yet within the context of research and public policy on aging, the contemporary discourse on families and care is congruent with social capital assumptions. In this paper, we draw on social capital literature to frame...