The hotel is at the other end of the government district, near Capitol Hill and the Library of Congress, where I would present a lecture on a classical Brazilian author the next day. When I tell the taxi driver that we have to be at the State Department in twenty minutes, his black forehead wrinkles. That might be difficult, he says, because of a Latino demonstration against the new immigration laws. Nervously I ask if there is some shortcut and add (...) in a half whisper that I have an appointment with the Secretary. “Good girl,” says the driver jovially but…. (shrink)

I cordially thank the members of the Central Committee for the high honor they have bestowed on me-my election as General Secretary of the Central Committee. I am fully aware of the tremendous responsibility that has been placed upon me. I understand how important and how extremely complicated the work before me is. I assure the Central Committee, and the party, that I will apply all my efforts, my knowledge, and my experience to justifying this confidence and, together with (...) you, continue that fundamental line of our party that Iurii Vladimirovich Andropov consistently and persistently put into practice. (shrink)

In R [on the application of SG and others (previously JS and others)] v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the United Kingdom Supreme Court evaluated the legality of the benefit cap. The Court was sharply divided but decided by a narrow margin that the benefit cap did not amount to a violation of the claimants’ human rights. While the majority accepted that the gender discrimination was justified, the Court noted that the current measures fell short of the (...) United Kingdom’s responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This could prove of the outmost importance as the government elected in May 2015 has announced further reductions to the existing benefit cap. The case comment evaluates whether the Court paid enough attention to the multifaceted nature of poverty and discrimination, and argues that the impact the benefit cap has had specifically on women from black and ethnic minorities should have been considered. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of mandatory conscription for women by studying the experience of women soldiers who serve as secretaries in the Israeli military. The author argues that the military service of the secretaries is shaped by three organizing principles: an employment principle of cheap labor, a matrimonial principle of the office wife, and a hierarchy principle that shapes the secretaries as status symbols. Employing the theory of gendered organizations, the author maintains that each one of these organizing principles (...) operates as a gendering and a power mechanism. The convergence of these three gender/power principles results in overgendering of these women and their military experience. This overgendering reflects gender discrimination and creates feelings of alienation and frustration. For them, military service is not an experience that articulates their citizenship or enhances feelings of national belonging but rather stands in opposition to the values and goals of the mandatory people's army by estranging them from the state and its major institution. (shrink)

The article focuses on the narratives of women secretaries regarding their work experiences in private business in Latvia, and aims at understanding the barriers that prevent the formation of women’s political subjectivity in Latvia, by looking at why sexual harassment does not become a political issue for working women in Latvia. Using Hayden White’s theory of trope analysis, the article analyses the dominant tropes and the political results of their use in secretaries’ articulations and narratives about their experiences of sexual (...) harassment. Additionally, the article provides a critical trope analysis of Western feminist theories of sexual harassment, thus pointing out their usefulness for women’s politics in Latvia. Finally, the article outlines the discursive strategies that women in Latvia could use in order to claim their own distinct and transformative political subjectivity in the newly independent, capitalist and highly nationalist post-Soviet Latvia. (shrink)

Iran's nuclear program has garnered a great deal of media attention for nearly a decade, yet critical discourse scholars have been relatively silent on the matter. To spur more scholarship on the nuclear controversy, this study examines the language of nine interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Analyzing the opening questions of topic shifts, the relationship of scope and topic, and Secretary Rice's portrayal of the US and Iran, I argue that Rice used her media (...) access as a platform to encourage audiences to see Iran's nuclear program as a nuclear weapons program, often with the complicity of her interviewers and always without evidence. In the wake of the unilateralist American invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rice also worked to rebuild a positive image of the White House as she presented the US as a proponent of multilateral diplomacy as opposed to her portrayal of the Islamic Republic as a rogue state. (shrink)

