Legislation

About: Legislation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 62664 publications have been published within this topic receiving 585188 citations. The topic is also known as: law & act.

National population policy.

Abstract: The government of India has decided on the following measures regarding national population policy to reduce the birthrate from an estimated 35/1000 in the beginning of the Fifth Plan to 25/1000 at the end of the Sixth: 1) minimum marriage age raised to 18 for women and 21 for men; 2) representation in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures will be frozen on the basis of the 1971 census; 3) in the sharing of Central Resources with the states certain allocations where population is a factor will continue to be made on the basis of the 1971 census; 4) special measures are to be taken to raise the levels of female education; 5) population education in the school system will be intensified; 6) all ministries of the cabinet are to adopt the promotion of the small family norm as part of their responsibility; 7) monetary co mpensations for sterilization will be increased; 8) group incentives will be introduced; 9) expanded aid to voluntary organizations will be forthcoming; 10) research in reproductive biology and contraception will receive special attention; 11) state legislatures may enact compulsory sterilization statutes without objection from the national government; 12) the national government will require its employees to adopt the small family norm and state legislatures may enact similary legislation if they so wish; and 13) mass media programs will adopt a more vigorous rural-oriented approach.

Active parental consent in school-based research. An examination of ethical and methodological issues.

Abstract: To date, most school-based research has used passive parental consent. However, the Family Privacy Protection Act of 1995 aims to change these requirements. The proposed legislation requires written parental consent if minors are to be asked "sensitive" questions as part of any program or activity funded in whole or in part by the federal government. This act is representative of a growing trend toward restricting research involving minors. Whether or not this act is passed by Congress, two lines of concern are highlighted by this legislation. The first deals with ethical issues surrounding consent procedures. For instance, are parental rights compromised when active consent is not mandated? A second line of inquiry pertains to the effect of active consent procedures on response rates and sample bias. In this article, the authors discuss ethical issues surrounding passive and active consent procedures and then report response rates from two projects in which active consent procedures were implemented.

A Shortened Stress Evaluation Tool (ASSET)

Abstract: There is widespread acceptance that the workplace can be damaging to health. Many developed industrial countries have already produced, or are actively considering, legislation intended to make organizations accept greater responsibility for the physical and mental well-being of their workforce. In the U.K., for example, the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (1999) are intended to make employers meet their legal obligations with respect to employee health issues.

Bayh-Dole Reform and the Progress of Biomedicine

Abstract: I INTRODUCTION Advances in fundamental biomedical research play an important and growing role in the development of new therapeutic and diagnostic products. Although the development of pharmaceutical end products has long been a proprietary enterprise, (1) biomedical research comes from a very different tradition of open science. Within this tradition, longstanding norms call for relatively unfettered access to fundamental knowledge developed by prior researchers. (2) The tradition of open science has eroded considerably over the past quarter century as proprietary claims have reached farther upstream from end products to cover fundamental discoveries that provide the knowledge base for future product development. One important reason for this change has been a narrowing of the conceptual gap between fundamental research and commercial application. Once largely a matter of serendipity or trial-and-error, drug discovery is now critically dependent on basic knowledge of genes, proteins, and associated biochemical pathways. The foreseeable practical payoffs of this fundamental research make it easier to obtain patents for discoveries that, in an earlier era, would have seemed too far removed from useful applications for patent protection. As these early-stage advances in human understanding have become patentable, new firms have emerged, raising capital to develop and market proprietary research that lies somewhere between traditional academic research and end-product drug development. This upstream shift in patenting activity has met little resistance from the courts. In 1980, the Supreme Court held that genetically engineered microorganisms were eligible for patent protection, construing the language of the patent statute as permitting patents for "anything under the sun that is made by man." (3) Shortly thereafter, Congress created a specialized court to hear appeals in patent matters, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("Federal Circuit"). (4) The Federal Circuit has further extended the Supreme Court's expansive approach to patent eligibility (5) while relaxing the stringency of standards for patent protection, such as utility (6) and non-obviousness, (7) that might otherwise have prevented the patenting of incremental advances in upstream biomedical research. The Federal Circuit's generally supportive attitude towards patents has encouraged imaginative claiming strategies and unprecedented levels of patenting activity. These changes in the economic structure of research and in the case law have been important factors in promoting intellectual property claims in fundamental research discoveries. Perhaps an even more significant factor, however, has been the explicit U.S. policy of allowing grantees to seek patent rights in government-sponsored research results. This policy, which was codified beginning in 1980 with passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, (8) and the Stevenson-Wydler Act, (9) has turned universities into major players in the biopharmaceutical patenting arena. The goal of these legislative initiatives was to promote widespread utilization of federally-sponsored inventions. The sponsors of the legislation believed that grantee ownership of patent rights, which would permit grantees to convey exclusive licenses to their inventions to private firms, was necessary to motivate private investors to pick up where government sponsors left off and transform new discoveries into commercial products. (10) But the legislation draws no distinction between downstream inventions that lead directly to commercial products and fundamental research discoveries that broadly enable further scientific investigation. Universities have taken the opportunity to file patent applications on basic research discoveries, such as new DNA sequences, protein structures, and disease pathways, that are primarily valuable as inputs into further research, thereby accelerating the encroachment of the patent system into what was formerly the domain of open science. …