THE DIFFICULTY OF ENFORCING SURROGACY REGULATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-37
Author(s):  
Claire Fenton-Glynn

OVER the past 15 years, international surrogacy has grown from a niche practice catering only to a few adventurous couples, to a convenient response to infertility for those who would otherwise be hindered by restrictive national regimes. While the Hague Conference Permanent Bureau continues to debate the desirability, and indeed viability, of an international convention in this area, governments and courts around the world have been confronted by the difficult question of whether to recognise an agreement that takes place legally in another jurisdiction, but which is contrary to their own laws. In this, England is no exception. With approximately 25%. of all surrogacy arrangements now taking place outside its borders, English courts are regularly being asked to confer parenthood on commissioning parents in circumstances in which the statutory requirements have not only not been met, but in some cases flagrantly breached. The latest development in this regard is Re X (A Child) (Surrogacy: Time Limit) [2014] EWHC 3135 (Fam), where the tension between public policy as evinced in the legislation, and the welfare of the child who will bear the burden of any refusal to recognise parenthood, once again came to a head.

Author(s):  
Kate Crowley ◽  
Jenny Stewart ◽  
Adrian Kay ◽  
Brian W. Head

Policy studies are in a rut. Just as politics in both the global and domestic spheres have been taking more partisan forms, policy studies itself has become more inward looking, and less interested in politics and practice than in the past. The authors suggest that making public policy relevant again, requires an understanding, not just of policy development and selected policy-related themes, but a broader engagement with structure, process and system: as a way of depicting not just the formation of policy, but also its modes of action in the world. Doing this involves building on earlier iterations of policy thought and relating them, not only to the complexity of current policy problems, but also to the immense technological and political changes that have occurred in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Mariana Mazzucato

Successful innovation policies are those that actively create and shape markets, not only fix them. In the past this has been achieved through “mission-oriented” policies aimed not at fixing market failures or minimizing government failures, but rather on maximizing the transformative impact of policy. Countries around the world are currently striving to achieve innovation-led growth that is both inclusive and sustainable. For this to happen, public policy needs to support innovation and direct future activities. Innovation policy must focus on building more “symbiotic” (less parasitic) innovation “ecosystems.” This chapter discusses new types of policy questions needed to address the collective, uncertain, and persistent nature of innovation and posits four key areas: directing public policy, evaluating public policy, organizational change to accommodate risk taking and exploration, and the socialization of risks and rewards.


Antiquity ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (357) ◽  
pp. 565-572
Author(s):  
Chris Scarre

Protecting heritage is a mission to which all archaeologists will readily subscribe. How best to do so is a more difficult question. We cannot simply fossilise the past; nor (most would agree) should we commodify it, converting it into monetary values that are open to buying and selling. It has a value that goes beyond that: one that makes World Heritage Sites “parts of the cultural and natural heritage [. . .] of outstanding interest and [that] therefore need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole”.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 358-358
Author(s):  
Robert Nisbet

Through the application of science, human beings in America and other parts of the world have been liberated from plagues, pestilences, threats of famine, hardship and torment that once seemed an unalterable part of the human condition. And until recently, all of this was rewarded by public and governmental respect. In the past few years, however, disenchantment has set in, with the public concluding that the post-war promises of learning were inflated and misleading. Much of science and scholarship has become obsessed with what it likes to think is a public-policy role, with the individual scholar only too happy to serve as policy maker. Unhappily, as the policy maker advances, the man of learning recedes. Bureaucratic learning has also become commercial. The large grant, the entrepreneurially established institute have come to wield great power. Thus a substantial amount of research that does not really require great amounts of money and complex organizations, that is indeed retarded in inspiration by them, demands them anyhow. Grantsmanship, at first a wry joke among academics, is by now a publicly recognized source of banality, trivialization and pretentiousness. Bureaucratic learning has lost its sense of proportion and of the true roots of knowledge.


Author(s):  
John Mansfield

Advances in camera technology and digital instrument control have meant that in modern microscopy, the image that was, in the past, typically recorded on a piece of film is now recorded directly into a computer. The transfer of the analog image seen in the microscope to the digitized picture in the computer does not mean, however, that the problems associated with recording images, analyzing them, and preparing them for publication, have all miraculously been solved. The steps involved in the recording an image to film remain largely intact in the digital world. The image is recorded, prepared for measurement in some way, analyzed, and then prepared for presentation.Digital image acquisition schemes are largely the realm of the microscope manufacturers, however, there are also a multitude of “homemade” acquisition systems in microscope laboratories around the world. It is not the mission of this tutorial to deal with the various acquisition systems, but rather to introduce the novice user to rudimentary image processing and measurement.


This paper critically analyzes the symbolic use of rain in A Farewell to Arms (1929). The researcher has applied the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as a research tool for the analysis of the text. This hypothesis argues that the languages spoken by a person determine how one observes this world and that the peculiarities encoded in each language are all different from one another. It affirms that speakers of different languages reflect the world in pretty different ways. Hemingway’s symbolic use of rain in A Farewell to Arms (1929) is denotative, connotative, and ironical. The narrator and protagonist, Frederick Henry symbolically embodies his own perceptions about the world around him. He time and again talks about rain when something embarrassing is about to ensue like disease, injury, arrest, retreat, defeat, escape, and even death. Secondly, Hemingway has connotatively used rain as a cleansing agent for washing the past memories out of his mind. Finally, the author has ironically used rain as a symbol when Henry insists on his love with Catherine Barkley while the latter being afraid of the rain finds herself dead in it.


The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.


Commonwealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Arway

The challenges of including factual information in public policy and political discussions are many. The difficulties of including scientific facts in these debates can often be frustrating for scientists, politicians and policymakers alike. At times it seems that discussions involve different languages or dialects such that it becomes a challenge to even understand one another’s position. Oftentimes difference of opinion leads to laws and regulations that are tilted to the left or the right. The collaborative balancing to insure public and natural resource interests are protected ends up being accomplished through extensive litigation in the courts. In this article, the author discusses the history of environmental balancing during the past three decades from the perspective of a field biologist who has used the strength of our policies, laws and regulations to fight for the protection of our Commonwealth’s aquatic resources. For the past 7 years, the author has taken over the reins of “the most powerful environmental agency in Pennsylvania” and charted a course using science to properly represent natural resource interests in public policy and political deliberations.


Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.


Author(s):  
Gerald Gaus

This book lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. It shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. The book argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, the book points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. The book defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, this book rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.


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