The U.S. Supreme Court's 1991 decision in United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls capped a decade of adjudication of fetal protection policies under Title VII. In its decision, the Supreme Court barred the use of these policies, holding that the policies constituted unlawful gender discrimination. Prior to Johnson Controls, employers had justified these policies, which barred “fertile” women from certain workplaces, by contending that the workplace was not safe for women or their fetuses. Given this implicit disclosure by employers that their workplaces were unsafe, it is surprising that federal and state occupational safety and health agencies, charged with ensuring that employers furnish a workplace free from recognized hazards, did not play a larger role in the debate over these policies. This article examines the response of these agencies to the proliferation of fetal protection policies in the 1980s. It concludes that neither federal nor state occupational safety and health agencies crafted an adequate response to these policies during these years.

We model mates' interdependent parental investment decisions as a game of Chicken. An individual is better off (in terms of reproductive success) deserting one's offspring to start a new union if one's mate stays to raise the offspring, but better off not deserting if one's mate would in turn desert the offspring. Modelling the parental investment decisions as a game of Chicken leads to four hypotheses: An individual is more likely to desert if (1) the mate is more committed to the offspring, (2) the mate has more resources to invest in children, (3) the former mate is currently unmarried, and (4) the children are older (in sharp contrast to the prediction by both Trivers [1972] and Dawkins and Carlisle [1976]). Data from the 1992 U.S. Current Population Survey provide at least partial support for all hypotheses except Hypothesis 2. In particular, the data analysis strongly supports our prediction that individuals are more likely to desert older children than younger children even when time since separation is controlled for, and rejects the earlier prediction by Trivers (1972) and Dawkins and Carlisle (1976).

On June 29, 2002, President George W. Bush invoked the United States Constitution's Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967. By so doing, he helped focus attention on the amendment's two disability provisions, Sections 3 and 4. Section 3 provides for voluntary transfer of power from the president to the vice president and is wholly dependent on the president's wishes. Section 4 provides for involuntary transfers of power, possibly over the president's objection. This controversial provision allows a vice president, with the assent of a majority of the cabinet, to become acting president. Critics have long argued that the vice president and cabinet officers, since they all owe their positions to the president, may be excessively reluctant to act even when action clearly is warranted. Therefore, some of these critics have proposed that a presidential disability commission be established at the beginning of every administration either to act under Section 4 in place of the cabinet or to provide formal and regular medical assessments so as to press for action in the event of presidential inability. I argue that such proposals are unwise and that their implementation would be counterproductive and even dangerous, both to the presidency and to the nation.

Human nutrition provides a subject area in which biology and politics interact in two respects. First, nutrition is a factor in human political behavior that may affect both individual decision-making performance and mass participation. Specific conditions, such as hypoglycemia, may affect individual performance, while inadequate energy intakes and qualitative deficiencies may influence mass behavior. Second, public policy affects the nutritional status of individuals and populations. Agricultural policy, food trade policy, nutritional intervention programs, foreign and domestic food aid, and social welfare policies are among the categories of governmental outputs that help determine nutritional conditions in populations and their component groups. Nutritional status, in turn, has feedback effects through mass behavior on political inputs. Thus, human nutrition presents a problem of biopolitical interactions that involves a mutually interdependent relationship with cybernetic properties.

The response by Somit and Peterson to my earlier commentary in this journal (Corning, 2000), which sharply criticized their little-noticed 1997 book (by their own admission), must seem like old news that should be relegated to the obituary pages. On the contrary, it concerns one of the central political issues of our time—what sustains modern democracy, and what are its future prospects. Somit and Peterson in their modest book offered both a diagnosis and a prescription. I concluded in my essay that the result was disappointing—more for what was omitted than for any commissions. My critique involved a rather subtle argument, and, judging by the authors' response (Somit and Peterson, 2001), it seems to have been lost on them as well.

Physician-assisted death is a particularly relevant subject for the elderly since end-of-life issues affect them sooner rather than later. This article examines both the macro (aging interest group) and micro (individual) advocacy levels, using Proposition 161, The California Death With Dignity Act, as a case study. To determine old-age interest group attitudes and activism, we explored their advocacy levels on the ballot measure. Public opinion polls and a survey that was administered exactly one week prior to the November 1992 election at the Pasadena Senior Center in Pasadena, California helped measure individual attitudes and beliefs regarding active euthanasia.

Human Rights Watch is the largest U.S.-based independent human rights organization. It conducts regular, systematic investigations of human rights abuses in some seventy countries around the world. Human Rights Watch (HRW) includes five divisions, covering Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, and the signatories of the Helsinki accords, and has four thematic projects: the Arms Project, the Women's Rights Project, the Children's Rights Project, and the Free Expression Project. HRW maintains offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, London, Brussels, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Dushanbe, and Hong Kong. Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization, supported by contributions from private individuals and foundations worldwide. It accepts no government funds.

The Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute (CBACI) is an independent, nonprofit corporation established to promote the goals of arms control and nonproliferation, with a special, although not exclusive focus on the elimination of chemical and biological weapons. Established in late 1993, CBACI fosters its goals through an innovative program of research, analysis, technical support, and education designed to provide a strategic perspective and deepened understanding of contemporary arms control challenges to government, industry, and others. The institute's program is intended to alert decision-makers in government, industry, the media, and elsewhere to problems before they become crises, challenge conventional wisdom in light of new realities, and promote the integration of diverse perspectives into decision options that effectively balance competing interests. CBACI stresses, therefore, analyses and activities whose hallmarks are their anticipatory nature, action orientation, integrative approach, policy focus, and political realism.

Few would disagree that reproductive behavior is a powerful aspect of human life and society. Of the many aspects of human sexuality (which include some elements of inter- and intrasexual aggression and competition), one of the most intriguing is the extent of biological influences. Intuitively, one feels that powerful emotional and behavioral conditions exhibited during sexual or aggressive arousal must have biological bases. What are the hormonal and physiological correlates of such profound behavioral displays? Employing a research strategy involving psychiatric and endocrine perspectives, this laboratory's approach is to challenge the nervous system, either directly with hormone and drug treatment, or indirectly through behavioral or environmental stimuli, and monitor biobehavioral changes in physiology, mood, and arousal. In particular, I am interested in how gonadal and pituitary hormones, chemical messengers important to the reproductive system, act to organize, mediate, and reinforce human sexual and aggressive behavior. At present, two main lines of inquiry have been opened to investigate different elements of human psychoendocrinology. First among these is an investigation into biological bases of human sexual differentiation and sexual orientation. The second involves studying the physiology of erotic arousal and competitive behavior.