Short Report GIS Data Organization. Chapter Summary

Data management is an important part of GIS operation. However, there is a major difference between information in general and GIS data organization in particular. Fazal offers an overview of data and its use in GIS in a chapter of his book GIS basics.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Short Report: GIS Data Organization. Chapter Summary specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Although information and data are usually referred to as synonyms, in GIS perspective, there is a huge difference between the two. Despite the fact that in GIS, these two notions are admittedly related, they are still technically not the same. In the specified chapter of his book, Fazal explains that data is the source material, whereas information is the result of data analysis. Data can exist as a linguistic, symbolic, or mathematical expression, and even a signal. Information, however, exists only in the form of a message delivered to a recipien t from a sender. At some point, Fazal states in a straightforward fashion that â€Å"data are facts† (Fazal, 2008, p. 100). In other words, the concept of â€Å"data† embraces all elements known as facts, which can be stored in a database, such as images, programs, rules, etc. Hence the function of an information system is defined – the latter is supposed to convert data into information through conversion, organization, structuring and modeling. Apart from the difference between data and information, there is a huge gap between geographic data and data in general. Geographic data concerns solely providing characteristics for features and resources of the Erath. A geographical reference is another important feature of geographic data – as a rule, latitude and longitude are available to the recipient of the geographic information instantly. In addition, geographical data is supposed to be used for solving geography related problems. Containing both a descr iptive (non-spatial) and a graphical (spatial) element, geographic data provides a three-dimensional view of the current state of the Earth, as well as major geographical issues and dilemmas. Among the issues that GIS data can help solve, a reasonable use of exhaustible resources and the means to restore renewable ones are the priority. When dealing with the use of GIS data, one must keep in mind that it has three dimensions: a temporal, a thematic and a spatial one. Temporal data concern time related information, thematic data concerns a particular problem, and spatial data allow locating the affected areas.Advertising Looking for report on geography? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The difference between the spatial and non-spatial data is also to be kept in mind. Spatial data characterizes a particular area or object within this area by denoting its â€Å"location, shape, size, and orientation† (Fazal, 2008, p. 100). Non-spatial data concerns the information that is unrelated to geometric considerations. It is typical to refer to the elements of a non-spatial, or descriptive, data as a â€Å"data item† (Fazal, 2008, p. 86). The organization of data items is rather specific and can be viewed from four major perspectives. The first one is a Data Perspective Information Organization (DPIO); the second one is called a Relationship Perspective of Information Organization (RPIO) and describes the logical links between objects. The third one is the Operating System Perspective of Information Organization (OSPIO) and describes the link between directories. The fourth and the last one, the Application Architecture Perspective of Information Organization (AAPIO) describes the link between the client and the server. In particular, the DP links descriptive and graphical elements. The two have different requirements concerning data storage and organization, and DPIO helps create the environment for p reserving each. Descriptive data, or a data item, is considered the basic unit of information organization. Forming a record, a set of data items is collected into a data file with a unique file name (text file or ASCII file). A numeric data file is called a binary file. These files may form a one-dimensional (vector) or two-dimensional (matrix) array. If the data are arranged in columns and rows, the file is called â€Å"a table† (Fazal, 2008, p. 88). If the data is structured in a complex system with branches, the file is called â€Å"a tree† (Fazal, 2008, p. 88), with â€Å"leaves† and â€Å"nodes.† As a rule, â€Å"leaves† are larger in value than â€Å"heaps;† otherwise, the binary tree is called â€Å"a heap.† The heap sort algorithm sorts data from columns to heaps. Since recently, a database approach is associated with computing. The RPIO method classifies the data with the help of the scale of measurement. The latter is split into four grades, which are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. A nominal level is usually textual, and an ordinal one is numerical. An interval level is a list of numerical data linked to an arbitrary datum, and a ratio level is a list of numerical data linked to an absolute datum. Thus, in the RPIO system, the categories are rather broad. It is usually hard to include spatial relationships into the data set. However, it is possible with sufficient storage space.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Short Report: GIS Data Organization. Chapter Summary specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The above-mentioned means of information organization might seem rather clear and relatively easy to utilize. However, without knowing the difference between a data file and a database, one might find the descriptions of the four types of information management quite confusing. Therefore, the line between the two concepts must be d rawn. Fazal stresses that there are three basic differences between a data file and a database. A data file traditionally includes a collection of the same or similar data records and description, while a database includes interrelated records with possibly different data and descriptions. More importantly, a database may include several data files, though it does not necessarily have more than one. The processing procedure is another important distinction between a database and a data file. Fazal shows that data file processing is usually related to programming and computing, whereas database processing is always related to a database management system. Finally, a data file is used for spontaneous information check, acquisition, or analysis, while a database is traditionally used on a regular basis. As a relatively more complicated concept than a data file, a database deserves a closer consideration. Fazal explains that database models are the means to organize databases and define s four key types of these models: relational, network, hierarchical and object-oriented ones. Relational data are represented in a manner resembling a table; network data are introduced as a set of records organized according to their types; hierarchical data are listed in accordance with a parent-child principle and based on one-to-many relations; object oriented data are classified in accordance with unique characteristics of the objects included into the data set. The spatial, or graphical, data is also often referred to as the graphical data. Graphical data are split into basic graphical elements. Traditionally, three major graphic elements are distinguished; these are a point, a line, or an arc, and a polygon, or an area. From a dimensional perspective, a point is equal to zero (0), a line is equal to one (1) and an area is equal to two (2). The three elements in question depend on each other: areas consist of lines, lines consist of points, and points, in their turn, are defin ed by coordinates (latitude and longitude).Advertising Looking for report on geography? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The use of the above-mentioned elements in GIS to represent geographic characteristics of a particular region is usually referred to as a vector method (a vector data model). A vector method requires that the spatial component of a geographical database should be used in order to characterize a particular area. Because of its focus on the features of a physical object, the given type of data representation is defined as a method based on the â€Å"object view of the real world† (Fazal, 2008, p. 92). The positioning of a specific database element as an object represented the way in which it is viewed in the real world is not the only method adopted in the GIS system. Before defining the levels of data abstraction, one should set the concepts of data model and database model should be defined. A data model includes all raster and vector methods of reality representation, whereas a database model is a software implementation of a data model (Fazal, 2008, mp. 93). The highest lev el of data abstraction is denoted as a data structure. Several levels of a data structure (DS) are traditionally distinguished. A descriptive DS shows how non-spatial data was designed and used. A descriptive data structure exists either in the form of a relational DS, or in the form of an object-orientational data structure. A graphical DS may exist as a vector or a raster DS. The latter is represented by such subcategories as â€Å"irregular tessellation (e.g., triangulated irregular network (TIN)), hierarchical tessellation (e.g., quad tree) and scan-line† (Fazal, 2008, p. 94). A vector DS can be implemented as a spaghetti DS, a hierarchical DS, etc. The third type, a georelational data, is supposed to represent geographical information. The existing spatial data (point, line (arc) and polygon (area)) is characterized by two types of spatial relationships (proximal and topological). The OSPIO is linked directly to computing. Unlike in DPIO or RPIO, in OSPIO, directories ar e the primary method of information organization. Directories are also known as folders, which help organize data in a hierarchy – there is a root (topmost) directory in a computer, a sub-directory (the one below the topmost directory), and a parent directory (the one above a sub-directory). A directory structure was created for bookkeeping purposes and has a unique name assigned to it once a directory is created. The concept of workspace is used along with the notion of directory and is defined as a directory which the files of a specific project belong to. AAPIO, in contrast to DPIO or RPIO and OSPIO, is based on client–server relations. Like OSPIO, AAPIO is usually associated with computer databases and hinges on the data management processes in a particular computer or a telecommunication network. A client is a process that requires services, while the server is the one that facilitates them. The client–server architecture works in many ways, yet file server s, database servers, transaction servers, web servers and groupware servers are the most popular ones. With file servers, information is requested from a particular file; with database servers, a structured query language (SQL) request is sent from the client to the server; with transaction servers, a server transaction must be carried out to acquire information; with web servers, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used as the primary means of communication between the client and the server. Finally, groupware servers are based on the interface, which facilitates communication and information sharing between users (clients). A pure client–server setting provides an immediate access to remote data sources and a subsequent transfer of the retrieved documents to the client. The data structure demands that information should be sorted according to the frequency of its usage. Data that is supposed to be utilized for specific purposes and data that is used on a regular basis sho uld be stored in different databases with different security levels. The choice of a database depends on the type of data. To be more exact, it is necessary to determine whether the data in question is spatial or not. Fazal claims that spatial data are â€Å"multi-dimensional and auto-correlated† (Fazal, 2008, p. 100), while non-spatial data are â€Å"one-dimensional and independent† (Fazal, 2008, p. 100). For spatial data, order is crucial; therefore, the traditional type of databases cannot be used to locate geographical data. With the invention of new types of databases, new means of coordinating them appeared, though. The current DBMS (database management systems) provide two solutions for data arrangement in GIS: 1) providing the user the ability to access all data through DBMS (â€Å"total DBMS solution†); 2) leaving a direct access to some of the data that is inaccessible otherwise (â€Å"mixed solution†). A repository is viewed as an alternative s olution for the problem of data storage. The functions of a repository are restricted by adding data, retrieving it, and deleting it from the system. In some cases, the data added previously can be changed. However, in most cases, changing data in a repository is prohibited for security reasons. Speaking of DMBSs, a user can navigate them by using commands in different languages, such as a data definition language (DDL), a data manipulation language (DML), a query, and a query language. DMBSs have three levels of abstraction, unlike data itself; these levels are known as a physical level (database implementation), a conceptual level (expression of the model of the real world), and a view (a user group portion of a database (Fazal, 2008, p. 103)). In order to structure data appropriately and define the relationship between its elements, data modeling is used. Traditionally, conceptual, logical and physical data modeling is distinguished. In the course of data modeling, a mathematical formalism known as a data model emerges. A data model is composed of a notation for data description and a range of operations for data manipulation. Process modeling is also mentioned among the data modeling types. The given concept, however, is process-oriented and cannot technically be associated with the three data-oriented processes above. Data storage is a relatively hard task that needs to be approached with due responsibility. Knowing the basics of GIS information management, one can use it to the full potential. Therefore, Fazal’s Spatial data structure and models is a crucial piece of information that helps understand the GIS principles better. Reference Fazal, S. (2008). Spatial data structure and models. In S. Fazal (Ed.), GIS basics. New Delhi, IN: New Age Publications. This report on Short Report: GIS Data Organization. Chapter Summary was written and submitted by user Larry Riddle to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

