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Nineteen people refusing a blood transfusion in anticipation of thoracic surgery were met at the Clinical Ethics Center (AP-HP, Paris, France). The article reflects on the right place that respect for autonomy plays in medical decisions regarding (non)transfusion when medical practice would recommend it. Three patient profiles emerge: "categorical refusals", "refusals while affirming the need to live" and "refusals accompanied by doubt". Without neglecting the arguments relating to other principles of biomedical ethics (beneficence, non-maleficence, justice), the idea is to enable healthcare professionals to better assess the different situations they face and in particular those in which respect for autonomy seems essential. If the majority of people concerned by the issue are Jehovah's Witnesses, and although this religion is sometimes stigmatized, this work sheds light on the place of their wishes hold in medical decisions on (non)transfusion. Healthcare professionals could contact ethics units and ask them to carry out this same assessment in their own different., (© 2024 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)

This article is a re-examination of cooperation in international relations through the example of Franco-Syrian relations between 2001 and 2004. I explore how cooperation fulfils – or not – a function of recognition, especially in the case of countries under unequal terms. Based on archival research and interviews, the article analyses three concrete moments of cooperation between Syria and France during this time. While traditional Franco-Syrian cooperation, prior to 2000, was based on a mutual recognition of partners, in the aftermath of presidential change in Syria in 2000 and within the shifting regional context, the Franco-Syrian relationship seemed to be marked by an inequality. Therefore, the article aims to capture the symbols of this recognition between France and Syria, and to study the role of cooperation not only in deepening a bilateral relationship, but – in a new perspective in international relations – in undermining it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anuario Colombiano de Derecho Internacional is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Throughout the world, there is a steady decline in the population of pollinators due to pesticide use. This phenomenon is known as Colony Collapse Disorder. This is a worldwide problem because most food requires pollination to grow properly. On July 12, 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency unconditionally registered a pesticide called Sulfoxaflor, which is highly toxic to pollinators. In doing so, pollinator populations across the United States are threatened and Colony Collapse Disorder will advance. This article analyses the regulation of Sulfoxaflor in the United States, Europe, and specifically France (the first European country to fully ban Sulfoxaflor). The regulation of Sulfoxaflor in Europe and France is much more strict due to the precautionary principle, which has yet to be adopted in the United States. I recommend that the United States adopt the precautionary principle, as Europe and France have, or something similar to help establish a means to protect its population of pollinators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noria Distribution Sri, a judgment of the First Chamber of the Court delivered on 27 April 2017, appears trivial. The company had been prosecuted in France for supplying products which were not authorised; the Court found a violation of EU law became the relevant French law offered the company no adequate procedures through which to challenge this impediment to its commercial activity. And it is trivial. That, however, is where the interest lies. How can such a straightforward and obvious blockage to the functioning of the internal market be cluttering up the courts in 2017, a quarter of a century since the EU's internal market was supposed to be complete? The reasons lie in the structure of EU free movement law--most of all, that there is no principle of mutual recognition, but rather only a conditional or non-absolute principle of mutual recognition. This means that the internal market requires management, in order to sift out and, better still, prevent barriers to inter-State trade which cannot be shown to meet the standards of justification embedded in the conditional pattern of mutual recognition asserted by EU law. The EU's most obvious instrument for controlling intervention of the type pursued by the French authorities is Regulation 764/2008, the (unfortunately named) "Mutual Recognition Regulation ", which lays down procedures relating to the application of national technical rules to products lawfully marketed in another Member State. Yet the Regulation is not even mentioned in the questions referred or in the answers given in Noria. This deepens the intrigue attached to this trivial but illuminating ruling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the framework of his co-authored report on the precautionary principle entitled "Suivi des conclusions du rapport sur l'évaluation de la mise en œuvre du principe de précaution." The report was presented to the French Assemblée Nationale's evaluation and public policy control committee (comité d'évaluation et de contrôle des politiques publiques, CEC) in November 2011. The article also includes the author's reflections concerning this topic and its stakes.

