Potential International Approaches to Ownership/Control of Human Genetic Resources.

In its governance activities for genetic resources, the international community has adopted various approaches to their ownership, including: free access; common heritage of mankind; intellectual property rights; and state sovereign rights. They have also created systems which combine elements of these approaches. While governance of plant and animal genetic resources is well-established internationally, there has not yet been a clear approach selected for human genetic resources. Based on assessment of the goals which international governance of human genetic resources ought to serve, and the implications for how they will be accessed and utilised, it is argued that common heritage of mankind will be the most appropriate approach to adopt to their ownership/control. It does this with the aim of stimulating discussion in this area and providing a starting point for deeper consideration of how a common heritage of mankind, or similar, regime for human genetic resources would function and be implemented

International Governance of Biotechnology

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The significant media coverage recently given to issues such as the international impacts of biofuel production policies, advances in synthetic biology, and the ethical implications of research involving embryonic stem cells, is indicative of the high-level of interest - among policy-makers, academics and the public - in the biotechnology revolution, its applications, impacts and control. There is also significant interest in international regulatory processes as a form of governance, and international regulation is a vital part of efforts to manage the impacts of the biotechnology revolution, since many of these are global in their nature. The book establishes the need for international regulation of biotechnology, identifying the roles it needs to play, and the issues it needs to cover. Having outlined the importance of coherence to the effective functioning of international regulatory sets, a model of coherent international regulation is established, against which the biotechnology regulations can be assessed. This book approaches the subject from an international relations perspective but also draws from, and will contribute to, literature in the fields of international law, global governance, technological governance, and science-society relations

Identifiability of parameters in latent structure models with many observed variables

While hidden class models of various types arise in many statistical applications, it is often difficult to establish the identifiability of their parameters. Focusing on models in which there is some structure of independence of some of the observed variables conditioned on hidden ones, we demonstrate a general approach for establishing identifiability utilizing algebraic arguments. A theorem of J. Kruskal for a simple latent-class model with finite state space lies at the core of our results, though we apply it to a diverse set of models. These include mixtures of both finite and nonparametric product distributions, hidden Markov models and random graph mixture models, and lead to a number of new results and improvements to old ones. In the parametric setting, this approach indicates that for such models, the classical definition of identifiability is typically too strong. Instead generic identifiability holds, which implies that the set of nonidentifiable parameters has measure zero, so that parameter inference is still meaningful. In particular, this sheds light on the properties of finite mixtures of Bernoulli products, which have been used for decades despite being known to have nonidentifiable parameters. In the nonparametric setting, we again obtain identifiability only when certain restrictions are placed on the distributions that are mixed, but we explicitly describe the conditions.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS689 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Genomics Monitor, Issue 1

YesWelcome to the first issue of the Genomics Monitor. The Genomics Monitor provides information and analysis on developments in the international regulations relevant to the control of the biotechnology revolution. This introductory issue outlines the full range of applicable regulations at the international level - providing details on each regulation's aims, provisions, development and current status. Thirty-five key regulations are covered within the areas of arms control, health and disease control, environmental protection, trade, drugs control and the social and ethical impacts of human genetics. Because this Issue was launched in mid-November 2006 - just prior to the Sixth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention - there is also a section covering Key Points for the Conference. It is clear from the content of the Monitor that there are significant connections between the rules in the different issue areas as they apply to biotechnology. Because of these connections, awareness of developments throughout the set of regulations is important to ensure they develop in a mutually supportive manner. A key aim of this and future Issues is therefore to raise awareness of the connections between the regulations and highlight cross-cutting work being undertaken by associated international organisations. The Genomics Monitor is of relevance to anyone interested in the international regulation of biotechnology, and of particular use to those involved in informing and making policy in this area.Carnegie Corporatio

Making Maya Linguistics, Making Maya Linguists: The Production Of Maya Scientific Expertise And Models Of Personhood In The Yucatan Today

In this dissertation, I explore what it means to be Maya in the Yucatan today. I focus my research on a higher education program in Maya linguistics where Maya is used as a language of instruction. To do this, faculty and students are creating the words and concepts with which to talk about linguistics ich maaya ‘in the Maya language’, something previously only done in other languages, like Spanish. This is about expanding the conceptual work that can be done in the Maya language, but it also about creating new scientific objects—new linguistics terminology; new categorizations of the language; and a new category of persons, native-Maya-speaking linguists. Through an eighteen-month ethnography, I follow linguists and their students to show how disciplinary linguistics knowledge is being created in the Maya language and how its creation produces and contests categories of Maya personhood. I begin broadly by exploring what it means to be Maya in Yucatan today through an analysis of diacritics of Maya personhood. I show how certain behaviors are linked to ideas about who Maya people are. For example, participation in advanced formal education is not widely associated with models of Maya personhood, thus when individuals pursue higher education, it can call their Mayaness into question. In light of this, some Maya individuals engage in practices to re-associate themselves with widely circulating diacritics of Maya personhood, such as speaking Maya in a way that is perceived to be more authentic. This brings me to interrogate a register of the Maya language, jach maaya, that many highly educated Maya individuals use. I then focus my attention on the creation of linguistics ich maaya, discussing its practice in the classroom and the one text published in Maya on a linguistics topic. Finally, I turn my attention to the creation of Maya linguists to look at the important identity work participation in higher education in the Maya language is affording students. Throughout, I take up notions of linguistic purism, language ideologies, and processes of social identification. I also situate the creation of linguistics ich maaya within broader discourses about indigeneity and modernity

International Governance of Biotechnology

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The significant media coverage recently given to issues such as the international impacts of biofuel production policies, advances in synthetic biology, and the ethical implications of research involving embryonic stem cells, is indicative of the high-level of interest - among policy-makers, academics and the public - in the biotechnology revolution, its applications, impacts and control. There is also significant interest in international regulatory processes as a form of governance, and international regulation is a vital part of efforts to manage the impacts of the biotechnology revolution, since many of these are global in their nature. The book establishes the need for international regulation of biotechnology, identifying the roles it needs to play, and the issues it needs to cover. Having outlined the importance of coherence to the effective functioning of international regulatory sets, a model of coherent international regulation is established, against which the biotechnology regulations can be assessed. This book approaches the subject from an international relations perspective but also draws from, and will contribute to, literature in the fields of international law, global governance, technological governance, and science-society relations