Think Tank Library

The study looks at four major cultural trends in the discourse that still exerts a strong influence on bioethics.

The first trend is the romantic worldview.

The second trend is that the emotional connection between "dangerous foods" supersedes the lack of a causal connection.

The third trend is the resistance against "playing God" or "manipulation of the proper order of nature".

The fourth trend is the "clash of cultures” between the scientific community and the public.

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Nanotechnology, manufacturing on the molecular and atomic scale is a promising new technology that is being attacked before we even know if it is feasible. Opponents of development are misusing the precautionary principle to demand regulations and stifle development. The Canadian public policy group, ETC, is demanding international moratoriums on the research and UN regulations of new technologies. This study shows why we can loose the revolution before it even began.

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Tough Love: A Critique of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill 2003 by Alicia Collinson examines the magnitude of domestic violence problems and what risks and benefits the proposed legal measures will represent. The author considers the dangers of introducing a rigid system to deal with a wide range of domestic offences, and suggests an alternative, more flexible approach

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While prophesies of an `African Renaissance` were over-optimistic, out of the headlines some African countries have been doing relatively well. Lion Cubs brings together an international group of contributors in four case studies. Botswana demonstrates how Africans should manage natural resources; Tanzania shows the difficulty of moving to privatisation and de-regulation; Rwanda and Mozambique demonstrate the importance of broad-based, inclusive government for successful conflict resolution.

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During the past generation, a large environmentalist movement has emerged committed to showing that the world is a bad place and is growing progressively worse. This movement is headed by individuals such as Paul Ehrlich and David Pimental, and by organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace, Worldwatch, and many others.

To view the Economic Note, click here (English)
To view the Economic Note, click here (French)

The study explores the ideas behind DARPA`s controversial Policy Analysis Market research project by comparing it to more traditional futures markets. An idea futures market is supposed to provide policy makers with more robust and complex information based on individual knowledge, represented by the individual investments. But PAM fell prey to the problem it was thought to cure; misinformed politicians chose to shut down a project that was portrayed as "gambling on terrorism".

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In The Decline and Fall of Local Democracy: A History of Local Government Finance, the first part of a major study into local government financial reform, Professor Tony Travers of the LSE and Lorena Esposito of Policy Exchange examine the history of local government funding in England and Wales, from feudalism through the Victorian period to today. The authors show how the current system of highly centralised control is a product of the government`s desire to maintain uniformity and fiscal discipline.

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The current technological and medical development is increasing individuals` ability to change their physique. We do not at present have the cultural, political or ethical conventions to keep up with the speed of this development.

Regulation prohibiting certain technologies does not provide the individual with protection against being forced into changing themselves in way they do not agree with. Morphologic freedom will help healthcare organizations, public and private, to design suitable healthcare solutions for the individual.

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Over the past decade, there has been a sustained fall in the number of people who are unemployed. In Spring 1992, there were around 2.8 million unemployed people in Britain. That figure is now down to 1.5 million. What is much less well known is that this drop in unemployment has been accompanied by a rise in the number of people who are neither employed nor officially unemployed – a group described as economically inactive. Over 7.7 million people of working age now count as economically inactive, up from 7.3 million in 1992 and 7.6 million in 1997.Who they are, and what more can be done to help them, are the main themes of this paper.

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