The story of the end of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1783, is linked with that of the founding of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh , both of which were given Royal Charters sealed on 6 May 1783. It is a story which has been admirably told by Steven Shapin. He persuasively argued that the P.S.E. was a casualty of bitter quarrels rooted in local Edinburgh politics, in personal animosities and in disputes (...) about the control of cultural property and intellectual leadership. In all this he was surely correct just as he was in finding the principal actors in this controversy to be: David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan; the Reverend Dr John Walker, Professor of Natural History in Edinburgh University; Dr William Cullen, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice-President of the P.S.E.; Mr William Smellie, Printer to the Society of Antiquaries; Henry Home, Lord Kames, S.C.J. and President of the P.S.E.; Sir George Clerk-Maxwell, Vice-President of the P.S.E.; John Robison, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Secretary to the P.S.E.; Edinburgh University's Principal, William Robertson; the Curators of the Advocates Library: Ilay Campbell, Robert Blair, Alexander Abercromby, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Professor of Public Law; Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate and M.P. for Midlothian. In a peripheral way, the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons were probably also involved; so too were Lord Buchan's brothers, Henry and Thomas Erskine, Foxite Whigs who opposed Dundas politically. Henry Erskine displaced Dundas as Lord Advocate in August 1783. After the change of ministry on 18 December 1783 he was ousted, but became Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1785. National as well as burgh politics touched these disputes and gave the parties of the Erskines and Dundas and his friends some leverage in London. (shrink)

This note examines the decision of the Court of Appeal in Tabernacle v Secretary of State for Defence (2009). The court held that byelaws prohibiting camping on Ministry of Defence land adjacent to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire violated the human rights of women peace protestors under Articles 10 and 11 European Convention on Human Rights. The note argues that this decision calls into question arguments recently made, that the association of women with peace should be abandoned. (...) It also reveals the potential of law to facilitate the performative and transformative production of subject positions, as ‘woman’, which do not depend on or connect with debilitating patriarchal constructions of women as weak or vulnerable. (shrink)

The essential tension in Nehemiah Grew's working methods in his Anatomy of Plants (1682) resulted in a flowering of scientific creativity. On the one hand, he utilised his intuition about the plants he studied in order to understand them in their own right, and indeed to idealise them visually as structures of emotional sympathy and great geometric beauty. On the other hand, Grew was a secretary of the Royal Society, a physician, and a museum cataloguer, as well as a (...) Baconian empirical inductivist, and he believed his work should have practical, applied, and economic uses. Although he shared several of these impulses with other early modern English virtuosi, Grew's commitment to understanding the whole organism, from the observation of its smallest bits of matter to an emotional identification with his experimental subjects as sentient beings, shows us the power of cultivating “a feeling for the organism” in scientific work. (shrink)

Objectives To determine the frequencies and types of limitation of medical treatment performed by physician members of the German Society for Palliative Medicine and to analyse the findings with respect to clinical and ethical aspects of end-of-life practices. Design Cross-sectional postal survey. Setting Data collection via the secretary of the German Society for Palliative Medicine using the German language version of the EURELD survey instrument. Subjects All 1645 physician members of the German Society for Palliative Medicine. Main outcome measures (...) Types and frequencies of limitation of treatment and possible determinants. Results 901 physicians participated in the study (response rate 55.8%). Participants reported limitation of treatment in 69.1% of cases. These decisions most often affected artificial nutrition (19%), chemotherapy (14%), antibiotics (11%) and medication other than antibiotics (11%). In the majority of eligible cases, physicians estimated the life-shortening effect of limitation of treatment to be <7 days. However, estimations differ depending on the medical measures in question. Bivariate statistical analysis indicated that withholding of treatment was performed significantly more frequently for patients aged ≥65 years (p=0.019). In addition, there were significant associations between the incidence of limitation of treatment and the different diseases reported by respondents as the underlying cause of death. Conclusion The findings of this study provide information on the current state of an ethically and clinically challenging aspect of clinical practice and can serve as a starting point for further interdisciplinary research on normative and empirical aspects of treatment decision-making at the end of life. (shrink)