How to Work Mass Percent Problems in Chemistry

How to Work Mass Percent Problems in Chemistry Chemistry involves mixing one substance with another and observing the results. To replicate the results, its important to measure amounts carefully and record them. Mass percent is one form of measurement used in chemistry; understanding mass percent is important for accurately reporting in chemistry labs. What Is Mass Percent? Mass percent is a method of expressing the concentration of a substance in a mixture or element in a compound. It is calculated as the mass of the component divided by the total mass of the mixture and then multiplied by 100 to get the percent. The formula is: mass percent (mass of component / total mass) x 100% or mass percent (mass of solute / mass of solution) x 100% Usually, mass is expressed in grams, but any unit of measure is acceptable as long as you use the same units for both the component or solute mass and the total or solution mass. Mass percent is also known as percent by weight or w/w%.  This worked example problem shows the steps necessary to calculate mass percent composition. Mass Percent Problem In this procedure, we will work out the answer to the question What are the mass percentages of carbon and oxygen in carbon dioxide, CO2? Step 1: Find the mass of the individual atoms. Look up the atomic masses for carbon and oxygen from the Periodic Table. Its a good idea at this point to settle on the number of significant figures youll be using.  The atomic masses are found to be: C is 12.01 g/molO is 16.00 g/mol Step 2: Find the number of grams of each component make up one mole of  CO2. One mole of CO2 contains 1 mole of carbon atoms and 2 moles of oxygen atoms. 12.01 g (1 mol) of C32.00 g (2 mole x 16.00 gram per mole) of O The mass of one mole of CO2 is: 12.01 g 32.00 g 44.01 g Step 3: Find the mass percent of each atom. mass % (mass of component/mass of total) x 100 The mass percentages of the elements are: For Carbon: mass % C (mass of 1 mol of carbon/mass of 1 mol of CO2)  x 100mass % C (12.01 g / 44.01 g) x 100mass % C   27.29 % For Oxygen: mass % O (mass of 1 mol of oxygen/mass of 1 mol of CO2)  x 100mass % O (32.00 g / 44.01 g) x 100mass % O 72.71 % Solution mass % C 27.29 %mass % O 72.71 % When doing mass percent calculations, it is always a good idea to check to make sure your mass percents add up to 100%. This will help catch any math errors. 27.29 72.71 100.00 The answers add up to 100% which is what was expected. Tips for Success Calculating Mass Percent You wont always be given the total mass of a mixture or solution. Often, youll need to add up the masses. This might not be obvious! You may be given mole fractions or moles and then need to convert to a mass unit.Watch your significant figures!Always make sure the sum of the mass percentages of all components adds up to 100%. If it doesnt, then you need to go back and find your mistake.

Globalizations Eclipse of the Nation-State

Globalization's Eclipse of the Nation-State Globalization can be defined by five main criteria: internationalization, liberalization, universalization, Westernization, and deterritorialization. Internationalization is where nation states are now considered less important as their power is diminishing. Liberalization is the concept where numerous trade barriers have been removed, creating freedom of movement. Globalization has created a world where everyone wants to be the same, which is known as universalization. Westernization has led to the creation of a global world model from a Western perspective while deterritorialization has led to territories and boundaries being lost. Perspectives on Globalization There are six main perspectives that have arisen over the concept of globalization; these are hyper-globalists who believe globalization is everywhere and skeptics who believe globalization is an exaggeration which is no different from the past. Also, some believe that globalization is a process of gradual change and cosmopolitan writers think the world is becoming global as people are becoming global. There are also people who believe in globalization as imperialism, meaning it is an enrichment process deriving from the Western world and there is a new perspective called de-globalization where some people conclude globalization is beginning to break up. It is believed by many that globalization led to inequalities around the world and has reduced the power of nation states to manage their own economies. Mackinnon and Cumbers state Globalization is one of the key forces reshaping the geography of economic activity, driven by multinational corporations, financial institutions, and international economic organizations. Globalization is seen to cause inequalities due to the polarisation of income, as many laborers are being exploited and working under the minimum wage whilst others are working in high paying jobs. This failure of globalization to stop world poverty is becoming increasingly important. Many argue that transnational corporations have made international poverty worse. There are those who argue that globalisation creates winners and losers, as some countries prosper, mainly European countries and America, whilst other countries fail to do well. For example, the USA and Europe fund their own agricultural industries heavily so less economically developed countries get priced outof certain markets; even though they should theoretically have an economic advantage as their wages are lower. Some believe globalization has no significant consequences for less-developed countries income. Neo-liberalists believe that since the end of Bretton Woods in 1971, globalization has generated more mutual benefits than conflicting interests. However, globalization has also caused many so-called prosperous countries to have huge inequality gaps, for example, the United States and the United Kingdom, because being globally successful comes at a price. Nation States Role Diminishing Globalization led to a significant rise of multinational corporations which many believe undermined the ability of states to manage their own economies. Multinational corporations integrate national economies into global networks; therefore nation states no longer have total control over their economies. Multinational corporations have expanded drastically, the top 500 corporations now control almost one-third of global GNP and 76% of world trade. These multinational corporations, such as Standard Poors, are admired but also feared by nation states for their immense power. Multinational corporations, such as Coca-Cola, wield great global power and authority as they effectively place a claim on the host nation state. Since 1960 new technologies have developed at a rapid rate, compared to the previous fundamental shifts which lasted for two hundred years. These current shifts mean that states can no longer successfully manage the changes caused by globalization. Trade blocs, such as NAFTA, reduce nation states management over their economy. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a huge impact on a nations economy, therefore weakening its security and independence. Overall, globalization has diminished the nation states ability to manage its economy. Globalization within the neoliberal agenda has provided nation states with a new, minimalist role. It appears that nation states have little choice but to give away their independence to the demands of globalisation, as a cutthroat, competitive environment has now been formed. Whilst many argue that the nation states role in managing its economy is diminishing, some reject this and believe the state still remains the most dominant force in shaping its economy. Nation states implement policies to expose their economies more or less so to the international financial markets, meaning they can control their responses to globalization Therefore, it can be said that strong, efficient nation states help shape globalization. Some believe nation states are pivotal institutions and argue that globalization has not led to a reduction in nation state power but has altered the situation under which the nation state power is executed. Conclusion Overall, the nation states power can be said to be diminishing in order to manage its economy due to the effects of globalisation. However, some could question if the nation state has ever been fully economically independent. The answer to this is hard to determine however this would not appear to be the case, therefore, it could be said that globalization has not lessened the power of nation states but changed the conditions under which their power is executed. The process of globalization, in the form of both the internationalization of capital and the growth of global and regionalized forms of spatial governance, challenge the ability of the nation-state effectively to practise its claim to a sovereign monopoly. This increased the powers of multinational corporations, which challenge the nation states power. Ultimately, most believe nation states power has diminished but it is wrong to state that it no longer has an influence over the impacts of globalisation. Sources Dean, Gary. Globalisation and the Nation-State.Held, David and Anthony McGrew. Globalization. polity.co.uk.Mackinnon, Danny and  Andrew Cumbers. An introduction to Economic Geography. Prentice Hall, London: 2007.

Behavior in Higher Mammals Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Behavior in Higher Mammals - Essay Example They achieved a balance between molecular work, on the one hand, and anatomical and paleontological2 work on the other hand making them the higher amongst the all mammals found. Scientists say placental mammals are the most prominent mammals in the world today. Realizing the biggest category of the mammals we need to understand the ways in which we could observe them. Various precautions have to be taken before beginning with this activity. Some the things that have to be studied are It would be easy to observe domestic mammals in the beginning if you are not equipped with complete biological exploring4 kit. If you have a large team and resources you can go out and observe them in open settings else placental mammals can be started with to begin the study. Some of the placental mammals include rats, squirrels, rabbits, elephants, horses, lions, tigers, pandas, pigs, sheep, dolphins, whales, as well as humans and other primates. So we can begin our study by choosing the mammals we can have control over like rats, squirrel, pig, sheep, dolphins because they might be too friendly about your observation activity. So being precautious friendly mammal has to be chosen before you become expert with the technique of observing mammals. (According to Frost, PWS and the Gulf of Alaska (GOA)) Some o... Various precautions have to be taken before beginning with this activity. Some the things that have to be studied are We need to study the eating habits of the mammal. Realization of its food chain and biome3 is most necessary. Categorization into domestic and free mammal has to be realized. If one chooses to observe a mammal in a natural and semi natural surroundings one has to get knowledge about their foot marks their smell and things which attract them. Gulati Peeyush 2007 Keen observations have to be made depending upon the environment we have chosen to make observations. It would be easy to observe domestic mammals in the beginning if you are not equipped with complete biological exploring4 kit. If you have a large team and resources you can go out and observe them in open settings else placental mammals can be started with to begin the study. Some of the placental mammals include rats, squirrels, rabbits, elephants, horses, lions, tigers, pandas, pigs, sheep, dolphins, whales, as well as humans and other primates. So we can begin our study by choosing the mammals we can have control over like rats, squirrel, pig, sheep, dolphins because they might be too friendly about your observation activity. So being precautious friendly mammal has to be chosen before you become expert with the technique of observing mammals. (According to Frost, PWS and the Gulf of Alaska (GOA)) Some of the richest marine mammal fauna in the world: 21 species are currently known to live in these waters, of these 21, four species - the harbor seal, the killer whale, the sea otter, and the stellar sea lion - would likely be the easiest and most useful to monitor. So if you are technologically

