In the following pages, we continue our annual updating of the biopolitical literature.

Total publications (85 items) were down from last year's all-time high (116) but precisely at the average (85) for the other four of the past five years (table 1).

The most striking change in area of interest was the increase in items classified as “physiology” (table 2). More books (6) were published last year than in any previous year (table 3) and several more are in various stages of completion.

This article describes some aspects of an Italian didactic-pedagogic experiment about interaction between “town” pupils and natural environments. The project's general philosophy is to try to make pupils aware of our condition as “biocultural beings,” as results of biological, technological, and cultural co-evolution. The presence of extensive natural, cultural, and technological resources at the site where the experiment takes place favors such an awareness.

Some examples of teaching techniques designed especially to introduce pupils to the difficult but necessary subject matter of co-evolution are also described. Such teaching techniques have as their main goal to make the pupils themselves able to construct a logical network of questions, rather than in teachers giving them already prepared answers.

The as yet unresolved problems, which concern the training of teachers steeped in traditional methods, are also briefly described.

Political behavior, like all human behavior, can be studied using the S–O–R paradigm, where S is a particular stimulus, 0 is the human organism, and R is a response or behavior (cf. Tursky, Lodge, and Cross, 1976). Here at the Laboratory for Behavioral Research at Stony Brook we are currently conducting research projects that investigate each of these components of the paradigm and the interactions among them. Before reviewing these projects, however, I will briefly describe our laboratory facilities.

In deciding whether and to what extent surrogate parenting contracts should be recognized, states are faced with three legislative options. First, they may criminalize surrogacy, in effect punishing those who enter into or facilitate surrogate contracts by fine or imprisonment. Second, states may adopt the nonenforcement option. Under this approach, surrogate contracts are not subject to criminal sanction, but neither will they be enforced. The legal effect of such a rule is to leave the surrogate free to carry through with the contract or to refuse to relinquish custody of the child born of the arrangement as she wishes. In the event the surrogate decides that she wishes to keep the baby, the courts will decide the issue of parental rights in accordance with the best interests test much like that which is employed in divorce cases. This was the approach taken in In the Matter of Baby “M” (537 A.2d 1225 (N.J. 1988)). Finally, the third legislative alternative is regulation and enforcement of surrogate contracts. This would have the effect of requiring the surrogate to turn over the child she has borne for the intended parents even where she has changed her mind, a la Mary Beth Whitehead, and wishes to retain custody of the child.

Although I am intrigued by the recent efforts of several researchers who have taken issue with Sulloway's (1996) work on birth order, I experience some hesitancy to comment for a number of reasons. Birth order research has historically come up with contradictory findings (Nyman, 1995). In the main, I suspect that the apparent inconsistencies will be resolved not through commentary but with keener measuring tools, better experimental controls, and with the patience and energy to define each research condition so as to enable accurate replication. It is also not an easy assignment to critique the work of scientists whom I admire, especially when their inferences seem to be at odds. With this said, I shall attempt to deal with design issues inherent in birth order research in an effort to illustrate some of the factors that enter into the contradictory findings reported in the literature.

In their recent PLS article, Ken R. Daniels and Karyn Taylor (1993) advocate policies of openness in regard to donor insemination (DI). In this commentary, I examine openness within the social context of fertility, infertility, human reproduction, and social parenthood in Cameroon. The traditional concept of secrecy in reproductive failure, especially in the case of male infertility, is outlined. Some of the social alternatives, such as natural insemination and social parenthood, are discussed. The inappropriateness of openness in DI within a sociocultural milieu that places a high premium on male reproductive ability is highlighted.