The problems of the social responsibility of the scientist became a subject of public debate after the World War II in Japan, thanks to the activities and publications of Yukawa and Tomonaga. And such authors as J. Karaki, M.Taketani, Y. Murakami, and S. Fujinaga continued discussion in their books. However, many people seem to be still unaware of the most important source of these problems. As I see it, one of the most important treatments of these problems was the Franck (...) Report (June 11, 1945) submitted to the US government by James Franck (chairman) toward the end of the war. This Report contains many important ideas and suggestions as regards the responsibility of the scientist, the morality of the use of atomic bombs, the prospective nuclear armaments race, and the possibility of international control of nuclear power. However, I should like to concentrate only on the first topic in this paper. Why did Franck and his committee at Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago feel the urgent need for writing and submitting this Report? According to the Report, "in the past, scientists could disclaim direct responsibility for the use to which mankind had put their disinterested discoveries. We cannot take the same attitude now because the success which we have achieved in the development of nuclear power is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the inventions of the past." (I. Preamble) This passage seems to contain the crux of our problem: These scientists clearly recognize the "new" responsibility for them, and the ground of this responsibility is also clear enough; i.e., when a new scientific discovery or invention turns out to have grave bearings on human interests, the scientists who became aware of that are responsible for notifying people of this and advise to look for suitable means for avoiding prospective dangers. In the rest of the paper, I elaborate the reasoning behind the preceding passage, and confirm that basically the same idea and reasoning has been repeated and developed in Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955), by Pugwash Conferences (first in 1957), by Tomogana, and by Rotblat (the long-time Secretary of Pugwash, who received the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Conference in 1995). (shrink)

Starting with the analysis of the diary kept by Constantijn Huygens Jr in the second half of the 17th century, this book sketches a panoramic view of life among Dutch regents and at the court of William and Mary, including an eyewitness account of the Glorious Revolution, and highlighting themes such as scientific progress, book and art collecting.

In Alabaster v. Barclays Bank plc and Secretary of State for Social Security (No. 2: [2005] E.W.C.A Civ. 508, [2005] I.R.L.R. 576.) Michelle Alabaster won a grand total of £204.53 (plus £65.86 interest) after eight years of litigation, which included two visits to the Court of Appeal and one to the European Court of Justice. This marathon resulted from the sex discrimination which Alabaster had alleged in relation to the calculation of her Statutory Maternity Pay (S.M.P.) whilst she was (...) pregnant 10 years earlier. The technicalities of the statutory schemes involved should not be allowed to disguise the important principle which finally emerges in the Court of Appeal and which underlines one of the longstanding criticisms of the equality legislation, namely the requirement that a woman must compare herself with a man in order to establish unlawful sex discrimination. (shrink)

The process of the liquidation of the Hetmanate lasted for decades because of its scale and the constant need of Russia in the Cossack Army. Empress Elizabeth’s regime continued the centralizing policies introduced by Tsar Peter I. In anticipation of the possible consequences of this centralization, in the early 1860s Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovskyi tried to strengthen local governance by reforming his administrative system and judiciary, outlining the justification of his measures in an appeal to Empress Catherine II, entitled “Petition of (...) the Little Russian Nobility and Officers, Together with the Hetman Concerning the Restoration of Various Old Rights of Little Russia.” At the same time, Catherine II’s State Secretary, Grigorii Teplov expressed opposite views to the positions expounded in the “Petition,” in his so-called “Notes on Violations in Little Russia.” The main theses of Teplov’s memorandum were used by the Empress in secret guidelines issued to Petr Rumiantsev in his position as the President of the Second Little Russian Collegium. The reasoning of the above-mentioned documents formed the basis for Rumiantsev for the liquidation of the Ukrainian state. (shrink)

The article examines the way in which, after a short period of liberal­isation and opening to the West, the Romanian Cinema during the Ceaușescu regime follows a path of increasing ideological themes and political control. The process began shortly after the consolidation of the power by the new Secretary General and unfolded gradually, culminating in 1971 with the “July Theses”. Like the rest of the cultural activities, the effects of this retraction into the ideological shell of national-communism, marked by (...) strong xenophobic and isolationist accents, can be seen in the film industry as well. The article relies on the files in the fonds of the Central Committee of Romanian Communist Party to cover the specificities of the cultural policies in Ceaușescu’s Romania. The way these policies were received by the cinema industry is reflected in the issues of Cinema magazine from the second half of the ‘60s to the mid-70s. Finally, the specific Romanian case is analysed in the broader context of the other communist regimes of Eastern Europe during the years of Cold War detente. (shrink)