People Like Us Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

People Like Us - Essay Example In the same go, we decided to fight the evils of gender stereotypes, hatred towards homosexuals, racial prejudice, etc. The universities have been sincere in implementing the measures to encourage multiculturalism in their colleges and campuses. But there are certain concerns: Whether American universities are really encouraging diversity or doing nothing except issuing policy statements? However, Indiana State University, also known as ISU, has been very sincere in implementing diversity not only with the help of policy statements and plans, but also by actually putting them to implementation and practice. The university has adopted a strategic approach with an aim to encourage admission of students from various communities and nationalities. Thesis Statement The Indiana State University (ISU) has not constrained the concept of diversity within theoretical boundaries. Rather, it actually practices diversity through strategic implementation. ISU’s Stance on Diversity ISU is no t one of those institutions that believe in tall talking about diversity but avoid implementing it in practical sense. This is not only due to the sincere attitude of the ISU authorities, but also due to the practicability of its policies and practices, which extensively correlate diversity and holistic education. According to the ISU website, diversity can be comprehended as the range of human differences that include ethnicity, gender identity, racial identity, expression, socio-economic status, age, national origin, physical abilities and disabilities, sexual orientation, spiritual beliefs, etc. A careful introspection of diversity can â€Å"both spotlight the uniqueness of our identities and create opportunities for interaction, dialogue and analysis that build community.† (Indiana State University) This sort of clear perception of the very concept of diversity gives ISU an advantage of better theoretical understanding, which is subsequently reflected in its socio-educati onal and cultural activities. ISU has set up the ISU Office of Diversity, which works in juxtaposition with the President's Council on Diversity and promotes the policies, programs, and practices, which model impartiality and show the way to excellence of multicultural environment and education. Hence, the students get an opportunity to know about different cultures, practices, perceptions, and nationalities, which help them to mature and work better in the age of globalization. Diversity is thus not merely an ethical consideration. At ISU, it is a part of education. Hence the University invites â€Å"everyone in the ISU community and on the ISU campus to explore and embrace learning about diversity as a goal† (Indiana State University). A prime strategy of the university is to focus on the Diversity Crisis Model. Educational expert Damon A. Williams has remarked, â€Å"Too many diversity-planning efforts follow a reactive pattern that emerges when the campus is disrupted by a diversity crisis. Nationally publicized examples of such crises include controversial remarks by the president of Harvard University in 2003 regarding the ability of female faculty to perform in the sciences and the Duke University lacrosse team incident in 2006.† These sorts of incidents, in conjunction with the increasing occurrences of ethnically themed university, campus, and/or college parties,

Virginia Woolf Essay Example for Free

Virginia Woolf Essay Virginia Woolf, and educated woman, described two luncheons at a male and female college. The intended audience of both passages is educated men who can make a change. Virginia Woolf demonstrates the differences in quality of education between men and women through narrative structure, selection of detail, and tone in order to garner support to change the quality of education for female students. The quality of food served at the men’s college reflects the quality of the education. For example, Woolf describes her experience of the luncheon at the men’s college through narrative structure, â€Å"lunch†¦began with soles, sunk in a deep dish† (10-11). The moment the luncheon starts, Woolf is impressed with how much effort is put into the food. Describing how much effort people went through leaves the intended audience confident. Also the selection of detail in the passages supports the authors purpose by illustrating every food item, â€Å"potatoes, thin as coins† (18). The precision of the food item is mentioned through a simile to emphasize the importance of men in society. Enhancing the importance of men assists the author by proving how much people focus on what men want; putting all their energy to ensure that the education provided at the men’s college is exceptional quality. Woolf’s erudite tone towards the luncheon also reflects how impressed she was with the conversations surround her, â€Å"brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips† (29). The author supports her purpose through the erudite tone in order to present the intelligence surrounding her. The brilliant conversation Woolf hears at the luncheon is presented through personification, which represents the level of intelligence male students attending the college has from the quality of their education. Men will always have an advantage in society no matter if there is equality between men and women. Women earned equal rights as men, but there is a significant difference between the qualities of education, which Woolf explains through her experience at the women’s college luncheon. Woolf describes her meal from the beginning as â€Å"a plain gravy soup† (41-42) and ending with â€Å"everybody scraped their chairs back† (62-63). Right from the start there is nothing special about the luncheon at the women’s college. The whole lunch is characterized from the use of imagery to create the effect of the unmotivated students at the women’s college, presenting to the audience that there is a clear difference in quality of education. The selection of detail adds emphasis on the simplicity of the meal, â€Å"beef with†¦greens and potatoes† (45-46). There is nothing special about the meal, which also involves the length of the passage being concise, but still no one complains because it still is â€Å"†¦nature’s daily food†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (50). This help the author to further prove people do not pay close attention to the quality of female education. In addition to selection of detail, the morose tone adds to the bland luncheon, that consisted of no conversation at all, â€Å" That was all. The meal was over† (62-63). Woolf is simply pointing out the women who attend the college are not motivated. The quality of education the women are receiving may be adequate however; the education could become great if people paid more attention to it. Although women have equal rights as men, their quality in rights is not the same. Both the men and women’s college provided an education, but there is a difference in the quality of education provided. The narrative style Woolf writes for the male college represents an elegant lifestyle, while the women’s represents old fashion lifestyle, â€Å"To call it pudding†¦would be an insult†(23-24), â€Å"sprouts†¦ yellowed at the edge† (47-48). The difference supports the author’s purpose, emphasizing the contrast in foods as a metaphor for the difference in education. Men have always dominated society and sadly it is hard to have men and women become equal partners in society; leaving the intended audience aware of women’s place in society through Woolf’s own awareness of the change. Describing the food in detail described the elaborate food provided for the men while the women had plain food â€Å"the partridges†¦came wit all their retinue†(16-17), â€Å"prunes and custard followed† (52). The selection of detail indicates that people pay more attention to men than to women by giving men the best of the best and women what is considered as ordinary. The technique of personification describing the partridges creates a picture in the audience’s mind on how grand the meal is by saying the food had an entourage. Lastly there is a shift in tone going from enlightening â€Å"all are going to heaven† (33) to dreary â€Å" soon the hall was emptied† (63-64). The students at the male college are given plenty of support that they think they are the best; on the other hand the students at the women’s college go on with their daily lives as individuals. After leaving the luncheon at the men’s college Woolf felt amazing which is the complete opposite of what she felt leaving the women’s luncheon. Although the students at the women’s college eat together, they eat and live as individuals rather than a community like the men’s c ollege. Although it may seem like men and women have equal rights, which is not the complete truth. Virginia Woolf uses her experience of two complete opposite luncheons at a male and female college to persuade the audience that there is no equality in the quality of education.

Should Workers Be Allowed To Strike? - Argumentative Essay

It is difficult to see how anyone could deny that all workers should have the rights to strike. This is because striking gives workers freedom of speech. This is justifiable, because Britain is a democratic nation. My first reason supporting the motion that workers should be allowed to strike is in order to bring to the fore poor safety conditions. For instance, in the nuclear power industry, any breaches of safety can have tragic consequences. If the employees are exposed to nuclear material, this could lead to serious illnesses such as cancer, leukaemia and radiation sickness. Radioactive material could also affect residents of the surrounding area, as in the case of the Chernobyl disaster. In the light of poor safety conditions, workers striking can be justified by the fact that the government and public would be informed. Similarly, another justification for employees striking is that production and confidence would perhaps increase after industrial action. This could be because, when workers strike for higher pay or better conditions and their employers meet their demands, the employees return to their place of work with higher morale than before the walk-out. As a consequence, the higher productivity would be beneficial to the owners. Likewise, industrial action gives the worker a line of protest against unfair hours or miserly wages. Theoretically, if taking industrial action was outlawed, the management could impose any terms and contract changes that they wished ...

Power and Ambition

William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, is the story of a usurping General, Lord Macbeth, and his wife Lady Macbeth who are driven to murder their king in pursuit of the throne and power. The tragedy has multiple reoccurring themes and motifs, of which Shakespeare uses many aesthetic features to effectively develop and enhance. One such theme is Masculinity vs. Femininity which resounds throughout the entirety of the play and is a central focus point during many events.Shakespeare uses imagery, symbolism and metaphor very effectively during the course of the play to augment and pinpoint important developments and changes to the characters and their states of masculinity and femininity. At the time that Shakespeare wrote his plays the values and attitudes were vastly different to those of modern society. Women were considered the fairer sex while men were considered the dominant sex. Similar essay: If I Become A Collector EssayIn Macbeth, this view is approached with the idea that masculinity carried with it the ability to kill and commit sin while femininity in its ideal was softer, gentler and comprised of virtue. Shakespeare demonstrates this ideal very early in the play when, in Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth calls out, â€Å"Come you spirits that tend on human thoughts! Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty. † This happens directly after receiving notice from her husband that the witches’ prophecy had come true and that the king was to be joining them in their castle.At this point in the play she is asking the spirits to take away her femininity, a literal unsexing, and fill her with a ‘direst cruelty’ that she, as a woman, did not already possess so that she could have the ability to kill her king. This idea of femininity causing an inability to kill, indeed needing to become masculine to be able to commit the crime demonstrates Shakespeare’s ideal of women being pure while men have evil in their very being. The use of this imagery and figurative language, ‘direst cruelty’ and ‘unsex me now’, in this scene underlines this ideal and highlights Shakespeare’s view on femininity and masculinity.Another aspect of Shakespeare’s portrayal of women as incapable of sin relates directly to the view of women at the time the play was written. The medieval view of women, in that they were weaker, less intelligent and meant for menial work and child rearing; and the subsequent opposite view of males, being that they were the money earners, the soldiers, and thus full of courage and honour is very easily seen through Shakespeare’s language throughout Macbeth. In Act 4 Scene 3, Macduff says, ‘O!I could play the woman with mine eyes’ after being informed that his children and his wife had just been murdered in the home that he had run from. By implying that weeping is a womanly attribute and saying that he as a man should not do it, it again highlights the idea that women were weaker and softer in their femininity then men were in their masculinity. This weakness and its symbolized lack of physical strength, shows again, Shakespeare’s view of women as the weaker sex and their subsequent inability to commit murder or other atrocious acts.Yet another instance of Shakespeare’s obvious separation of femininity from sin is in the scene where Lady Macbeth is convincing Lord Macbeth to kill King Duncan. Lady Macbeth cows Lord Macbeth by asking him â€Å"With thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own self-esteem, letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’, like the poor cat I’ the adage? † This line and its subsequent imagery of a cat wanting the fish but afraid of the water shows that Shakespeare believes that to be a ma n is to go after his true desires regardless of the consequences.At this point in time, Lady Macbeth has been unsexed and is using her new found masculinity to manipulate and force Lord Macbeth into fulfilling her own desires, something that she was not capable of when she was a woman. This is a doubled example of masculinity’s ingrained sin; Lady Macbeth is manipulating Lord Macbeth by questioning his manhood and as a result to prove his virility and strength he will commit murder. By proving his masculinity in this way, through murder and evil, it shows that Shakespeare believed men to be the only ones capable of sin.Throughout Macbeth, the theme of Masculinity vs. Femininity is developed and expanded upon using imagery and symbolism. Shakespeare manipulates language conventions to demonstrate the idea of the feminine sex being incapable of murder and sin while men and their subsequent masculinity is the root of such evil acts. At the time that Shakespeare wrote his plays t he values and attitudes were vastly different to those of modern society and as such his ideals and views reflect these medieval interpretations of women being the weaker sex while men were dominant.From Lady Macbeth’s plea to be unsexed, to Macduff’s implication of crying being a weak response of women and then to Lady Macbeth’s manipulation of her husband after being filled with the ‘direst cruelty’ of masculinity, Shakespeare’s language shows his view on Masculinity vs. Femininity. Through his imagery and symbolism, his opinion that women are incapable of evil in their feminine state becomes very clear and Macbeth becomes almost a warning to the fairer sex; do not lose your femininity and thus your purity.

