The Invisibility of Disability: Using Dance to Shake from Bioethics the Idea of ‘Broken Bodies’

Complex social and ethical problems are often most effectively solved by engaging them at the messy and uncomfortable intersections of disciplines and practices, a notion that grounds the InVisible Difference project, which seeks to extend thinking and alter practice around the making, status, ownership, and value of work by contemporary dance choreographers by examining choreographic work through the lenses of law, bioethics, dance scholarship, and the practice of dance by differently‐abled dancers. This article offers a critical thesis on how bioethics has come to occupy a marginal and marginalizing role in questions about the differently‐abled body. In doing so, it has rendered the disabled community largely invisible to and in bioethics. It then defends the claim that bioethics – as a social undertaking pursued collaboratively by individuals from different disciplines – must take much better notice of the body and the embodied individual if it is to better achieve its ends, which include constructing a moral and just society. Finally, this article considers how the arts, and specifically dance (and here dance by differently‐abled dancers), provides us with rich evidence about the body and our ability to respond positively to normally ‘othered’ bodies. It concludes that greater attention to empirical evidence like that being generated in InVisible Difference will help to expand the reach and significance of bioethics, and thereby its relevance to (and consciousness of) important questions about the status of bodies and bodily differences, which must be considered as central to its ambitions.     

Property rights and the marginal wildebeest: an economic analysis of wildlife conservation options in Kenya

This paper discusses policy responses to the potential loss of biodiversity in the Mara Area of Kenya from the conversion of essentially wild and undeveloped rangeland to developed agriculture. Property rights are central to the debate, and raise two fundamental issues. First, to what extent do the Maasai, the traditional users and owners of the land, have the right to benefit from the development potential of their land to further their economic, social and political standing, even if by so doing they create domestic and global externalities through the loss of biodiversity. Second, if the state alienates their development rights in the name of conservation, then to what extent should the state compensate the Maasai for their lost economic opportunities. To the Maasai, conservation as implemented through Government policy is a publicc bad: they are denied access to resources, their costs of production are significantly increased, and development is slowed down or actively discouraged. A cost:benefit analysis suggests that it is neither supportable nor sustainable to condemn the Maasai to a poverty trap on behalf of conservation, and that it is instead socially prolitable for the Kenyan Government to meet in full their opportunity costs of forgone economic benefits.     

Leilani Muir versus the Philosopher King: Eugenics on trial in Alberta

The Province of Alberta in Canada was the only jurisdiction in the British Empire where a eugenic sterilization law was passed (in 1928) and vigorously implemented. The pace of sterilization orders accelerated during the Nazi era and remained high after World War II, terminating only in 1972 when the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed. The Alberta Eugenics Board operated away from public and legislative scrutiny, and many things done in the name of eugenics were clearly illegal. Eugenics was put on trial in Alberta in 1995 and a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench ruled in 1996 that the government had wrongly sterilized Leilani Muir. After hearing evidence about the history of the eugenics movement, the origins of Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act, the operation of the Eugenics Board, and details of Muir's life, Madam Justice Joanne B. Veit found that ‘the damage inflicted by the operation was catastrophic’, the ‘wrongful stigmatization of Ms. Muir as a moron ⋯ has humiliated Ms. Muir every day of her life’, and ‘the circumstances of Ms. Muir's sterilization were so high-handed and so contemptuous of the statutory authority to effect sterilization, and were undertaken in an atmosphere that so little respected Ms. Muir's human dignity that the community's, and the court's, sense of decency is offended’. Veit awarded Muir damages of $740,780 CAD and legal costs of $230,000 CAD. The order for Muir's sterilization was signed by John M. MacEachran, founder of the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Alberta and chairman of the Eugenics Board from 1929 to 1965. An exponent of Platonic idealism, MacEachran believed sterilization of children with a low IQ test score was a means of ‘raising and safeguarding the purity of the race’. However, the Alberta Sterilization Act was passed and implemented with cavalier disregard for the principles of genetics as well as the rights of children. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Nuffield Council’s green light for genome editing human embryos defies fundamental human rights law

In July 2018, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics released the report Genome editing and human reproduction: Social and ethical issues, concluding that human germline modification of human embryos for implantation is not ‘morally unacceptable in itself’ and could be ethically permissible in certain circumstances once the risks of adverse outcomes have been assessed and the procedure appears ‘reasonably safe’. The Nuffield Council set forth two main principles governing anticipated uses and envisions applications that may include health enhancements as a public health measure. This essay provides a critique of three aspects in the Nuffield Council’s Report: its presumption of therapeutic efficacy, its inflation of parental rights to create a certain type of child, and its reliance on a specially commissioned report that appears to distort key definitions in international law.     

The denied land rights of the indigenous peoples and their endangered livelihood and survival: the case of the Nuba of the Sudan

The current situation of indigenous peoples in the Sudan is the result of the independent state's adoption of land and other policies identical to those introduced by colonialists more than a century ago. The Sudanese state has not only unwittingly maintained some colonial coercive institutions and policies but it has introduced more aggressive ones and brutally deployed them against its indigenous peoples, particularly the Nuba. In the light of this, this paper attempts to demonstrate analytically how some historical and contemporary socio-political dynamics have continued systematically to deprive these indigenous Nuba peoples of their customary land, and to assess to what extent the recently concluded Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) has been successful in addressing the land question as one of the root causes of the recurring civil wars in the Sudan in general and in the Nuba Mountains in particular.     