The entry into force of the Rome Statute on 1 July 2002 establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) has signified a shift in the goals pursued by international criminal law. Due to new types of warfare dynamics, international protection is in need of new orientations, particularly with regard to conflict deterrence aims. This urgency is widely documented by the normative action framework of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) and, more recently, by the UN Secretary-General 2012–2013 Reports for the RtoP’s (...) implementation. The scope of this study is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to explore theoretical overlapping between the jus post bellum and the RtoP with regard to deterrence effects of the ICC; on the other hand, it proposes to illustrate such dynamics by reference to Kenya’s post-electoral violence during the period 2007–2013. Kenya represents an instance of a post-conflict society whereby transitional justice actions have taken place under a de facto adoption of a RtoP framework. As a result, I defend a qualified correlation between ICC’s retribution and deterrence effects. I claim that the hypothesis of the ICC’s deterring effects accounts in Kenya is constructed upon a general condition of direct compliance by self-interested rational actors (such as high-ranking political candidates and their secretariat) as well as on unintended effects of ethnic stabilization. I further consider that this possibility is reinforced by systemic interdependencies with other national and international initiatives such as the Kenyan National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) mediation initiative, the Grand Coalition Government, the Panel of African Eminent Personalities led by Kofi Annan, and the findings of the Commission of Enquiry of Post-Election Violence (CIPEV). (shrink)

Nana Sita is best known for being the secretary of the Transvaal Indian Congress and for his leadership in the passive resistance movement for which he was incarcerated three times. This article focusses specifically on three more times he was sentenced to hard labour for refusing to submit to the Group Areas Act and to leave his house at 382 Van Der Hoff Street in Hercules, Pretoria. The main sources for telling the story of Nana Sita’s resistance are interviews (...) with his 93-year-old daughter, a chapter written on him by E.S. Reddy and other unpublished material placed at the author’s disposal by Maniben Sita herself. The focus of the article will be on the religious arguments against the Group Areas Act put forward by Nana Sita himself in his defense during his final trial in 1967.Contribution: Historical thought and source interpretation are not limited to historic texts but include social memory in the endeavour of faith seeking understanding. People of faith in South Africa can only come to grips with reality by engaging with the stories of the past, like that of Nana Sita. (shrink)

This essay begins with the recent visit of the Secretary of Defense William Cohen to the National Training Center for an Advanced Warfighting Experiment, and ends with an ethnographic ramble in Disneyworld's backyard at Orlando, Florida, where the CEOs of the defense industries and the flag and general officers of US armed forces convened for four days at the annual Interservice/Industry Training Systems and Education Conference, to analyze, exhibit, and hawk ‘Information Technologies: The World Tomorrow’. In between lies an (...) effort to understand the persistence of what William S. Burroughs called the ‘war universe’. (shrink)

The popular press has claimed that Secretary of the Interior James Watt bases his philosophy of environmental management on his religious views as a charismatic Christian. An examination of Watt’s published statements indicates: his philosophy of environmental management sterns largely from economic and political considerations; he has a relatively simple ecotheology based on concepts such as God providing creation as a blessing for mankind, and mankind having a stewardship responsibility to use resources to provide for people; his ecotheology does (...) not incorporate any characteristically charismatic ideas; and his ecotheology does not strongly parallel that of conservative Christian theologians who have written on environmental issues. This analysis suggests that for the new “Christianpolitic” as a whole, there is a danger of confusing the scriptural with the cultural and political in the area of environmental ethics. If a Christian ecotheology is going to be used for environmental decision making, it should be developed fully and represent scripture accurately and completely. (shrink)