The precautionary principle has been the subject of a heated debate in recent months in France, not least because it was mentioned in the Environmental Charter discussed by the French Parliament in 2005, and included in the French constitution. In this context, the French Committee for Prevention and Precaution has issued a position paper—presented hereafter—in order to remind legislators and the public of the essential rationale of the precautionary principle, as the committee conceives it. The Committee for Prevention and Precaution (CPP) is an advisory body to the French Ministry of the Environment (now Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development), which was created by a Ministerial Decree on 30 July 1996 with the aim of contributing to giving sound foundations to the Ministry's policies in matters related to risk prevention and precaution; detecting, and providing warning and expertise on health issues related to disruptions in the environment; and creating a linkage between scientific research and knowledge on one hand, and regulatory action on the other. Its operational resources are provided by the Ministry's Department of Economic Studies and Environmental Assessment. The CPP is comprised of 19 scientific experts from the field of health and environment, and chaired by Professor Alain Grimfeld.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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When dealing with public policy in the field of safety, security, and environmental health, legitimacy or illegitimacy is often evoked as a challenge that determines whether a policy will be embraced over time. Scholarly literature points to key variables of public support as well as the use of subject matter experts to build legitimacy in the policy process, yet few articles unpack the meaning and application of legitimacy in a manner that accounts for unique political, institutional, and cultural considerations. This article offers a holistic understanding of the various drivers and challenges behind the legitimacy principle. Specifically, this article reviews how policy successes and failures in France were driven at least in part by a perception of policy legitimacy by policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Copyright of Parlement(s) is the property of Classiques Garnier Numerique and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Focuses on the relation between the demand for equality and the nature of public service in France. Interpretations of the right of equality given by Léon Duguit, one of the fathers of the theory of public service; Comment on the means of application of the equality principle as quoted by French Theorist Maurice Hauriou; Annotation on the choice of values in the French version of equality.

The article reports developments concerning the application of precautionary principle (PP) in France. The French Supreme Court alleges that PP shall be used following a global analysis that can be performed only by the public authorities. It also discusses the judgment concerning the restriction to the use of PP on the uncertainty of the safety of certain food. It highlights the court's judgment on the food supplement containing creatine and glutamine without having obtained an authorization to the adjunction under the 1912 legislation.

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Background: In France, some independent administrative authorities have been granted punitive powers concerning violations committed against stated regulatory rules. In this regard, the issue of the accumulation of penalties has been repeatedly raised concerning sanctions imposed by independent administrative authorities and criminal justice penalties. For example, a certain action could be criminalised by virtue of the Penal Law, necessitating a custodial sanction or a fine, while also considered a mere breach under financial and monetary laws, leading to the imposition of a certain financial penalty. This raises the question of whether the infliction of both criminal and administrative sanctions on financial and tax crimes violates the 'ne bis in idem' principle. The French Constitutional Council has addressed this issue extensively; it has banned the accumulation of criminal penalties and administrative sanctions of a punitive nature upon the fulfilment of certain conditions. Interestingly, these conditions did not apply to tax disputes, permitting the accumulation of penalties in this specific field. However, the accumulation of penalties was banned and deemed impermissible in financial markets. Therefore, a major question can be raised: Why has the Constitutional Council adopted two different approaches in those two similar fields? Methods: In pursuit of the research goals, this study employed a combination of comparative, historical, and analytical methodologies. By examining the legal nature of independent administrative authorities, this study conducts a comprehensive examination of relevant legal texts, encompassing constitutional provisions, legislation, and judicial decisions, to analyse the ne bis in idem principle in France. A comparative analysis approach was utilised to compare the rulings of the French Constitutional Council, the French Court of Cassation, and European judicial bodies. Results and conclusions: In various jurisdictions, including France and the EU, the principle of non-accumulation of criminal penalties and administrative sanctions is recognised, yet differences arise in its application. Jurisdictions vary in approach, with some strictly prohibiting accumulation while others allow flexibility based on factors like offence nature and societal interests. The French Constitutional Council sets standards, allowing dual penalties in tax matters but not in finance. Rulings by the French Constitutional Council and Court of Cassation offer insights into applying the principle, revealing complexities in balancing regulatory enforcement and individual rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the reaction of the human beings when they face any kind of risk, need for diligence, undertaking of necessary precautions and the building of the proper foresight in the formulation of a strategy. It informs that the due diligence is a precept rather characteristic of Anglo-American common law and finds particular application in regard to prosthetic devices, pharmaceutical and other biotechnological products. It further informs that the few guarantees against short-lived precautions were present and Protestants fared badly in France.

