International Law, and more article submissions by delegates
Hey everyone,
Again, I have to apologize for my haphazard breaks from blogging. Life for a college student is very busy, and I hope you understand.
That being said, its less than three weeks until the conference, and I hope you guys are getting as excited as I am, especially seeing some of the submissions of articles that I’ve been getting.
First of all, I promised you guys an overview of international law, both in principle and in practice. Convienently, I was the head chair of the 6th Legal committee of the General Assembly for last year’s session, and I provided a succinct overview of international law in that committee’s topic synopsis. It was brief considering that international law is a very nebulous and arbitrary process, and hard to understand, even for people like me. Last year’s delegates only needed a minimal level of understanding, and I cannot see you guys needing to know more than they did…
6th Legal topic synopsis from the 55th Annual Session
Finally, two delegates have submitted very interesting articles…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People indigenous to Siberia have strong genetic links to native peoples in the Americas, according to a study further supporting the theory that humans first entered the Americas over a land bridge across the Bering Strait.
Scientists at Stanford University in California combed through the genes of 938 people from 51 places, looking at 650,000 DNA locations in each person…
This article is quite revealing in the fact that we can discover people’s common ancestry in a peaceful way and let science be a main priority. With this way of discovering the past and DNA of indigenous people, we can ensure the safety of indigenous people and also let science discover the links between various ethnic groups. Also, by discovering the differences between people’s places of origins, we can stop the flow of prejudice by disproving that a certain ethnic groups committed crimes against another group. This would be one of the more positive side effects of genetic tracking. Hopefully, countries will see the positive effects of genetic tracking and will be more inclined to support scientists, but will also hopefully join together to combat any negative side effects that may arise.
The normal “standard of care” against which new interventions are tested in medical research has not been formally defined. It is usually taken to mean the “best proved treatment” for any condition under investigation in a trial. We reject the arbitrariness of this notion of the standard of care and offer a more comprehensive alternative. Use of this new standard invokes a new approach to international research ethics that focuses on reducing inequalities in global health…
If you guys cannot access the second article, let me know, and I will email the full text to you. I have access through the University of California proxy server, so I’m not sure how the restrict access to the general public.
Later this week I will start posting some intriguing case studies for you all to look over. So, until then, good luck with continuing your awesome researching!
- Bryan
February 25th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
We believe that when scientists create solutions to problems, that they need to think practically. You have to think of the ramifications of certain results. While some solutions may be good in the short run, will they last in the long run? Will AIDS medication A last more than 5 years, or will it cease to fulfill it’s purpose.
When it comes to ethical standards for scientific research, we must think about it from all fronts. Will it be able to distribute, will it be affordable, can it be effective where the problem it’s solving is most present. We also must think about how successful it will be down the road. We need to find cures for diseases and other solutions as quickly as possible but we need to think practically, and we also need to make sure that while we think about what may happen right now, we also must think about the future, ramifications, both positive and negative, and what will happen once these solutions are implemented.
February 27th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Many companies use animals to run their clinical trials. If the trials on animals turn out to be safe, companies will then try the clinical testing on humans. An effective resolution should combat the fact that safe testing on animals does not indicate safe testing on humans as well. The United Kingdom highly supports the idea of screening clinical trials, however, the proper and intelligent way to do so would not be by testing on animals.
The following article demonstrates that UK favors and will propose a policy that will provide drug and pharmaceutical companies with other ways of testing their drug before experimenting on humans during their clinical trials.
The UK strongly believes with the article’s wording that this kind of drug testing is “insufficient” for further operation.
February 27th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
This is an article link to UK’s response from BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4821732.stm