Many corporations actively engage in political activities to enhance their relationships with politicians, facilitating access to scarce resources and creating competitive advantages. We investigate corporate donations to explore how they initiate interactions between firms and new local leaders in China. Specifically, we propose that political turnover creates unique opportunities for firms to win over new officials via corporate donations, especially in competitive markets. Moreover, we find that firms that make generous donations at the beginning of a new city secretary’s (...) tenure receive more attention from representatives of new local leaders, especially firms that were politically disadvantaged under a predecessor’s governance. Empirical studies on the turnover of city secretaries between 2001 and 2012 in China strongly support our hypotheses. Consequently, this study improves our understanding of how corporate donations initiate social exchanges between firms and politicians. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the success of CoG-Kenya projects in poverty alleviation in Emuhaya District, Western KenyaMethodology: This study was a cross-sectional research that sought to give an examining and descriptive scrutiny of the CoG-K’s activities in Emuhaya District of Western Kenya. This study sampled a total of 312 respondents (1 Bishop, 1 General Secretary, 1 General Assembly Trustee, 1 General Assembly Treasurer, 16 Directors, 282 Pastors, and 10 Elders) through purposive sampling method. Oral (...) interviews, questionnaire methods and focus group discussion were used to collect data from the respondents. Observation method was used to validate the information obtained through oral interviews and questionnaires. Secondary data was sourced from published and unpublished literature. Data was analyzed using the theological method of induction (TMI).Results: The study proved that the CoG-K has a role to play through her programs like Sisi kwa Sisi, Child Development Centres, Health care Units and education, thus these institutions make a significant contribution to sustainable development in Emuhaya District and are useful instruments for spearheading alleviation of poverty in the said district. The CoG-K’s development is founded upon a spirituality of mutual sustenance and transformation through its concern for the adherents’ struggle with poverty. This study found out that faith activities and the related projects implicitly advance the poverty alleviation cause, thus all development revolves around spirituality. From this perspective the CoG-K has the responsibility to engage in all aspects of development within spirituality as the foundation of such engagement.Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommends that development experts, theologians, policy makers and practitioners should cultivate long-term relationship with the church in general and the CoG-K in particular so as implement policy for development consequently alleviating poverty. (shrink)

This unique collection of letters portrays the life and times of John of Salisbury, the devoted secretary of Archbishop Theobald, the faithful friend and...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel BellShuchen Xiang (bio)The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University. By Daniel Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. x+ 196. Hardcover $27.95, isbn ISBN 978-0-691-24712-0.In the Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University, Daniel Bell reflects on his experiences of Chinese academia, (...) society and political life from the past two decades, notably the last few years, in which he served as the Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University. The role is historic: it is the first time that a foreign dean has been appointed at a political science faculty in mainland China's history. This historic position affords Bell with unique insights that the book records. A deeply personal book that often reads like a memoir (Bell himself compares the work to Rousseau's Confessions), Bell makes no attempts to hide the fact that his account is perspectival, indebted to his own experiences and so not an attempt to speak on behalf of any organization. It is this avowedly perspectival tone that imbues his account with a frankness that endows his account with a convincing authority. One comes away from the book with an investment not only in the China of which Bell is an attentive observer but also in the continuing experiment that is Daniel Bell himself: a Canadian political scientist, visibly invested in Confucianism, working in Confucian-Communist China during historic times.A pervasive theme in this work is a preoccupation with the status of Confucianism for contemporary China. The Confucian texts serve as a hermeneutic framework through which Bell understands many social-political phenomena and runs as a leitmotif throughout the book. This kind of cultural analysis is applied in chapter one, "Dye and Dynamism," in which Bell muses on why Chinese politicians all seem to dye their hair. The answer might be indebted to the Mencian saying (1A.7) that "white-haired people" should be cared for rather than engage in strenuous labor. Dyeing one's hair so that one gives the appearance of still being in the vigors of youth conforms to this tacit Confucian custom. It was Bell's dedication to Confucianism that piqued his interest in becoming the dean at a newly established branch of Shandong University on the coastal city of Qingdao. "What a beautiful opportunity to help promote Confucianism in China," he writes, "while respecting other traditions!" (p. 38).Whilst at Shandong, Bell had the opportunity to reflect on the role of the shuji (书记), an official role that is unique to China. This he does in chapter two, [End Page 1] "The Harmony Secretary." Through his observations, Bell concludes that one of the roles of the shuji is to help keep harmony within his appointed organization, in this case, an academic faculty. In visiting the role of the shuji, Bell highlights an episode between himself and a junior faculty that the shuji mediated in an optimally harmonious manner. I was personally very interested in this anecdote in which said junior faculty "attacked" Bell's work on the faculty WeChat account (p. 41). Bell does not go into detail, but I was left speculating why it was that this junior faculty so vehemently attacked Bell's work and his moral character. Given that Bell is renowned for promoting Confucianism and defending the theoretical legitimacy of China's own indigenous forms of government, I can imagine that perhaps this junior faculty took issue with this profile. Whatever the reason for said junior faculty's disagreement with Bell, the author does not talk about the degree to which Chinese academic life conforms to the attitudes, values, ways of knowing, and power structures perpetuated by western colonizing societies, i.e. coloniality.Bell's own experiences with collective leadership in the administration at Shandong University spurred him to make some conclusions about the qualities needed for effective collective leadership at higher levels of government. This he does in chapter three, "On Collective Leadership." Here, the author reflects on the tendency towards collective decision... (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