Getting Away with Torture

Global Governance 11 (2005), 389–406 REVIEW ESSAY Getting Away with Torture Kenneth Roth The Bush administration’s use of torture and inhumane treatment has undermined one of the most basic global standards governing how governments can treat people under their control. Contrary to the efforts of the administration to pass this abuse off as the spontaneous misconduct of a few low-level soldiers, ample evidence demonstrates that it reflects policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the U. S. government.Repairing the damage done to global standards will require acknowledging this policy role and launching a genuinely independent investigation to identify those responsible and hold them accountable. The creation of regulated exceptions to the absolute prohibition of torture and mistreatment, as suggested by several academics, will not redeem the tarnished reputation of the United States or restore the global standards that the Bush administration has so severely dama ged. KEYWORDS: torture, Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo, interrogation, cruel treatment.B’Tselem, â€Å"Legislation Allowing the Use of Physical Force and Mental Coercion in Interrogations by the General Security Service,† B’Tselem Position Paper, January 2000, 80 pp. Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 592 pp. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 288 pp. Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds. , The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1,284 pp. Philip B. Heymann and Juliette N.Kayyem, Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (Cambridge: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2004), 195 pp. Human Rights Watch, The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), 37 pp. Sanford Levinson, ed. , Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 328 pp. 389 390 Getting Away with Torture ho would have thought it still necessary to debate the merits of torture? Sure, there are always some governments that torture, but they do it clandestinely. Torture is inherently shameful—something that, if practiced, is done in the shadows.In the system of international human rights law and institutions that has been constructed since World War II, there is no more basic prohibition than the ban on torture. Even the right to life admits exceptions, such as the killing of combatants allowed in wartime. But torture is forbidden unconditionally, whether in time of peace or war, whether at the local police precinct or in the face of a major security threat. Yet, suddenly, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, torture and related mistreatment have become serious policy options for the United States.Academics are proposing ways to regulate the pain that can be inflicted on suspects in detention. Overly clever U. S. government lawyers have tried to define away laws against torture. The Bush administration claims latitude to abuse detainees that its predecessors would never have dared to contemplate. Washington’s new willingness to contemplate torture is not just theoretical. The abuse of prisoners has flourished in the gulag of offshore detention centers that the Bush administration now maintains in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the secret dungeons where the U. S. government’s â€Å"disappeared† prisoners are held.Hidden from public scrutiny, shielded from legal accountability, the interrogators in these facilities have been allowed to flout the most basic rules for the decent and humane treatment of detainees. Yet torture remains the despicable practice it has always been. It dehumanizes people by treating them as pawns to be manipulated through their pain. It harnesses the awesome power of the state and appl ies it to human beings at their most vulnerable. Breaching any restraint of reciprocity, it subjects the victim to abuse that the perpetrator would never himself want to suffer.Before looking at why Americans are suddenly confronting the torture option, it is useful to clarify what, exactly, torture is. The word torture has entered the vernacular to describe a host of irritants, but its formal meaning in international law is quite specific: the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, for whatever reason. Torture as defined in international law is not done by private actors but by government officials or those operating with their consent or acquiescence. 1 Torture exists on a continuum of mistreatment.Abuse just short of torture is known in international law as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The lines between these different degrees of mistreatment are W Kenneth Roth 391 not crystal clear—lesser forms are often gateways to tort ure—which is one reason why international law prohibits all such forms of coercion. 2 Torture as well as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is flatly prohibited by such treaties as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and the Geneva Conventions.All of these treaties are widely ratified, including by the United States. None permits any exception to these prohibitions, even in time of war or a serious security threat. Indeed, these prohibitions are so fundamental that the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, the most authoritative U. S. treatise on the matter, lists them as peremptory jus cogens norms, meaning they bind governments as a matter of customary international law, even in the absence of a treaty.Breach of these prohibitions gives rise to a crime of universal jurisdiction, allowing the perpetrator to be prosecut ed in any competent tribunal anywhere. Yet it is precisely because of the fundamental character of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that the Bush administration’s deliberate disregard for it is so damaging. If this basic human rights protection can be cast aside, no right is secure. Moreover, the Bush administration is not just any government. When most governments breach international human rights law, they commit a violation—the breach is condemned or prosecuted, but the rule remains firm.Yet when a government as dominant and influential as the United States openly defies that law and seeks to justify its defiance, it also undermines the law itself, and invites others to do the same. That shakes the very foundations of the international system for the protection of human rights that has been carefully constructed over the past sixty years. This unlawful conduct has also damaged Washington’s credibility as a proponent of hum an rights and a leader of the campaign against terrorism. The U. S. government’s record of promoting human rights has always been mixed.For every offender it berated for human rights transgressions, there was another whose abuses it ignored, excused, or even supported. Yet despite this inconsistency, the United States historically has played a key role in defending human rights. Its embrace of coercive interrogation—part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism—has significantly impaired its ability to mount that defense. As a result, governments facing human rights pressure from the United States now find it increasingly easy to turn the tables, to challenge Washington’s standing to uphold principles that it violates itself. 92 Getting Away with Torture Whether it is Egypt justifying torture by reference to U. S. practice, Malaysia defending administrative detention by invoking Guantanamo, Russia citing Abu Ghra ib to blame abuses in Chechnya solely on lowlevel soldiers, Nepal explaining a coup by reference to America’s postSeptember 11 excesses, or Cuba claiming the Bush administration had â€Å"no moral authority to accuse† it of human rights violations, repressive governments find it easier to deflect U. S. pressure because of Washington’s own sorry counterterrorism record on human rights.Indeed, when Human Rights Watch asked State Department officials to protest administrative detention in Malaysia and prolonged incommunicado detention in Uganda, they demurred, explaining, in the words of one, â€Å"With what we are doing in Guantanamo, we’re on thin ice to push this. †3 Washington’s loss of credibility has not been for lack of rhetorical support for concepts that are closely related to human rights, but the embrace of explicit human rights language seems to have been calculatedly rare.In his January 2005 inauguration speech, President Bush spok e extensively of his devotion to â€Å"freedom† and â€Å"liberty,† his opposition to â€Å"tyranny† and â€Å"terrorism,† but hardly at all about his commitment to human rights. 4 The distinction has enormous significance. It is one thing to pronounce oneself on the side of the â€Å"free,† quite another to be bound by the full array of human rights standards that are the foundation of freedom. It is one thing to declare oneself opposed to terrorism, quite another to embrace the body of international human rights and humanitarian law that enshrines the values rejecting terrorism.This linguistic sleight of hand—this refusal to accept the legal obligations embraced by rights-respecting states—has both reduced Washington’s credibility and facilitated its use of coercive interrogation. Because of this hypocrisy, many human rights defenders, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, now cringe when the United States comes t o their defense. Reformers in the Middle East speak of â€Å"the hug of death†Ã¢â‚¬â€the ill effects of Washington’s hypocritical embrace.They may crave a powerful ally, but identifying too closely with a government that so brazenly ignores international law, whether in its own abuses or its alliance with other abusers, has become a sure route to disrepute. At a time when the Bush administration is extolling itself as a champion of reform in the Middle East, as the catalyst behind recent democratic developments, however modest, in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories, it is a sad irony that so few reformers welcome its support.That weakening of Washington’s moral authority in the Middle East is particularly tragic, because that region is where effective counterterrorism efforts are most needed. Open and responsive political systems Kenneth Roth 393 are the best way to encourage people to pursue their grievances peacefully. But whe n the most vocal governmental advocate of democracy deliberately violates human rights, it undermines democratically inclined reformers and strengthens the appeal of those who preach more radical visions. Instead, U. S. buses have provided a new rallying cry for terrorist recruiters, and the pictures from Abu Ghraib have become the recruiting posters for Terrorism, Inc. Many militants need no additional incentive to attack civilians, but if a weakened human rights culture eases even a few fence-sitters toward the path of violence, the consequences can be dire. Why is the United States taking this approach? To vent frustration, to exact revenge—possibly—but certainly not because torture and mistreatment are required for national security or protection.Respect for the Geneva Conventions does not preclude vigorously interrogating detainees about a limitless range of topics. The U. S. Army’s field manual on intelligence interrogation makes clear that coercion underm ines the quest for reliable information. 5 The U. S. military command in Iraq says that Iraqi detainees are providing more useful intelligence when they are not subjected to abuse. In the words of Craig Murray, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was speaking of the UK’s reliance on torture-extracted testimony, â€Å"We are selling our souls for dross. 6 Moreover, coercive interrogation is making us less safe by effectively precluding criminal prosecution of its victims. Once a confession is coerced, it becomes extremely difficult to prove, as due process requires, that a subsequent prosecution of the suspect is free of the fruits of that coercion. As a result, the Bush administration finds itself holding some suspects who clearly have joined terrorist conspiracies and might have been criminally convicted and subjected to long prison terms, but against whom prosecution has become impossible. In February 2005, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began openly fretting about the problem.What happens, it worried, when continuing to detain suspects without trial becomes politically untenable, but prosecuting them is legally impossible because of taint from coercive interrogation? 7 None of this is to say that the United States is the worst human rights abuser. There are many more serious contenders for that notorious title, including governments that torture more frequently and more ruthlessly. But the United States is certainly the most influential abuser, making its contribution to the degradation of human rights standards unique and the costs to global institutions for upholding human rights incalculable.It is not enough to argue, as its defenders do, that the Bush administration is well intentioned—that they are the â€Å"good guys,† in the 394 Getting Away with Torture words of the Wall Street Journal. 8 A society ordered on intentions rather than law is a lawless society. Nor does it excuse the administrati on’s human rights record, as its defenders have tried to do, to note that it removed two tyrannical governments—the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ba’ath Party in Iraq. Attacks on repressive regimes cannot justify attacks on the body of principles that makes their repression illegal.So, how did we get here? How did the United States, historically perhaps the most vigorous governmental proponent of human rights, come to undermine through its own actions one of the most basic human rights there is? Several books, both new and old, provide insight into this sorry state of affairs. Cover-Up and Self-Investigation When the photos from Abu Ghraib became public, the Bush administration reacted like many abusive governments that are caught redhanded: it went into damage control mode. It agreed that the torture and abuse featured in the photographs were wrong but sought to minimize the problem.The abusers, it claimed, were a handful of errant soldiers, a few â€Å"bad a pples† at the bottom of the barrel. The problem, it argued, was contained, both geographically (one section of Abu Ghraib prison) and structurally (only low-level soldiers, not more senior commanders). The abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib and broadcast around the world, it maintained, had nothing to do with the decisions and policies of more senior officials. President Bush vowed that â€Å"wrongdoers will be brought to justice,†9 but as of March 2005, virtually all of those facing prosecution were of the rank of sergeant or below.To some extent, the sheer outrageousness of the sexual and physical depravity featured in the Abu Ghraib photographs made it easier for the administration to disown responsibility. Few believe that President Bush or his senior officials would have ordered, for example, Lyndie England to parade about a naked detainee on a leash. Yet behind this particular mistreatment was an atmosphere of abuse to which the Bush administration, at the highest l evels, did contribute. The ingredients of that atmosphere are described in several new books.The most comprehensive compilation of the documentary record is contained in The Torture Papers, a book edited by Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, which includes all of the administration’s notorious â€Å"torture memos† available by late 2004. Mark Danner’s book, Torture and Truth, includes many of these same documents, as well as his insightful analysis, drawn from his articles in the New York Review of Kenneth Roth 395 Books, of the policy decisions that lay behind them. The Human Rights Watch report, The Road to Abu Ghraib,10 details how this atmosphere played out on he ground, as American interrogators deployed â€Å"stress and duress† interrogation techniques and then covered up the cruel and occasionally deadly consequences. Torture: A Collection, a new set of essays on torture edited by Sanford Levinson, contains thoughtful essays from a range of scholar s, including a vigorous debate about how to limit torture in the post-September 11 environment. The key to the administration’s strategy of damage control was a series of carefully limited investigations—at least ten so far.The reports of several of these are reprinted in the Greenberg and Dratel compilation. Most of the investigations, such as those conducted by Maj. Gen. George Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones, involved uniformed military officials examining the conduct of their subordinates; these officers lacked the authority to scrutinize senior Pentagon officials. Typical was the most recent investigation, conducted by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, who said he did not interview senior officials such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or draw conclusions about their individual responsibility. 