The Precautionary Principle is a guide to coping with scientific uncertainties in the assessment and management of risks. In recent years, it has moved to the forefront of debates in policy and applied ethics, becoming a key normative tool in policy discussions in such diverse areas as medical and scientific research, health and safety regulation, environmental regulation, product development, international trade, and even judicial review. The principle has attracted critics who claim that it is fundamentally incoherent, too vague to guide policy, and makes demands that are logically and scientifically impossible. In this paper we will answer these criticisms by formulating guidelines for its application that ensure its coherence as a useful normative guide in applied and policy ethics debates. We will also provide analyses of cases that demonstrate how our version of the principle functions in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We tackle the real-time Energy Consumption Minimization Problem. • It minimizes train energy consumption and delay, with given routing and precedences. • We propose an algorithm based on mixed-integer linear programming. • We test it on a critical French control area where traffic is dense. • The results show that good solutions can be often found in real-time. Abstract A new timetable must be calculated in real-time when train operations are perturbed. Although energy consumption is becoming a central issue both from the environmental and economic perspective, it is usually neglected in the timetable recalculation. In this paper, we formalize the real-time Energy Consumption Minimization Problem (rtECMP). It finds in real-time the driving regime combination for each train that minimizes energy consumption, respecting given routing and precedences between trains. In the possible driving regime combinations, train routes are split in subsections for which one of the regimes resulting from the Pontryagin's Maximum Principle is to be chosen. We model the trade-off between minimizing energy consumption and total delay by considering as objective function their weighted sum. We propose an algorithm to solve the rtECMP, based on the solution of a mixed-integer linear programming model. We test this algorithm on the Pierrefitte-Gonesse control area, which is a critical area in France with dense mixed traffic. The results show that the problem is tractable and an optimal solution of the model tackled can often be found in real-time for most instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pareto principle is often viewed as a mild requirement compatible with a variety of value judgments. In particular, it is generally thought that it can accommodate different degrees of inequality aversion. We show that this is generally not true in time-consistent intertemporal models where some uncertainty prevails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The precautionary principle first appeared in France during the health crisis following the contamination of patients with HIV via blood transfusion. This study analyses whether the risk associated with blood transfusion was taken into account early enough considering the context of scientific uncertainty between 1982 and 1985. The aim was to evaluate whether a precautionary principle was applied and whether it was relevant. First, we investigated the context of scientific uncertainty and controversies prevailing between 1982 and 1985. Then we analysed the attitude and decisions of the French authorities in this situation to determine whether a principle of precaution was applied. Finally, we explored the reasons at the origin of the delay in controlling the risk. Despite the scientific uncertainties associated with the potential risk of HIV contamination by transfusion in 1983, we found that a list of recommendations aiming to reduce this risk was published in June of that year. In the prevailing climate of uncertainty, these measures could be seen as precautionary. However, the recommended measures were not widely applied. Cultural, structural and economic factors hindered their implementation. Our analysis provides insight into the use of precautionary principle in the domain of blood transfusion and, more generally, medicine. It also sheds light on the expectations that health professionals should have of this principle. The aim of the precautionary principle is to manage rather than to reduce scientific uncertainty. The principle is not a futile search for zero risk. Rather, it is a principle for action allowing precautionary measures to be taken. However, we show that these measures must appear legitimate to be applied. This legitimacy requires an adapted decision–making process, involving all those concerned in the management of collective risks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

