Wrongful birth and wrongful life. Floodgate argument and the balancing of conytrasting rights in courts law making

The decision analyzed affects damages forthe born child because of the impossibility for the mother to exercise the right to abortion, as the diagnosis was missing and she was not aware of the hard risk for her physical and psychological health coming from the birth of a child affected by \u201cdown syndrome\u201d. The study starts from the distinction between: a)Wrongful birth: the personal damages suffered by pregnant women, who have not had the possibility of self-determining in the prosecution of the pregnancy in case of pathological processes of the fetus; in particular, in those cases when a disease exposes herself and her health to a severe risk (a pre-condition for abortion, according to the Italian L. 194/1978), caused by the doctor's breach of contract and, in particular, because of the latter not informing the patient of the fetus illness. b)Wrongful life: the damages suffered directly by the conceived but not yet born fetus, because of the missed abortion; this category of damages has been invoked often by parents in case of fetus malformations o genetic diseases, when it is not possible to ascertain the doctor's responsibility for the child's health damages, since the disease preexisted to medical treatment and intervention. The wrongdoing concerns only the lack of diagnosis and of subsequent information, as the woman consequently could not exert her right to choose abortion and the child was born, while she/he shouldn\u2019t have. After years of contrasting decisions SS.UU., has stated that there is no place for a \u201cright to birth only if healthy\u201d in the Italian legal system. In analyzing such decision, the study focus especially on: I. burden of proof; II. potential plaintiffs of such kind of action (parents, brother and sisters of the child and the child her/himself); III. comparative insights on how legislation, judges and scholars in other legal systems (Great Britain and France) have managed with the floodgate argument, the rights of both the woman and the \u201cunborn\u201d child

The European Union policies on access to justice and ADRs: good intentions are not enough as \u201cthe way to hell is paved with...\u201d.

Forms of extra-judicial dispute resolution are widespread in legal systems belonging to the western legal tradition and in the systems based on religion and tradition. With regard to the study this article refers to, cultural movements spreading and promoting ADR models have found place in legal systems based on the rule of law over the past fifty years, although with the necessary distinctions of institutional and, before that, socio-cultural nature. In a first phase, the European Union opened a broad debate to sensitize public awareness on the issues concerning the access to justice, the reduction of time and costs of a trial if compared to those when using ADRs, the respect of the weak parties in the legal-economic relations. On the other hand, in a second phase the EU carried out some early non-binding legislative initiatives, and later obliged Member States to legislate on the mediation in civil and commercial disputes

Pandemia in translation: a comparative understanding of European social values

This volume, resulting from the training and research activities of the “Pandemic in translation” project – FORTHEM’s Experiencing Europe Lab, University of Palermo –, deals with central issues related to COVID-19 pandemic, and aims at contributing to a comparative understanding of mainly, but not exclusively European values challenged during this contingency. This interdisciplinary projects mobilizes a multicultural and multilingual debate about norms and beliefs, cultural identities and societal values, public policies and emotional communities. Using methodologies drawn from Comparative and International Law to Comparative Literature, from discourse analysis to Translation Studies, this book clarifies the socially constructed nature of the pandemic reality and calls for a redefinition of some long-assumed categories. Although translation can function culturally, epistemologically and cognitively as a metaphor, in fact translation seems more like “a process endogenous to social life”: in this sense – and from an anthropological point of view – it allows for the articulation of ethical, legal, normative and ideological representations. In some cases, translation can highlight the hermeneutic impasse between public policy actions and the discursive politics that emerge from them. The social suffering caused by the pandemic crisis calls into question both scientific mediation as a whole and scientists’ position in particular: how can scientific accuracy be reconciled with the need to make certain warnings known? Who is qualified to speak about the pandemic and its societal implications? Which authority figures are expressing their thoughts on the matter, and how trustworthy are they? Indeed, the methodological combination of 1 the approaches of Translation Studies and Multilingual crisis communication points to translation as a key theoretical concept not only in social and human sciences, but also in the anthropological and epistemological construction of global public health discourses

Belonging: The Social Dynamics of Fitting In as Experienced by Hmong Refugees in Germany and Texas, by Faith G. Nibbs

Belonging: The Social Dynamics of Fitting In as Experienced by Hmong Refugees in Germany and Texas by Faith G. Nibbs Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 201

Pepducins as a potential treatment strategy for asthma and COPD.

Current therapies to treat asthma and other airway diseases primarily include anti-inflammatory agents and bronchodilators. Anti-inflammatory agents target trafficking and resident immunocytes and structural cells, while bronchodilators act to prevent or reverse shortening of airway smooth muscle (ASM), the pivotal tissue regulating bronchomotor tone. Advances in our understanding of the biology of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and biased agonism offers unique opportunities to modulate GPCR function that include the use of pepducins and allosteric modulators. Recent evidence suggests that small molecule inhibitors of Gα q as well as pepducins targeting G q -coupled receptors can broadly inhibit contractile agonist-induced ASM function. Given these advances, new therapeutic approaches can be leveraged to diminish the global rise in morbidity and mortality associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

The Impact of Technological Developments on the Rules of Attorney Ethics Regarding Attorney–Client Privilege, Confidentiality, and Social Media

This article focuses on the development of the law of ethics and technology. Emphasis is placed on how technological developments have affected the rules and means by which lawyers practice law and certain ethical pitfalls that have developed hand-in-hand with technological advancements. Topics examined include: (1) the ways by which electronic communication has increased the potential for the attorney–client privilege to be waived and the resulting impact on the present-day practice of law; (2) the effect of social media on lawyers’ ethical obligations, including counseling clients regarding the client’s use of social media and the lawyer’s own use of social media; and (3) the impact of cloud computing on a lawyer’s obligation to protect client confidences. The authors examine the development of these technological effects on the practice of law through an examination of the evolution of the American Bar Association, its Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and state ethics opinions and representative case law

A new multi-modal database for developing speech recognition systems for an assistive technology application

In this paper we report on the acquisition and content of a new database intended for developing audio-visual speech recognition systems. This database supports a speaker dependent continuous speech recognition task, based on a small vocabulary, and was captured in the European Portuguese language. Along with the collected multi-modal speech materials, the respective orthographic transcription and time-alignment files are supplied. The package also includes data on stochastic language models and the generative grammar associated to the collected spoken sentences. The application addressed by this database, which consists of voice control of a basic scientific calculator, has the particularity of being designed for a person with a specific motor impairment, namely muscular dystrophy. This specificity is a remarkable characteristic, given the lack of such kind of data resources for developing assistive systems based on audio-visual speech recognition technology