11The one investigation with the theoretical capacity to examine the conduct of Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides—the inquiry led by former secretary of def ense James Schlesinger—was initiated by Rumsfeld himself and seemed to go out of its way to distance Rumsfeld from the problem. At the press conference releasing the investigative report, Schlesinger said that Rumsfeld’s resignation â€Å"would be a boon to all America’s enemies. † The Schlesinger investigation lacked the independence of, for example, the September 11 Commission, which was established with the active involvement of the U.S. Congress. 12 As for the CIA—the branch of the U. S. government believed to hold the most important terrorist suspects—it has apparently escaped scrutiny by anyone other than its own inspector general. Meanwhile, no one seems to be looking at the role of President Bush and other senior administration officials. As for criminal investigations, there has been none independent of the Bush administration. When an unidentified government official retaliated against a critic of the administration by revealing th at his wife was a CIA agent—a erious crime because it could endanger her—the administration agreed, under pressure, to appoint a special prosecutor who has been promised independence from administration direction. Yet the administration has refused to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether senior officials authorized torture and other coercive interrogation—a far more serious and systematic offense. So far, prosecutors 396 Getting Away with Torture under the direction of the administration have focused only on the little guy. The Policies Behind Abu Ghraib What would a genuinely independent investigation find?It would reveal that the abusive interrogation seen at Abu Ghraib did not erupt spontaneously at the lowest levels of the military chain of command. It was not merely a â€Å"management† failure, as the Schlesinger investigation suggested. As shown in the collection of official documents organized by Greenberg and Dratel and Danner, Danner ’s analysis, and the Human Rights Watch study, these abuses were the direct product of an environment of lawlessness, an atmosphere created by policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the Bush administration, long before the start of the Iraq war.They reflect a determination to fight terrorism unconstrained by fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law, despite commitments by the United States and governments around the world to respect those principles even in times of war and severe security threats. These policy decisions included: †¢ The decision not to grant the detainees in U. S. custody at Guantanamo their rights under the Geneva Conventions, even though the conventions apply to all people picked up on the battlefield of Afghanistan.Senior Bush officials vowed that all detainees would be treated â€Å"humanely,† but that vow seems never to have been seriously implemented and at times was qualified (and arguably eviscera ted) by a selfcreated exception for â€Å"military necessity. † Meanwhile, the effective shredding of the Geneva Conventions—and the corresponding sidestepping of the U. S. Army’s interrogation manual—sent U. S. interrogators the signal that, in the words of one leading counterterrorist official, â€Å"the gloves come off. †13 The decision not to clarify for nearly two years that, regardless of the applicability of the Geneva Conventions, all detainees in U. S. custody are protected by the parallel requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture. Even when, at the urging of human rights groups, the Pentagon’s general counsel belatedly reaffirmed, in June 2003, that CAT prohibited not only torture but also other forms of ill treatment, that announcement was communicated to interrogators, if at all, in a way that had no discernible impact on their behavior.Kenneth Roth 397 †¢ The decision to interpret the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment narrowly, to permit certain forms of coercive interrogation—that is, certain efforts to ratchet up a suspect’s pain, suffering, and humiliation to make him talk. At the time of ratifying the ICCPR in 1992 and the CAT in 1994, the U. S. government said it would interpret this prohibition to mean the same thing as the requirements of the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.The clear intent was to require that if an interrogation technique would be unconstitutional if used in an American police station or jail, it would violate these treaties if used against suspects overseas. Yet U. S. interrogators under the Bush administration have routinely subjected overseas terrorist suspects to abusive techniques that would clearly have been prohibited if used in the United States. That the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment was intentional was suggested by Att orneyGeneral Alberto Gonzales during his confirmation process.In his written reply to Senate questions—after the administration had supposedly repudiated the worst aspects of its torture memos—he interpreted the U. S. reservation as permitting the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as it was done against non-Americans outside the United States. 14 That makes the United States the only government in the world to claim openly as a matter of policy the power to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.Other governments obviously subject detainees to inhumane treatment or worse as a matter of clandestine policy, but the Bush administration is the only government to proclaim this policy publicly. Reflecting that policy, the Bush administration in late 2004 successfully stopped a congressional effort to proscribe the CIA’s use of torture and inhumane treatment in interrogation. †¢ The decision to hold some suspects—eleven known15 and r eportedly some three dozen—in unacknowledged incommunicado detention, beyond the reach of even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).Many other suspects were apparently temporarily hidden from the ICRC. Victims of such â€Å"disappearances† are at the greatest risk of torture and other mistreatment. For example, U. S. forces continue to maintain closed detention sites in Afghanistan, where beatings, threats, and sexual humiliation are still reported. At least twenty-six prisoners have died in U. S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what army and navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide. 16 One of those deaths was as recently as September 2004. The refusal for over two years to prosecute U. S. soldiers implicated in the December 2002 deaths of two suspects in U. S. custody in Afghanistan—deaths ruled â€Å"homicides† by U. S. Army pathologists. 398 Getting Away with Torture Instead, the interroga tors were sent to Abu Ghraib, where some were allegedly involved in more abuse. †¢ The approval by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld of some interrogation methods for Guantanamo that violated, at the very least, the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and possibly the ban on torture.These techniques included placing detainees in painful stress positions, hooding them, stripping them of their clothes, and scaring them with guard dogs. That approval was later rescinded, but it contributed to the environment in which the legal obligations of the United States were seen as dispensable. †¢ The reported approval by an unidentified senior Bush administration official, and use, of â€Å"water boarding†Ã¢â‚¬â€known as the â€Å"submarine† in Latin America—a torture technique in which the victim is made to believe he will drown, and in practice sometimes does.Remarkably, Porter Goss, the CIA director, defended water boarding in March 2005 testimon y before the Senate as a â€Å"professional interrogation technique. †17 †¢ The sending of suspects to governments such as Syria, Uzbekistan, and Egypt that practice systematic torture. Sometimes diplomatic assurances have been sought that the suspects would not be mistreated, but if, as in these cases, the government receiving the suspect routinely flouts its legal obligation under the CAT, it is wrong to expect better compliance with the nonbinding word of a diplomat.The administration claimed that it monitored prisoners’ treatment, but a single prisoner, lacking the anonymity afforded by a larger group, would often be unable to report abuse for fear of reprisal. One U. S. official who visited foreign detention sites disparaged this charade: â€Å"They say they are not abusing them, and that satisfies the legal requirement, but we all know they do. †18 †¢ The decision (adopted by the Bush administration from its earliest days) to oppose and undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC), in part out of fear that it might compel the United States to prosecute U.S. personnel implicated in war crimes or other comparable offenses that the administration would prefer to ignore. The administration spoke in terms of the ICC infringing U. S. sovereignty, but since the ICC could not have jurisdiction over offenses committed by Americans in the United States without Washington’s consent, the sovereignty argument actually cuts the other way: it is a violation of the sovereignty of other governments on whose territory an atrocity might be committed not to be free to determine whether to prosecute the crime themselves or to send the matter to the ICC.The administration’s position on the ICC was thus reduced to an assertion of exceptionalism—a claim that no international enforcement regime should regulate U. S. criminality overseas. Kenneth Roth 399 That signaled the administration’s determination to protect U. S. personnel from external accountability for any serious human rights offense that it might authorize. Since, in the absence of a special prosecutor, the administration itself controlled the prospects for domestic criminal accountability, its position offered an effective promise of impunity. The decision by the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the White House counsel to concoct dubious legal theories to justify torture, despite objections from the State Department and professional military attorneys. Under the direction of politically appointed lawyers, the administration offered such absurd interpretations of the law as the claim that coercion is not torture unless the pain caused is â€Å"equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result. Similarly, the administration claimed that President Bush has â€Å"command er-in-chief authority† to order torture—a theory under which Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein may as well be given the keys to their jail cells, since they too presumably would have had â€Å"commander-in-chief authority† to authorize the atrocities that they directed. The Justice Department, in a December 2004 memorandum modifying the definition of torture, chose not to repudiate the claim about commander-in-chief authority to order torture but instead stated that repudiation was unnecessary because, it said, the president opposes torture as a matter of policy.These policy decisions, taken not by low-level soldiers but by senior officials of the Bush administration, created an â€Å"anything goes† atmosphere, an environment in which the ends were assumed to justify the means. Sometimes the mistreatment of detainees was merely tolerated, but at other times it was actively encouraged or even ordered. In that environment, when the demand came from on hi gh for â€Å"actionable intelligence†Ã¢â‚¬â€intelligence that might help stem the steady stream of U. S. asualties at the hands of Iraqi insurgents—it was hardly surprising that interrogators saw no obstacle in the legal prohibition of torture and mistreatment. Nor did these basic human rights rules limit the broader effort to protect Americans from the post-September 11 risks of terrorism. To this day, the Bush administration has failed to repudiate many of these decisions. It continues to refuse to apply the Geneva Conventions to any of the more than 500 detainees held at Guantanamo (despite a U. S. court ruling rejecting its position) and to many others detained in Iraq and Afghanistan.It continues to â€Å"disappear† detainees, despite ample proof that these â€Å"ghost detainees† are extraordinarily vulnerable 400 Getting Away with Torture to torture. It continues to defend the practice of â€Å"rendering† suspects to governments that torture on the basis of unbelievable assurances and meaningless monitoring. It refuses to accept the duty never to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment anywhere. It continues its vendetta against the ICC. It has only selectively repudiated the many specious arguments for torture contained in the administration lawyers’ notorious â€Å"torture memos. And long after the abuses of Abu Ghraib became public—at least as late as June 2004—the Bush administration reportedly continued to subject Guantanamo detainees to beatings, prolonged isolation, sexual humiliation, extreme temperatures, and painful stress positioning, all practices that the ICRC reportedly called â€Å"tantamount to torture. †19 In selecting his cabinet for his second presidential term, President Bush seemed to rule out even informal accountability. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the cabinet official who most forcefully opposed the administration’s disavowal of the Geneva Conventions, left his post.Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered abusive interrogation techniques in violation of international law, stayed on. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who sought production of the memos justifying torture and who wrote that the fight against terrorism renders â€Å"obsolete† and â€Å"quaint† the Geneva Conventions’ limitations on the interrogation and treatment of prisoners, was rewarded with appointment as attorney general. 