With the global society facing serious environmental problems it is imperative to find solutions to meet new environmental challenges. The precautionary principle answers those types of challenges that are still under uncertain future. This principle requires action steps to uncertain risks. If the original principle was hardly considered, today it managed to advance the principles of precaution environmental and oldest tradition. It is of interest to know that in law enforcement has developed an extensive jurisprudence based on the precautionary principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia Constitucional is the property of Revista Historia Constitucional and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Council of Europe recommends promoting proportionality when dealing with biometric data, notably by “1) limiting their evaluation, processing and storage to cases of clear necessity, namely when the gain in security clearly outweighs a possible interference with human rights and if the use of other, less intrusive techniques does not suffice; 2) providing individuals who are unable or unwilling to provide biometric data with alternative methods of identification and verification; (…)”. France counts as a pioneering Member State in addressing the specific data protection risks raised by the increasing development of biometrics, in particular in the private sector. Since 2004, the French Data Protection Authority, the CNIL, has been empowered to prior check the proportionality of biometric systems deployed in the private sector. It also enforces in practice the articulation between the necessity test and the consent requirement. The present contribution reviews 10 years of CNIL's decisions with respect to biometric systems, then identifies and further discusses the criteria taken into account to apply the necessity test and the consent requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al- Mouhakiq Al-Hilly Journal for Legal & Political Science is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is said that the equivalence principle - promoting equivalence between the kinds of fault that are recognised and the prejudices suffered or interests protected - is a peculiarity of the French law of civil liability deduced from the general clause of liability enshrined in the French Civil Code. The principle is applied in different ways in contractual and extra-contractual liability. In fact, the equivalence principle is more of a facade than a genuine reflection of French law, which provides for both the differentiated protection of interests and a hierarchical ordering between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses critiques of Marxist universalism by the French philosophers Paul Ricoeur and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Topics include the views of philosopher Michel Foucault on the notion the autonomy of power, French intellectual reactions to foreign interventions by the Soviet Union (USSR) in Hungary and Korea, and the notion of difference in relation to the thought of philosopher Karl Marx.

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Sarkozy's decision to bring France back into NATO's integrated military structure in 2009 represents in some ways a break with French exceptionalism. But how deep is this change? This article examines whether the decision has led to a real integration of France along various dimensions of integration; whether the decision represents a continuation or a break with the traditional French approach and the effects of this reintegration on NATO/EU cooperation. The empirical analysis of French political and military practices in NATO combines a focus on macro-level foreign policy formulations with a micro-level study of how French officials and representatives communicate and interact on a day-to-day basis. The analysis shows that France has become increasingly integrated into NATO since 2009 on most dimensions except with regard to cultural integration. Thus, France may be reintegrated in practice, but not yet in principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ottomans and Moroccans on France's galleys from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century violated the kingdom's 'free soil' principle. Evaluating naval, spatial, strategic, theological and juridical explanations, this article argues that employing Muslim rowers served pragmatic and symbolic ends, while provoking relatively little consternation among French leaders. Only after colonial slaves began claiming liberty in the metropole did questions about the lawfulness of keeping esclaves turcs arise. The rationales proposed suggest that a categorical shift in French understandings of servitude accompanied more limited access to freedom as the Atlantic slave trade eclipsed the Mediterranean one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: MICROSCOPE is a French space mission for testing the weak equivalence principle (WEP). The mission goal is the determination of the Eötvös parameter with an accuracy of 10−15. The French space agency CNES is responsible for the satellite which is developed and produced within the Myriade series. The satellite''s payload T-SAGE (Twin Space Accelerometer for Gravitation Experimentation) is developed and built by the French institute ONERA. It consists of two high-precision capacitive differential accelerometers. One accelerometer is used as reference sensor with two test masses of platinum, the science sensor contains a platinum and a titanium proof mass. The detection of the test mass movement and their control is done via a complex electrode system. As a member of the MICROSCOPE performance team, the German department ZARM will be involved in the data analysis of the MICROSCOPE mission. For this purpose, mission simulations and the preparation of the mission data evaluation in close cooperation with the French partners CNES, ONERA and OCA are realised. The development status of the simulation tool which will represent the complex spacecraft dynamics and all error sources in order to design and test data reduction procedures is presented and some features are discussed in detail. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The 'Costanzo obligation' implies that national administrative authorities are obliged to solve conflicts between provisions of national law and provisions of European law in favour of the provision of European law, when necessary by leaving the provision of national law unapplied. It is paradoxical that this obligation is directly addressed to administrative authorities, as European law is generally not concerned with the internal state structure of the Member States. This article investigates whether the key to solve this paradox may be found in the possibilities that the central governments of the Member States have to supervise their administrative authorities. This article focuses on supervision in France, Germany and the Netherlands by the central government with regard to acts or decisions, adopted by administrative authorities. The article aims to answer the question: can the current supervisory powers close the gap between the Costanzo obligation and the principle of institutional autonomy? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the needs of gastronomic production. It relates the story of chef Bernard Loiseau's suicide on February 24, 2003, which has changed the gastronomic discourse. The author suggests that cooking profession must complement the food lover and the aesthetics of excess characterizing it. He also discusses how the biographers of Loiseau like Rudolph Chemlminski attribute the fate to the culinary perfection principle, which includes chef and kitchen in the obliteration of life.