The Library of the Royal Society of London contains a large collection of manuscript material relating to Henry Oldenburg and his correspondents. Oldenburg was one of the two Secretaries of the Royal Society when it was founded in 1662. For many years he acted as intermediary between British and Continental philosophers: and scientists. He also edited the early volumes of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions . His contacts were accordingly very extensive. Nearly all the seventeenth-century pioneers of science were among (...) his correspondents. In his role of intermediary he was in the habit of sending extracts from some of his foreign letters to. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to develop a postmetaphysical conception of reading by following Kierkegaard’s Either/Or Part I (1843) through such Derridian concepts as secret, hospitality, and spectrality. The work focuses on the three essays addressed to the Symparanekromenoi (“the community of the dead”), a fellowship neither young nor old with an aphoristic way of life (2010b, pp. 137–225) that can be understood as a figure of alterity. Special attention is paid to paratextual features of the book: the texts (...) are actually presented as old papers found in a secretary desk by a pseudonymous editor (“Victor Eremita”), which suggests that every text is a posthumous paper, that is to say, it will always be read after the death of its author. Instead of finding a solid author who holds the semantic weight of the text, these papers are based in a blank of sense, a specter, a secret: if they are sustained on its author, then they are sustained in a mystery, not in a sort of revelation of meaning. (shrink)

Over the past seventy-five years, the UN secretary-general has come to occupy a highly visible position in world politics. While the UN Charter describes the post merely as the “chief administrative officer” of the organization, today it is widely recognized that the secretary-general also plays a central role in political matters. What makes the role of the UN secretary-general special? Where does the office's authority come from? As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at (...) Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay looks back at the tenures of previous UN secretaries-general and applies ideas from sociological institutionalism to argue that the UN secretary-general holds the position of a “guardian” of the UN Charter. The UN secretary-general, more than anyone else within the UN system, represents the UN overall. From this flows great responsibilities and challenges, as the UN secretary-general is often expected to step in when other parts of the UN are unable or unwilling to act, and to take the blame when things go wrong. But this special position also endows the office with a substantial degree of authority, which future holders of the office can use to shape policies and mobilize support as the UN seeks to address urgent global challenges. (shrink)

The new regulations on xenotransplantation pay insufficient attention to the broad ethical problems raised by this technique and that the abandonment of a national body with overall regulatory authority in this area is a mistake.Following reports from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics1 and, most importantly, the Advisory Group on the Ethics of Xenotransplantation2 , the UK Xenotransplantation Interim Regulatory Authority was established in 1997. The existence of a national body to govern xenotransplantation was deemed to be of critical importance by (...) the Kennedy report given the practical and ethical issues associated with xenotransplantation. Indeed, the Kennedy report recommended that ultimately UKXIRA should be placed on a statutory footing.2 The remit of UKXIRA was to advise the Secretary of State on particular applications, gather information on issues such as safety, and assess whether the preconditions identified by the Kennedy report had been met.3In December 2006, UKXIRA was quietly disbanded, and the Department of Health issued a statement of guidance, the terms of which now govern xenotransplantation in the UK. This document superseded procedures that had been in place since 1998, which had placed the overall regulation of applications to conduct xenotransplantation in the hands of UKXIRA and, ultimately, the Secretary of State.4 The revised guidance defines xenotransplantation as being: “… any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either live tissues or organs retrieved from animals, or, human body fluids, cells, tissue or organs that have undergone ex vivo contact with live non-human animal cells, tissues or organs.”5 . Given the range and nature of the procedures covered by the guidance, it is surprising, not to say a little worrying, that it is so …. (shrink)