Eliminating Consideration of Parental Wealth in Post-Divorce Child Custody Disputes

There may be no story as old as that of the child of privilege, spoiled in the things of the world, who finally achieves happiness through coming to appreciate the simple charms of working-class life. But equal in strength are the real life stories of American parents: their drive for the accumulation of personal wealth, so frequently justified as for the children. The place of wealth in the good life of a child is deeply controversial, and it should surprise no one to see it played out in child custody law. Under the statutes of almost all states, custody disputes between divorcing parents must be decided in the best interests of the child. These statutes often list particular factors that are to be considered when deciding children\u27s interests, such as [t]he love, affection, and other emotional ties existing between the parties involved and the child. Some statutes also expressly forbid consideration of particular factors, such as the gender of the parent. Even with these attempts to narrow the inquiry, the best-interests standard remains notably vague. This inevitably leads to serious disputes about which factors ought to be considered, and how much weight they should be given. Perhaps the most troubling of these disputes has involved the relevance to the custody decision of each parent\u27s ability to provide the child with material goods

Rationalizing Juvenile Justice

Few issues have occupied the public mind so much in recent years as the problem of youth violence. Due to sensational school shootings and public paranoia about the violence of youth gangs, America is concerned - very concerned - about the growing criminality of its children. In our concern, we find ourselves caught in the classic conundrum of criminal responsibility: reconciling the unavoidable knowledge that much of human behavior is determined with our strong instincts about free will. We blame violent television and video games, we blame single mothers, we blame low church attendance, but when all is said and done, we punish the child. The concrete response to our fears about increasing youth violence has been increased accountability for young offenders, and growing rhetoric about the genuine evil that exists even in seemingly innocent youth. Franklin Zimring confronts this trend of getting tough on young offenders in his most recent book, American Youth Violence. The basic aim of his project is to quell the storm of youth crime policy motivated by fear and hostility towards young offenders (p. xiii). Increased length of punishment, as well as abandonment of efforts at reform, have characterized the recent moves in juvenile justice. Zimring argues against these trends

Stroke genetics informs drug discovery and risk prediction across ancestries

Previous genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of stroke — the second leading cause of death worldwide — were conducted predominantly in populations of European ancestry1,2. Here, in cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses of 110,182 patients who have had a stroke (five ancestries, 33% non-European) and 1,503,898 control individuals, we identify association signals for stroke and its subtypes at 89 (61 new) independent loci: 60 in primary inverse-variance-weighted analyses and 29 in secondary meta-regression and multitrait analyses. On the basis of internal cross-ancestry validation and an independent follow-up in 89,084 additional cases of stroke (30% non-European) and 1,013,843 control individuals, 87% of the primary stroke risk loci and 60% of the secondary stroke risk loci were replicated (P < 0.05). Effect sizes were highly correlated across ancestries. Cross-ancestry fine-mapping, in silico mutagenesis analysis3, and transcriptome-wide and proteome-wide association analyses revealed putative causal genes (such as SH3PXD2A and FURIN) and variants (such as at GRK5 and NOS3). Using a three-pronged approach4, we provide genetic evidence for putative drug effects, highlighting F11, KLKB1, PROC, GP1BA, LAMC2 and VCAM1 as possible targets, with drugs already under investigation for stroke for F11 and PROC. A polygenic score integrating cross-ancestry and ancestry-specific stroke GWASs with vascular-risk factor GWASs (integrative polygenic scores) strongly predicted ischaemic stroke in populations of European, East Asian and African ancestry5. Stroke genetic risk scores were predictive of ischaemic stroke independent of clinical risk factors in 52,600 clinical-trial participants with cardiometabolic disease. Our results provide insights to inform biology, reveal potential drug targets and derive genetic risk prediction tools across ancestries

Rationalizing Juvenile Justice

Few issues have occupied the public mind so much in recent years as the problem of youth violence. Due to sensational school shootings and public paranoia about the violence of youth gangs, America is concerned - very concerned - about the growing criminality of its children. In our concern, we find ourselves caught in the classic conundrum of criminal responsibility: reconciling the unavoidable knowledge that much of human behavior is determined with our strong instincts about free will. We blame violent television and video games, we blame single mothers, we blame low church attendance, but when all is said and done, we punish the child. The concrete response to our fears about increasing youth violence has been increased accountability for young offenders, and growing rhetoric about the genuine evil that exists even in seemingly innocent youth. Franklin Zimring confronts this trend of getting tough on young offenders in his most recent book, American Youth Violence. The basic aim of his project is to quell the storm of youth crime policy motivated by fear and hostility towards young offenders (p. xiii). Increased length of punishment, as well as abandonment of efforts at reform, have characterized the recent moves in juvenile justice. Zimring argues against these trends

Eliminating Consideration of Parental Wealth in Post-Divorce Child Custody Disputes

There may be no story as old as that of the child of privilege, spoiled in the things of the world, who finally achieves happiness through coming to appreciate the simple charms of working-class life. But equal in strength are the real life stories of American parents: their drive for the accumulation of personal wealth, so frequently justified as for the children. The place of wealth in the good life of a child is deeply controversial, and it should surprise no one to see it played out in child custody law. Under the statutes of almost all states, custody disputes between divorcing parents must be decided in the best interests of the child. These statutes often list particular factors that are to be considered when deciding children\u27s interests, such as [t]he love, affection, and other emotional ties existing between the parties involved and the child. Some statutes also expressly forbid consideration of particular factors, such as the gender of the parent. Even with these attempts to narrow the inquiry, the best-interests standard remains notably vague. This inevitably leads to serious disputes about which factors ought to be considered, and how much weight they should be given. Perhaps the most troubling of these disputes has involved the relevance to the custody decision of each parent\u27s ability to provide the child with material goods