We apply the Bogoliubov compensation principle to the gauge electro-weak interaction to demonstrate the spontaneous generation of an anomalous three-boson gauge invariant effective interaction. The non-trivial solution of the compensation equations uniquely defines the values of the parameters of the theory and the form factor of the anomalous interaction. The contribution of this interaction to the running EW coupling, αew( p2), gives its observable value αew( M)=0.0374, in satisfactory agreement to the experiment. The anomalous three-boson interaction gives a natural explanation of the well-known discrepancy in the muon g−2. The implications for EW studies at Tevatron and LHC are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioethics laws in France have just undergone a revision process. The bioethics debate is often cast in terms of ethical principles and norms resisting emerging social and technological practices. This leads to the expression of confrontational attitudes based on widely differing interpretations of the same principles and values, and ultimately results in a deadlock. In this paper I would like to argue that focusing on values, as opposed to norms and principles, provides an interesting perspective on the evolution of norms. As Joseph Raz has convincingly argued, "life-building" values and practices are closely intertwined. Precisely because values have a more indeterminate meaning than norms, they can be cited as reasons for action by concerned stakeholders, and thus can help us understand how controversial practices, e.g. surrogate motherhood, can be justified. Finally, norms evolve when the interpretations of the relevant values shift and cause a change in the presumptions implicit in the norms. Thus, norms are not a prerequisite of the ethical solution of practical dilemmas, but rather the outcome of the decision-making process itself. Struggling to reach the right decision in controversial clinical ethics situations indirectly causes social and moral values to change and principles to be understood differently.

Debridement is required to prepare the wound bed, essentially in removing undesired tissues observed both in acute wound after burns or trauma and in chronic wounds such as pressure ulcers, leg ulcers, and diabetic foot ulcers. Surgical debridement has been described as one of the most effective methods but can be contraindicated in the elderly, arteriopathic context, or patients under effective anticoagulation. Recently described debridement technologies are based on application of important mechanical severing forces over the wound surface using high-power hydrojets. High water flux acts as a vector for separating necrotic and sloughy tissues from the wound bed and aspirates them out of the wound immediately. Electrical powered techniques and lasers were also scarcely described. The Coblation debridement technology presented here is based on the local induction of a focused plasma field chemically deleting undesired tissues. This technique is a modification of conventional electrosurgical devices, developed in 1928 where tissue excision and coagulation of tissues were observed. Principles of plasma-mediated debridement are based on a bipolar radiofrequency energizing the molecules, thus creating a plasma field. This glow discharge plasma produces chemically active radical species from dissociation of water, breaking molecular bonds, and causing tissue dissolution. The thermal effects are a by-product, which can be modulated by modifying the electrode construction, limiting the local temperature to less than 50°C in order not to induce wound bed renecrosis. The authors describe here the principle, the first technical adaptation for wound debridement, and the potential clinical interest of the Coblation technology.

