Looking Back with a Legend: Ira Millstein Reflects on the Impact of Milton Friedman\u27s Views on Corporate Governance

In this discussion, corporate governance legend and frequent The Business Lawyer contributor Ira M. Millstein reflects on the impact of Milton Friedman and his adherents on our corporate governance system and economy generally, as well as the path forward to an economy that functions better for the many. Millstein takes an historical perspective in conversation with former Chief Justice and Chancellor of Delaware, Leo E. Strine, Jr., moderated by Professor Eric Talley of Columbia Law School. Millstein situates the evolution of our corporate governance system, including the effect of Friedman and the Chicago school on it, within the political dynamics of the last fifty years since the New York Times published the essay, “A Friedman Doctrine —The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.

\u3ci\u3eCaremark\u3c/i\u3e and ESG, Perfect Together: A Practical Approach to Implementing an Integrated, Efficient, and Effective \u3ci\u3eCaremark\u3c/i\u3e and EESG Strategy

With increased calls from investors, legislators, and academics for corporations to consider employee, environmental, social, and governance factors (“EESG”) when making decisions, boards and managers are struggling to situate EESG within their existing reporting and organizational structures. Building on an emerging literature connecting EESG with corporate compliance, this Essay argues that EESG is best understood as an extension of the board’s duty to implement and monitor a compliance program under Caremark. If a company decides to do more than the legal minimum, it will simultaneously satisfy legitimate demands for strong EESG programs and promote compliance with the law. Building on that insight, we explain how boards can marry existing corporate compliance programs with budding EESG programs. By integrating compliance and EESG, corporations can meet growing societal demands in an effective and efficient manner that capitalizes on existing structures. Lastly, we address how EESG and corporate compliance responsibilities should be allocated at the board and senior management level. Instead of separating compliance and EESG oversight, this Essay suggests that boards embrace a functional approach, delegating similar compliance and EESG oversight to the same committee and managers. By situating EESG within the board’s existing fiduciary duties, this Essay provides academics, legislators, investors, and managers with a novel framework to conceptualize EESG while also offering a path forward for boards struggling to place the current EESG movement within their existing corporate structure

\u3cem\u3eCaremark\u3c/em\u3e and ESG, Perfect Together: A Practical Approach to Implementing an Integrated, Efficient, and Effective \u3cem\u3eCaremark\u3c/em\u3e and EESG Strategy

With increased calls from investors, legislators, and academics for corporations to consider employee, environmental, social, and governance factors (“EESG”) when making decisions, boards and managers are struggling to situate EESG within their existing reporting and organizational structures. Building on an emerging literature connecting EESG with corporate compliance, this Essay argues that EESG is best understood as an extension of the board’s duty to implement and monitor a compliance program under Caremark. If a company decides to do more than the legal minimum, it will simultaneously satisfy legitimate demands for strong EESG programs and promote compliance with the law. Building on that insight, we explain how boards can marry existing corporate compliance programs with budding EESG programs. By integrating compliance and EESG, corporations can meet growing societal demands in an effective and efficient manner that capitalizes on existing structures. Lastly, we address how EESG and corporate compliance responsibilities should be allocated at the board and senior management level. Instead of separating compliance and EESG oversight, this Essay suggests that boards embrace a functional approach, delegating similar compliance and EESG oversight to the same committee and managers. By situating EESG within the board’s existing fiduciary duties, this Essay provides academics, legislators, investors, and managers with a novel framework to conceptualize EESG while also offering a path forward for boards struggling to place the current EESG movement within their existing corporate structure

Sacral Neuromodulation in Children

Sacral neuromodulation (SNM) has emerged as a treatment option for refractory lower urinary tract and bowel dysfunction in children. SNM is typically reserved for a select population of children who have failed an extended period of behavioral modification, biofeedback, and pharmacologic therapy. The surgical techniques for SNM in children are analogous to those in adults and include both one- and two-stage procedures as well as a peripheral nerve evaluation with the InterStim® system (Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN). Most studies have observed not only an improvement in symptoms and quality of life in children undergoing SNM for non-neurogenic and neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction but also a much higher reoperative rate than in adults. Further high-quality research is necessary to corroborate the results of earlier studies and to better define the indications for SNM in children

Searching the web builds fuller picture of arachnid trade

Trade in arachnids includes millions of individuals and over 1264 species, with over 70% of individuals coming from the wild. Wildlife trade is a major driver of biodiversity loss, yet whilst the impacts of trade in some species are relatively well-known, some taxa, such as many invertebrates are often overlooked. Here we explore global patterns of trade in the arachnids, and detected 1,264 species from 66 families and 371 genera in trade. Trade in these groups exceeds millions of individuals, with 67% coming directly from the wild, and up to 99% of individuals in some genera. For popular taxa, such as tarantulas up to 50% are in trade, including 25% of species described since 2000. CITES only covers 30 (2%) of the species potentially traded. We mapped the percentage and number of species native to each country in trade. To enable sustainable trade, better data on species distributions and better conservation status assessments are needed. The disparity between trade data sources highlights the need to expand monitoring if impacts on wild populations are to be accurately gauged and the impacts of trade minimised.Peer reviewe

Smoking and health-related quality of life in English general population: Implications for economic evaluations

Copyright @ 2012 Vogl et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Little is known as to how health-related quality of life (HRQoL) when measured by generic instruments such as EQ-5D differ across smokers, ex-smokers and never-smokers in the general population; whether the overall pattern of this difference remain consistent in each domain of HRQoL; and what implications this variation, if any, would have for economic evaluations of tobacco control interventions. Methods: Using the 2006 round of Health Survey for England data (n = 13,241), this paper aims to examine the impact of smoking status on health-related quality of life in English population. Depending upon the nature of the EQ-5D data (i.e. tariff or domains), linear or logistic regression models were fitted to control for biology, clinical conditions, socio-economic background and lifestyle factors that an individual may have regardless of their smoking status. Age- and gender-specific predicted values according to smoking status are offered as the potential 'utility' values to be used in future economic evaluation models. Results: The observed difference of 0.1100 in EQ-5D scores between never-smokers (0.8839) and heavy-smokers (0.7739) reduced to 0.0516 after adjusting for biological, clinical, lifestyle and socioeconomic conditions. Heavy-smokers, when compared with never-smokers, were significantly more likely to report some/severe problems in all five domains - mobility (67%), self-care (70%), usual activity (42%), pain/discomfort (46%) and anxiety/depression (86%) -. 'Utility' values by age and gender for each category of smoking are provided to be used in the future economic evaluations. Conclusion: Smoking is significantly and negatively associated with health-related quality of life in English general population and the magnitude of this association is determined by the number of cigarettes smoked. The varying degree of this association, captured through instruments such as EQ-5D, may need to be fed into the design of future economic evaluations where the intervention being evaluated affects (e.g. tobacco control) or is affected (e.g. treatment for lung cancer) by individual's (or patients') smoking status