20 As for the broader Bush administration, the November 2004 electoral victory seems to have reinforced its traditional disinclination to serious self-examination.It persists in its refusal to admit any policylevel misconduct in the treatment of detainees under interrogation. The Twisted Logic of Torture The Bush administration’s policy of abusive interrogation has received important support in the United States from three Harvard professors: Alan Dershowitz and Phil Heymann of Harvard Law School and Juliette Kayy em of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Rather than reinforce the absolute prohibitions of international law, each would seek to regulate exceptions to the prohibitions on mistreating detainees.Ostensibly their aim is to curtail that mistreatment but, by legitimizing it through regulation, they would have the opposite effect. Dershowitz, in his book Why Terrorism Works and in his chapter in the Levinson compilation, typifies this regulatory approach. In his view, torture is inevitable, so prohibiting it will only drive it underground, where low-level officials use it in their discretion. Instead, he would subject torture to judicial oversight by requiring investigators who want Kenneth Roth 401 to use it to seek the approval of a judge—to procure a torture warrant, much like they would seek a search warrant or an arrest warrant.This independent scrutiny, he posits, would reduce the incidence of torture. Dershowitz’s argument is built largely on faith that forcing tortur e into the open would reduce its use. But he simply assumes that judges would have a less permissive attitude toward torture than do the senior members of the Bush administration. The available evidence is not encouraging. Since torture would presumably be sought in connection with investigations into serious criminal or national security matters, the information behind the request for a torture warrant would presumably be secret.As in the case of a search warrant or a wiretap, that would mean an ex parte application to a judge, with no notice to the would-be victim of torture and no independent counsel opposing the request. How rigorous would judicial oversight be in such cases? We can derive some sense from the record of the courts used to approve foreign intelligence wiretaps, and the picture is not impressive. According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, between 1993 and 2003, courts operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were asked to approve nearly 10,000 wiretaps of foreign sovereign agents.Of those, all but four were approved. When an intelligence agent claims that life-and-death matters of national security are at stake, there is no reason to believe that the scrutiny by Dershowitz’s torture courts would be any more rigorous. In the meantime, by signaling that torture is at least sometimes acceptable, Deshowitz would reduce the stigma associated with its use. Torture would no longer be a despicable practice never to be used, but merely one more tool in the law enforcement arsenal.Torture specialists eager to practice their trade would appear, international prohibitions of torture would be undermined, and America’s credibility as an opponent of torture would be deeply tarnished. Dershowitz points out that accepting clandestine torture also legitimizes it, but he seems never seriously to consider the alternative: vigorously trying to stop, and prosecute, anyone who breaches the absolute ban on torture. He ymann and Kayyem take a slightly different approach in their monograph, Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. They foreswear torture but would allow a U. S. resident to order cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as he or she certified to Congress that American lives were at stake. Again, the theory is that such treatment would be rare because the president would be reluctant to invoke that power. But since the president has already claimed â€Å"commander-in-chief authority† to order even torture, and since his attorney general claimed the power as recently as January 2005 to 402 Getting Away with Torture order cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as it is used against non-Americans overseas,21 Heymann and Kayyem are probably overestimating presidential inhibitions.Making the defense against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment depend on the man who has made such treatment a central part of U. S. counterterrorism strategy i s truly asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. Heymann and Kayyem take a similar regulatory approach to coercive interrogation short of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The U. S. Army’s field manual on intelligence interrogation makes clear that coercive interrogation is unnecessary, unreliable, and wrong.That’s because, as most professional interrogators explain, coercive interrogation is far less likely to produce reliable information than the time-tested methods of careful questioning, probing, cross-checking, and gaining the confidence of the detainee. A person facing severe pain is likely to say whatever he thinks will stop the torture. But a skilled interrogator can often extract accurate information from the toughest suspect without resorting to coercion. Yet Heymann and Kayyem would abandon that bright-line rule and permit coercive interrogation so long as the president notifies Congress of the techniques to be used.However, setting American interroga tors free from the firm mooring of the U. S. Army field manual can be dangerous, as we have seen so painfully in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. If mere coercion (itself a violation of the Geneva Conventions in wartime) does not work—and, given that the suspect is supposedly a hardened terrorist, often it will not—interrogators will be all too tempted to ratchet up the pain, suffering, and humiliation until the suspect cracks, regardless of the dubious reliability of information provided in such circumstances.In this way, coercion predictably gives way to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, which in turn gives rise to torture. The proposals from Dershowitz and Heymann and Kayyem suffer from the same fundamental defect: they seek to regulate the mistreatment of detainees rather than reinforce the prohibition against such abuse. In the end, any effort to regulate mistreatment ends up legitimizing it and inviting repetition. â€Å"Never† can not be redeemed if allowed to be read as â€Å"sometimes. † Regulation too easily becomes license.Behind the Dershowitz and Heymann and Kayyem proposals is some variation of the â€Å"ticking bomb† scenario, a situation in which interrogators are said to believe that a terrorist suspect in custody knows where a ticking bomb has been planted and must urgently force that information from him to save lives. Torture and inhumane treatment Kenneth Roth 403 may be wrong, those who talk of ticking bombs would concede, but the mass murder of a terrorist attack is worse, so in these supposedly rare situations, the lesser evil must be tolerated to prevent the greater one.The ticking bomb scenario makes for great philosophical discussion, but it rarely arises in real life, at least not in a way that avoids opening the door to pervasive torture. In fact, interrogators hardly ever learn that a suspect in custody knows of a particular, imminent terrorist bombing. Intelligence is rar ely if ever good enough to demonstrate a particular suspect’s knowledge of an imminent attack. Instead, interrogators tend to use circumstantial evidence to show such â€Å"knowledge,† such as someone’s association with or presumed membership in a terrorist group.Moreover, the ticking bomb scenario is a dangerously expansive metaphor capable of embracing anyone who might have knowledge not just of immediate attacks but also of attacks at unspecified future times. After all, why are the victims of only an imminent terrorist attack deserving of protection by torture and mistreatment? Why not also use such coercion to prevent a terrorist attack tomorrow or next week or next year? And once the taboo against torture and mistreatment is broken, why stop with the alleged terrorists themselves?Why not also torture and abuse their families or associates—or anyone who might provide lifesaving information? The slope is very slippery. Israel’s experience is in structive in showing how dangerously elastic the ticking bomb rationale can become, as described by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in its report on interrogations by Israel’s intelligence agency, the General Security Services (GSS). In 1987, an official government commission, headed by former Israeli Supreme Court president Moshe Landau, recommended authorizing the use of â€Å"moderate physical pressure† in ticking bomb situations.As B’Tselem describes, a practice initially justified as rare and exceptional, taken only when necessary to save lives, gradually became standard GSS procedure. Soon, some 80 to 90 percent of Palestinian security detainees were being tortured until 1999 when the Israeli Supreme Court curtailed the practice. Dershowitz cites the court’s belated intervention as validation of his theory that regulating torture is the best way to defeat it, but he never asks whether the severe victimization of so many Palestinians c ould have been avoided with a prohibitory approach from the start.Notably, Israel’s escalation in the use of torture took place even though a ministerial committee chaired by the prime minister was supervising interrogation practices—a regulatory procedure similar to the one proposed by Heymann and Kayyem. Indeed, in September 1994, following several suicide bombings, the ministerial committee 404 Getting Away with Torture even loosened the restrictions on interrogators by permitting â€Å"increased physical pressure. † Heymann and Kayyem never explain why, especially in light of the abysmal record of the Bush administration, we should expect any better from high-level U. S. officials.The Way Forward Faced with substantial evidence showing that the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were caused in large part by official government policies, the Bush administration must reaffirm the importance of making human rights a guiding force for U. S. conduct, even in figh ting terrorism. That requires acknowledging and reversing the policy decisions behind the administration’s torture and mistreatment of detainees, holding accountable those responsible at all levels of government for this abuse (not just a bunch of privates and sergeants), and publicly committing to ending all forms of coercive interrogation.These steps are necessary to reaffirm the prohibition of torture and ill treatment, to redeem Washington’s voice as a credible proponent of human rights, and to restore the effectiveness of a U. S. -led campaign against terrorism. Yet all that is easier said than done. How can President Bush and the Republican-controlled U. S. Congress be convinced to establish a fully independent investigative commission—similar to the one created to examine the attacks of September 11, 2001—to determine what went wrong in the administration’s interrogation practices and to prescribe remedial steps?How can Attorney-General Gonz ales, who as White House counsel played a central role in formulating the administration’s interrogation policy, be persuaded to recognize his obvious conflict of interest and appoint a special prosecutor charged with investigating criminal misconduct independently of the Justice Department’s direction? These are not steps that the administration or its congressional allies will take willingly. Pressure will be needed. And that pressure cannot and should not come from only the usual suspects.The torture and abuse of prisoners is an affront to the most basic American values. It is antithetical to the core beliefs in the integrity of the individual on which the United States was founded. And it violates one of the most basic prohibitions of international law. This is not a partisan concern, not an issue limited to one part of the political spectrum. It is a matter that all Americans—and their friends around the world—should insist be meaningfully addressed and changed.It is an issue that should preoccupy governments, whether friend or foe, as well as such international organizations and actors as Kenneth Roth 405 the UN Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Committee, High Commissioner on Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on Torture. Taking on the world’s superpower is never easy, but it is essential if the basic architecture of international human rights law and institutions is not to be deeply compromised.As Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the March 2005 International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security: â€Å"Upholding human rights is not merely compatible with successful counter-terrorism strategy. It is an essential element. †22 There is no room for torture, even in fighting terrorism; it risks undermining the foundation on which all of our rights rest. Notes Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. 1. See Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Art. 1. . Ibid. , Art. 16. 3. See â€Å"Malaysia: P. M’s Visit Puts Spotlight on Detainee Abuse,† Human Rights Watch News, 19 July 2004, available online at http://hrw. org/english/ docs/2004/07/19/malays9097. htm. 4. Fifty-fifth Inaugural Ceremony, 20 January 2005; see www. whitehouse. gov/inaugural. 5. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 34-52 Intelligence Interrogation, Washington, D. C. , 28 September 1992, available online at http://atiam. train. army. mil/portal/atia/adlsc/view/public/302562-1/FM/3452/FM34_52. PDF. 6. ‘Torture Intelligence’ Criticized,† BBC News, 11 October 2004, available online at http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/uk/3732488. stm. 7. Douglas Jehl, â€Å"C. I. A. Is Seen as Seeking New Role on Detainees,† New York Times, 16 February 2005. 8. â€Å"Red Double-Crossed Again,† Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2004. 9. Remarks by President Bush and His Majesty King Abdullah II of the Hashemite K ingdom of Jordan in a Press Availability, 6 May 2004, available online at www. whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040506-9. html. 10. Available online at http://www. rw. org/reports/2004/usa0604/. 11. Josh White and Bradley Graham, â€Å"Senators Question Absence of Blame in Abuse Report,† Washington Post, 11 March 2005. 12. The 9/11 Commission Report, see http://a257. g. akamaitech. net/7/257/ 2422/05aug20041050/www. gpoaccess. gov/911/pdf/fullreport. pdf. 13. Testimony of Cofer Black, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, before a joint session of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, 26 September 2002, available online at www. fas. org/irp/congress/ 2002_hr/092602black. tml. (â€Å"All I want to say is that there was ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off. †) 14. â€Å"A Degrading Policy,† Washington Post, 26 January 2005; â€Å"U. S. Justifying Abuse of Detainees,† H uman Rights Watch News, 25 January 2005. 406 Getting Away with Torture 15. Human Rights Watch, The United States’ â€Å"Disappeared†: The CIA’s Long-Term â€Å"Ghost Detainees† (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004), available online at www. hrw. org/backgrounder/usa/us1004/index. htm. 16. Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, â€Å"U. S.Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide,† New York Times, 16 March 2005. 17. Douglas Jehl, â€Å"Questions Are Left by C. I. A. Chief on the Use of Torture,† New York Times, 18 March 2005. 18. Dana Priest, â€Å"CIA’s Assurances on Transferred Suspects Doubted,† Washington Post, 17 March 2005. 19. Neil A. Lewis, â€Å"Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo,† New York Times, 30 November 2004. 20. Memorandum to the President from Alberto R. Gonzales, 25 January 2002, available online at www. msnbc. msn. com/id/4999148/site/newsweek. â€Å"In my judgment, this new paradigm [the war aga inst terrorism] renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded . . . [listed] privileges. †) 21. â€Å"A Degrading Policy† and â€Å"U. S. Justifying Abuse of Detainees. † 22. Keynote address to the Closing Plenary of the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security, â€Å"A Global Strategy for Fighting Terrorism,† Madrid, Spain, 10 March 2005, available online at www. un. org/apps/sg/ sgstats. asp? nid=1345.