The Indonesian Legal Framework on Baselines,Archipelagic Passage,and Innocent Passage

As an archipelagic state, Indonesia is faced with a wide range of potential maritime security threats. This article analyzes the existing Indonesian legislation on baselines, archipelagic passage, and innocent passage in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The article demonstrates the challenges that exist in implementing the key navigational rights laws.     

Support for Kurdish language rights in Turkey: the roles of ethnic group,group identifications,contact, and intergroup perceptions

The question of Kurdish language rights has been a central issue in the Turkish–Kurdish conflict. The current study examined endorsement of Kurdish language rights in relation to intergroup factors (i.e. group identifications, cross-group friendships, perceived discrimination, and perceived out-group beliefs about state unity) among self-identified Turkish and Kurdish participants. The results indicate that Turks were much less in favour of these rights than the Kurds. In addition, for the Turks, higher national and ethnic identification were associated with lower support for Kurdish language rights, while cross-group friendship, perceived discrimination of Kurds and the belief that Kurds endorse national unity were associated with more support for rights. For the Kurdish participants, stronger national identification seems to undermine the mobilizing meaning that Kurdish group identification has for language rights support. Furthermore, friendship with Turks can undermine the support for rights because it strengthens national identification and reduces ethnic identification.     

Expresión sexual y regulación de la sexualidad en residencias de personas mayores

Objectives

The study had three objectives: (a) To determine how staff perceives the frequency of different sexual expressions in long-term care facilities for older people; (2) to quantify policies aimed at guaranteeing residents’ sexual rights in such institutions, and (3) to determine factors influencing the presence of these kind of policies.

A review of the world marine gastropod fishery: evolution of catches, management and the Chilean experience

Marine mollusks are among the most importantinvertebrate fisheries in the world. The mainclasses of mollusk fished are Cephalopoda,Bivalvia and Gastropoda. Marine gastropodsrepresent approximately 2% of the mollusksfished in the world. Several species ofgastropods, such as Haliotis spp., Strombus spp., Busycon spp. and Concholepas concholepas, have high economicvalue in international markets and playimportant social roles in small-scale artisanalfisheries. In the past 25 years wild-stockcatches of marine gastropods have increasedfrom 75,000 mt in 1979 to 103,000 mt in 1996.During the same period the countries involvedin gastropod landings rose from 23 to 47.Gastropods are fished mainly in: (1) theAmerican continent, dominated by the extractionof the muricid ``loco', C. concholepas, inChile and Peru; strombid conchs, Strombusspp., in the Caribbean, and abalone, Haliotis spp., in California and the west coastof the Baja California peninsula; (2) Asia andOceania, with the dominate abalone fishery,mainly in Australia and New Zealand, and thehorned turban snail, Turbo truncatus, inJapan and Korea; (3) in Africa and Europe, thedominate species extracted are Haliotismidae, heavily fished in South Africa, and thecommon periwinkle, Littorina littorea,and the whelk Buccinum undatum, which areextracted in Europe. This review summarizes the fishery of abalonespecies in California and the west coast of theBaja California peninsula. We highlightoverfishing situations and the utilization ofadaptive management tools, such as those inoperation in Baja California, where small-scalefisher associations (cooperatives) havereceived exclusive access rights to abaloneextraction within specific fishing zones, since1936. We also review the abalone fishery inAustralia, and the use of IndividualTransferable Quotas (ITQs) and Total AllowableCommercial Catches (TACC), which have been inuse since the mid-1980's. We describe thegastropod fisheries in Chile, mainly C. concholepas, highlighting their economic andsocial importance. We provide information onthe evolution of catches and exports anddiscuss the development of novel managementadaptive tools, such as the implementation ofthe Benthic Regime for Extraction andProcessing (BREP), the introduction ofNon-Transferable Individual Quotas (NTIQs) andterritorial users rights for benthic fisheries,such as the Management and Exploitation Areas(MEAS). Finally, we present and discuss thenecessary steps for the sustainable managementof marine gastropods and other benthic resources.     

Population aging and international development: addressing competing claims of distributive justice

To date, bioethics and health policy scholarship has given little consideration to questions of aging and intergenerational justice in the developing world. Demographic changes are precipitating rapid population aging in developing nations, however, and ethical issues regarding older people's claim to scarce healthcare resources must be addressed. This paper posits that the traditional arguments about generational justice and age-based rationing of healthcare resources, which were developed primarily in more industrialized nations, fail to adequately address the unique challenges facing older persons in developing nations. Existing philosophical approaches to age-based resource allocation underemphasize the importance of older persons for developing countries and fail to adequately consider the rights and interests of older persons in these settings. Ultimately, the paper concludes that the most appropriate framework for thinking about generational justice in developing nations is a rights-based approach that allows for the interests of all age groups, including the oldest, to be considered in the determination of health resource allocation.