The precautionary principle is objet of an intense discussion in different legal orders. It is easy to understand the reason why: the regulation of risks challenges the legal thought. The positivist approach has shown its limits. It is now important to ask ourselves about the way in which we can deal with uncertainty effectively. The task is difficult, but we can point out two different aspects. Firstly, it is important to understand the complexity of the technological risks in a transdisciplinary way. This is an unavoidable step in evaluating the ability of the law to prevent them. Secondly, the precautionary principle presupposes a pluralistic conception of nature in which the economic sphere can be seen as a tool to express the relationship between man and nature.

As accessibility becomes a basic need of modern society, the issue of sustainable transportation continues to gain importance. On the large scale, it concerns interconnecting cities and metropolises, and, on a smaller scale, it refers to connection networks for pedestrians, cyclists and other means of public transport. The study aims to assess the importance of sustainable transport as a principle of New Urbanism in contemporary redevelopment projects. It introduces possible ways of implementing these principles, as well as dangers coming from misunderstanding them. The approaches and methods used in this article combine field studies conducted during the research trips, desk research and interviews with professionals at various stages of two urban renewal projects - Clichy Batignolles (France) and the main train station area in Lodz (Poland). The study revealed the strategic role of rail line redevelopment projects in both rebuilding the continuity of the urban fabric (Clichy Batignolles) and in creating a new centrality for an area with attractive cultural activities and services (Lodz). As urban project timeframes are often long, both case studies show that high flexibility and the ability to adapt investments to changing conditions are often required. Nevertheless, the realization of the key infrastructure elements should be maintained all along. Furthermore, functional diversity can provide an important support for the sustainability of the project as it ensures the quality of urban tissue through height level representative public projects, thereby giving the area in question a new image. As exemplified by the housing policy in France, the distribution of functions can also serve as a pertinent response to the strategic needs of the entire agglomeration as well as a useful solution to local problems. One of the most crucial elements of redevelopment projects is the implementation of sustainable transportation that provides quick and comfortable connections by various means of public transport within different urban scales: metropolises, cities, districts and the city. As an element of sustainable urban policy, an effective public transportation network in the inner city should be supported by the limitation of car park ratio for non-residents within the redevelopment project. Altogether, the impact that other New Urbanism principles exert on developing urban structures is a pertinent question. Today, the real challenge for this movement has moved into the city, rather than on the outskirts, as in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The treatment of premature newborns has evolved a lot in France over the last decade. It can be examined with regard to the four main principles of biomedical ethics: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice. Consequently the combination of medical-nursing vigilance and individualised developmental care enables the premature baby to benefit from truly "ethical" healthcare.

The importance of the precautionary principle in public health was highlighted in France after the HIV contamination of blood products used for transfusion. However, the definition of this principle, its objectives, the way in which it should be applied, and its consequences had not been considered previously. The question as to whether the application of the precautionary principle is appropriate remains unanswered. The aim of this study was to analyze the interpretations of the application of the precautionary principle to determine its consequences in terms of risk management and patient rights. This was accomplished by interviewing persons involved in transfusion medicine. We conducted 33 interviews and describe the issues enunciated for and against the application of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle concept was confusing to the respondents. A major issue emerging from the interviews was that the precautionary principle was perceived more as a means of protecting the decision maker than as a means of protecting the patient. Taken to its extreme, the use of the precautionary principle could prejudice sound medical decision making. However, it was felt that it also can lead to the introduction of measures that update and gradually reduce risks associated with transfusion.

The purpose of this article is to define the role of the radiation safety officer in raising the awareness of the radiology staff to the ALARA (As low as reasonable achievable) principle specified in European directive 97-43. The actions taken and the techniques used in our hospital, as well as the potential improvements that could be achieved with extra funding, will be presented. The didactic value of flow charts recording technical factors and fluoroscopy times for quality improvement will be demonstrated. In the future, a dosimeter incorporated on the new equipment could allow direct recording of the dose. The different items presented in this paper should allow routine implementation of the required elements described in the law 2003-270, i.e the French translation of European Directive 97-43.