UNESCO/IUBS/EUBIOS BIOETHICS DICTIONARY - "Y"s

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YELLOWCAKE: Unprocessed uranium oxide, or mined uranium ore. (See URANIUM) (MP)

YI CHEMA: (1836-1900) Korean physician. Developed the Korean Sasang (4-type) medical system. As in Greek medicine, the Sasang system divides people into four types, and the treatment of conditions is based upon one's constitutional type. However, the definition of these four types is different than the humors of Greek medicine. Yi Chema wrote a detailed description of his system in the work "Tongui suse powon" (Longevity and Life Preservation in Oriental Medicine). (AG)

YIELD: 1. To surrender or relinquish power. 2. Interest payment or profit returns. 3. The produce returned from agricultural cultivation, hunting or fishing. (See SUSTAINABLE YIELD, OPTIMUM SUSTAINABLE YIELD) (MP)

YIN AND YANG: The two forces in the universe in traditional Chinese terms, which are both in opposition and complementary to each other. Yin and Yang represent the positive and negative forces in the universe, and these can be perceived in every aspect of the universe. Although they may be labelled as "positive" and "negative", one is not preferred over the other. Rather it is more along the lines of positive and negative existing in electrical currents. Both are integral aspects of electricity. As with the five elements (see Five Elements), Yin and Yang should ideally be in balance. If an imbalance develops in either direction, this can generate problems of various types. The concepts of Yin and Yang are important for traditional Chinese medicine. (AG)

YONI: From Sanskrit, the yoni refers to the vulva or feminine gender, sometimes represented in image or statue and worshipped in Hinduism as a divine object of pleasure and regeneration. (See LINGAM) (MP)

YOUTH: Young people, individually or collectively, and the freshness, vigor, enthusiasm and flexibility associated with youth. Human mythologies have always yearned for an eternal ‘fountain of youth’, and people haveh the senior adulRITY, INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY) (MP)

YUK FACTOR: A term used to indicate the ethical acceptability of any type of experimental engineering procedures. Foe example can a cow be used as a “milk producing machine” due to genetically enevelopment from the conception to zygote to embryo to fetus when exactly one can recognize human personhood? (JA)

YUPPIES: Colloquial contraction of ‘Young Upwardly-mobile (or Urban) Professionals’, the yuppie contrasts with the hippie in being a city-dwelling professional, economically and socially motivated, technologically aware, stock-market driven, consumeristic and distracted by fashionable social trends. Yuppiedom is the associated home-renovating, mobile phone-toting new age lifestyle, and yuppification is the gentrification or modernization of urban areas. (See HIPPIES, GREENIES) (MP)

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