Behaviour Alteration, the Law Reform Commission and the Courts: An Ethical Perspective

The Law Reform Commission of Canada, in its Working Paper 43 Behaviour Alteration and the Criminal Law, addresses the issue of the deliberate modification of human behaviour by medical means. It does so vis-A-vis non-consensual treatment prescribed in the purely therapeutic setting as well as with respect to such treatment imposed by way of sentencing. The Commission focuses its deliberations around three questions: 1. Do present laws provide sufficient protection against involuntary or non-consensual administration of behaviour alteration treatment? 2. Should psychological integrity be protected by the Criminal Code as physical integrity already is? 3. Should the law legitimate the use of these techniques for purposes of criminal sanction as a matter of social control

The Right to Life of Potential Persons

The law accords an individual the right to sue for damages sustained in utero when these damages are the result of what would otherwise be described as criminally negligent treatment. Recent court actions involving children subjected to the influence of thalidomide during certain critical stages of their fetal development 1 make this only too clear. 2 At the same time, however, the law also permits abortion: the deliberate and intentional killing of fetuses at precisely those stages of their development at which thalidomide damage would be sustained were the drug to be administered. 3 In adopting these two stances, the law appears to find itself in a position of conflict. For the right to sue for damages is reserved solely for those individuals which in one sense or another are persons; 4 and in taking a favourable stance in the thalidomide cases, 5 the law seems to be operating on the principle that those individuals who suffer morphological damage as a result of exposure to the drug in fact enjoyed the status of persons at that particular time. On the other hand, in permitting abortions to occur at that particular stage of fetal development, the law seems to be operating on the principle that these individuals are not yet persons; 6 for otherwise, the act of abortion would be one of murder

The Euthanasia of Radically Defective Neonates: Some Statutory Considerations

Advances in medical technology, discoveries in pharmacology, an developments in bio-engineering have made it possible for the modem physician to save and/or sustain the lives of individuals who but a few decades ago would have died. These developments have proved a mixed blessing. While on the one hand they have allowed the physician to exercise his profession more successfully, on the other they have opened up before him a domain of decision problems that few of his predecessors have had to face. The thrust of these problems may be focussed into a single question: Ought he to employ the techniques, drugs and devices thus at his disposal in all cases, or ought he to proceed selectively

Spectroscopy of the 1S0−3P0^1S_0-{}^3P_0 Clock Transition of 87^{87}Sr in an Optical Lattice

We report on the spectroscopy of the $5s^2 {}^1S_0 (F=9/2) \to 5s5p {}^3P_0 (F=9/2)$ clock transition of ${}^{87}{\rm Sr}$ atoms (natural linewidth of 1 mHz) trapped in a one-dimensional optical lattice. Recoilless transitions with a linewidth of 0.7 kHz as well as the vibrational structure of the lattice potential were observed. By investigating the wavelength dependence of the carrier linewidth, we determined the magic wavelength, where the light shift in the clock transition vanishes, to be $813.5\pm0.9$ nm.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. (09/May/2003

Atomic and nuclear physics with stored particles in ion traps

Trapping and cooling techniques play an increasingly important role in many areas of science. This review concentrates on recent applications of ion traps installed at accelerator facilities to atomic and nuclear physics such as mass spectrometry of radioactive isotopes, weak interaction studies, symmetry tests, determination of fundamental constants, laser spectroscopy, and spectroscopy of highly-charged ions. In addition, ion traps are proven to be extremely efficient devices for (radioactive) ion beam manipulation as, for example, retardation, accumulation, cooling, beam cleaning, charge-breeding, and bunching