Scholarship Essay Competition

Scholarship Essay Competition Scholarship Essay Competition Best Essay Education is a top academic writing service that, for years, has produced high quality academic writing for students in high school, college and graduate/professional programs. We pride ourselves in employing only the best writers, with Bachelor’s through Ph.D. degrees in all academic disciplines, so that we can serve any student need. As students use our service, and receive original, custom academic writing, they are able study those pieces and become better writers themselves. Best Essay Education has created a scholarship essay competition to encourage students to produce their own great essays and have the opportunity to win a sizeable financial award to help with their own educational expenses. Below, you will find all of the details. If you meet our entry requirements and are ready to craft that perfect essay, we urge you to enter. Who is Eligible? To apply, you must be a student at an accredited college, university, community college, oct-tech certificate program, or any graduate or equivalent professional program. High school students who have just enrolled in college, are certainly eligible. Essay Prompts Entrants must choose one of the following three prompts: Should students have the right to evaluate their teachers? Why or why not? If so, how should this be done? What new innovations promise to significantly change your life in college? How will they change your life? Of all of the environment threats, which do you see as the most dangerous right now? Rules 1. The entry is free, but a  student may only enter one time 2. The essay has a word maximum of 1,000 words and must be in English   3. Essays must be submitted through our application form or as a Word attachment, sent to @gmail.com, with the subject line â€Å"Scholarship Essay Contest.†Ã‚   4. Once the essay is submitted, entrants must access their Facebook, Twitter, Flipboard or Stumbleupon page and repost this page. Help us to spread the word about the scholarship to as many students as possible. 5. Entrants must also â€Å"Like† our Facebook page and â€Å"follow† us on Twitter.   6. No offensive, harassing, or incendiary, defaming content may be used.   7. By submitting an essay, the student is certifying that the content in fully original. 8. Entry automatically constitutes agreement on the part of the entrant to all of the Terms and Conditions listed below.   9. Entrant’s full name, email, and social media account ID’s should appear on a separate page and submitted with the essay. Methods of Judging All eligible essays will be evaluated by a panel of Best Essay Education writers and editors. The following criteria will be used: Originality of thought and structure Quality of grammar and composition, including organization, vocabulary, etc. Creativity and depth of thought    The panel shall determine the top three winners, based upon a scored rubric, and will then publish those winner names on its site, and social media pages, as it deems appropriate. Winners will receive notification via email and will be required to reply to those emails. Should a winner fail to respond to the email or, for any reason, refuse the prize award, the award will be provided to the entrant who is next in line. Deadline for entries is 30 November, 2017.    Terms and Conditions:  By submitting an entry to Scholarship Contest, the entrant automatically agrees to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. Entrants attest that any entry submitted to the Best Essay.Education scholarship essay contest will be fully original and is one that has never been submitted or published anywhere else. We reserves the right to subject every entry to a plagiarism-scan, in order to verify originality. Once an entry is submitted, entrant agrees that all ownership rights to that essay are transferred to , and all copyright laws protect ownership by . Entrant understands and agrees that s/he may not reproduce, transfer, share, republish, or otherwise use or distribute the entry essay in any way, without express written permission. Entrant agrees that the company may use his/her name in publishing the contest entrants and/or winners. shall protect all other personal information of every contestant and shall not provide that personal information to any third party.

