Debate about human rights in Australia is often polarised. One view commonly expressed is that by Sir Robert Menzies in 1967, just retired as Prime Minister, that ‘the rights of individuals in Australia are as adequately protected as they are in any other country in the world’
Genes influence every aspect of a person’s health, from the ability to resist infection with a pathogen, to how medication is metabolised, to mental health and behaviour. Diseases have historically been defined by what a clinician sees, rather than the root cause of the pathology. In rare diseases, we know that genetic defects affecting different components of the same biological pathway can produce very similar clinical problems. However, understanding the factors contributing to common disorders is considerably more complex
Writing this chapter in the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic provides a stark warning against over confident predictions about the ways in which human societies and ecologies will evolve
AS Yeb Sono reminds us, the devastating impact of Typhoon Haiyan provides one more powerful reminder of the real and present danger of the climate change emergency now hurtling towards us
A 300% increase in three years; from 200 million in 2017 to 626 million in 2020. This astounding number is the most recent prediction for the total number of surveillance cameras across China (Qiang, 2019). Close to a single camera per 2,000 inhabitants, all fully networked to form the Skynet project — perhaps an awkward name, as Skynet in The Terminator movies attempted to exterminate humanity
Just over 20 years ago, in a small ramshackle town called Goma on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, there was the most unimaginable human catastrophe. It was the concluding days of the war that saw over 800,000 men, women and children killed at the hands of the genocidaires
There are many different ways that faults in the genetic code can occur. Alterations to the genetic code can arise at any level and can affect gene expression leading to human disease. Before reading this chapter, readers might want to remind themselves of some of the terminology that is used to describe the genes and how they are assembled, by looking back at the introductory chapter, Chapter 1. There are many ways in which the genetic code, from the level of the chromosome (the bundles of genes in our cells), right down to a single nucleotide (the individual building blocks that make up our genes), can be disrupted
If an advertising guru, a famous writer and an even more famous philosopher between them are right, in order to foster creativity we need curiosity about life in all its aspects, imagination to picture what we desire, will to bring it into being, and understanding of desire, emotion and knowledge as the wellsprings of all human behaviour to encourage its widespread adoption
Fundamental to the argument in this chapter is that Australia should aspire to the highest possible standards of democratic life. We not only have to be constantly vigilant about the erosion of democratic practices but also fully aware of the initiatives being taken in other countries to strengthen democracy and extend public accountability
At the heart of intergenerational equity is the principle that we hold the natural environment as a sacred trust that we have a duty to hand down to following generations in a state not less diminished than the one that we have enjoyed