Can Human-Animal Chimeras Aid Medical Researches

Can Human-Animal Chimeras Aid Medical Researches Chapter 1 The Science behind the Biotechnology Chimeras rely on stem cells and their ability to differentiate into the necessary cells needed by the body. It is this feature of stem cells that allow scientist to culture tissue samples and eventually produce transplantable organs. The procuration of stem cells is the subject of a controversial argument as the methodologies of some variations raises several moral and ethical issues. Human Embryonic Stem Cells (hESCs) As the name suggests, this form of stem cells are derived from human embryos. Contrary to popular belief, these cells are not obtained from eggs fertilised inside a womans body; the embryos are usually donated for research purposes by In Vitro Fertilisation Clinics, with the consent of the donors. The embryos are then suspended in a culture medium ,mirroring similar conditions to that of a mothers womb, allowing the embryo to divide into a mass of cells known as the blastocyst. The cells within the blastocyst are usually referred to as totipotent stem cells. It is here that the first ethical issue arises. The beginning of life is said to be conception or fertilisation therefore this method of obtaining stem cells can be considered as taking a life without its consent. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016) Another limitation of hESCs includes carcinogenic risk when the culture medium is altered in order to induce differentiation of stem cells to form specialised cells such as: heart cells, lungs cells, liver cells and nerve cells. If the wrong mix of proteins or hormones are added to the stem cells theres a potential risk of mutation of DNA resulting in the production of cancerous or faulty cells. Conversely, hESCs are more accepted in the scientific community as the production of it can be done at lower cost with much more efficient differentiation and the cells produced are within a suitable HLA spectrum. [1] (Pappas, 2008) Parthenote Stem Cells It is possible however to bypass the ethical and moral issues that hESCs present, as these issues only arise if the cell is post-fertilisation. Therefore, if stem cells are extracted from an unfertilised egg, then arguably life which begins at conception or fertilisation, has not yet begun, making the use of the stem cells less controversial. However, the ethical implications have not been bypassed altogether, as it can still be argued that stem cells from unfertilised eggs do still have the potential to make a living individual. Parthenogenesis[2] allows for the egg cell to be activated without the need for a sperm. Parthenogenetic embryos will develop to the blastocyst stage and so can serve as a source of embryonic stem cells. Parthenogenetic Embryonic Stem Cells (pESCs) have been shown to have the properties of self-renewal and the capacity to generate cell derivatives from the three germ layers, confirmed by contributions to chimeric animals (Department of Animal Science, Michig an State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA, 2006) Induced Pluripotent stem cells The process behind iPSCs was a big medical breakthrough as it allowed somatic (body) cells to be reprogrammed into regenerative cells. The formation of iPSCs require the donor to undergo shave or punch biopsies, this procedure can be done under local anesthetic and is minimally invasive so the procuration of the adult cells poses no moral or ethical predicaments. The induction of pluripotency in adult somatic cells via proteins, will produce genetical and immune-histocompatibility matches thus, lowering the chance of rejection (if used for transplantation), this also reduces the need for the patient to take immunosuppressant which can result in a compromised immune response. But this form of stem cells comes with its disadvantages, as it is a new concept the cost of production is high. Therefore this process in its current state of development is economically viable for a large population size. Furthermore, the mechanisms behind how the reprogramming factors work are unknown, this pr esents the chances of mutagenesis[3], oncogene activation risk[4], and retroviral gene delivery[5] (Pappas, 2008) Chapter 2 Potential Uses of Animal-Human Chimeras in Therapeutics Vaccinations As of 2015, there are 36.7 million people living with HIV as per WHO and UNAIDS. (WHO, 2016). The field of vaccines for diseases such as Hepatitis-B and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) have taken a heavy toll in developing countries and have faced major failures. In the hopes of improving the current situation. Human-animal chimeras, developed with a humanized immune system could be useful to study infectious diseases, including many neglected diseases. These would also serve as an important tool for the efficient testing of new vaccine candidates to streamline promising candidates for further trials in humans. (Bhan, et al., 2010). Human hematopoietic stem cells, or in laymans terms, bone marrow cells, have the unique capacity of engrafting, greatly expanding, and repopulating immunodeficient mice, with virtually all different types of human immune cells; as shown by the image above. Humanized mouse models are produced via transplantation of CD34+ stem cells and/or implantation of human tissue into immunodeficient mice. Depending on whether tissue or CD34+ cells are used and the strain of mouse, this results in mice which have a part or a complete human immune system. (Garcia, 2016) This xenografted[6] mouse is then used as a disease model[7]. This allows scientists to better understand the mechanisms behind the disease, which results in a more efficient treatment plan for those who suffer from. Hepatitis-B. Another disease model being used are primates, these are considered to be the most accurate as we share a common ancestor. Additionally, primates have the closest metabolic conditions to humans. When this model was injected with HIV-1 (via IV), HIV-2 (via vagina) and SIV (via rectum) the results were advantageous as they provided useful information for vaccine and therapeutic studies. However, the cost of producing this model is very high and raises many moral and ethical concerns; furthermore, despite having some genetic similarities, primates do have different cellular and molecular markers and the time and course of infection could vary. Chimeras are also benefiting the treatment of Japanese encephalitis. This disease is a type of viral brain infection thats spread through mosquito bites, commonly found in South-East Asia. Although theres no cure for Japanese encephalitis, it can be prevented through vaccination, which is usually only available privately (NHS, 2016). A recently developed vaccine, which is an animal-human chimera which is a mouse brain-derived, inactivated JE vaccine (MBV). In order to evaluate its efficacy case controlled studies were carried out. A randomized double-blinded study conducted in northern Thailand, using JE MBV produced in Thailand, yielded an overall effectiveness of 91%. Another trial in Taiwan revealed an effectiveness of approximately 85% when two or more doses were administered. The effectiveness of the JE vaccine in Northern Vietnam was 92.9% efficacious. (Marks, et al., 2012). Control disease progression Another therapeutic use of animal-human chimeras is the development of drugs to aid in the treatment of known diseases.The drug called Rituximab, is a chimeric antibody which means it contains portions of both human and mouse antibodies mixed together. The drug was licensed in 1997 for the treatment of NHL (Non-Hodgkins lymphoma)-a form of cancer which causes B-cells to mutate and divide abnormally. The drug targets the CD20 receptor on B-cells as this receptor is located on the surface of the cell and it doesnt mutate, move inside the cell or fall off in the life cycle of the B-cell. The drug contains the variable domain of the mouse antibody, the portion that specifically binds CD20, along with the constant domain of human antibody, the portion that recruits other components of the immune system to the target-the B-cells and so after it is administered, and a large number of tumour cells are immediately destroyed and eliminated from the body. Rituximab is also used to treat advanced rheumatoid arthritis and it has also been part of anti-rejection treatments for kidney transplants (both involve B cells). The disadvantage only that the mouse antibody was unsuitable for direct use in humans and clinical trial results varied, likely due to the differing sizes of tumors between the patients, (Speaking of Research, 2017) Chapter 3 Potential Uses of Animal-Human Chimeras in Surgery The demand for organ transplantation has rapidly increased all over the world due to the increased incidence of vital organ failure. However, the unavailability of adequate organs for transplantation procedures to meet this growing demand has resulted in a major organ crisis. In 2014, 429 patients died while on the waiting list for an organ transplant- thats up to 3 patients a day. (Knapton, 2015). Currently, the government plan on changing the organ donation system to an opt out system, which hopes to promote organ donation and increase the availability of organs. The opt-out system presumes the donors consent unless the individual expresses a refusal to become a potential donor- allowing the donor to make a free choice (Abouna, 2008). As well as increasing obtainability of organs, it also increases the likelihood of more organs found within a suitable HLA spectrum. (Department of Health and Social Care and Cabinet Office, 2017). But it can be argued that this system of obtaining organs is seen as unfair as majority of organ donors must be recently deceased (excluding kidney donors) therefore the longevity of one persons life is at the cause of anothers death. (World Health Organisation, 2005) To prevent this choice being made, alternative solutions are being developed in order to aid the organ crisis-one of them being animal-human chimeras. Current research on stem cells have shown that they can differentiate into different cell types but cannot effectively produce usable tissues and organs as a culture medium cannot replicate the growth of an organ in a body. A recent breakthrough by the (Salk Institute of Biological Research, 2017) shows a pig-human chimera, which would be capable of making human organs. The research began by creating an interspecies chimera[8] consisting of a rat and mouse. They used a gene editing technology known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to turn off the gene that makes the pancreas. They then inserted rat iPSCs which contained a pancreas gene into the mouse embryo. The result, when implanted into surrogate mouse mothers, was a fully developed mouse with a growing rat pancreas. This concept was then mirrored using pigs embryos and human stem cells; as pigs have similar organ sizes and developmental timescales as humans. Although this experiment had to be halted at 4 weeks of development due to ethical issues and the lack of consent- as the experiment was designed to prove it was possible, not to produce a human organ-we can safely assume that, if the development of the pig was allowed to continue, the pig would have a whole human organ inside it. Theoretically, this concept can then be implemented, producing specific human organs, eliminating the wait for a human donor and reducing the risk of organ rejection. Chapter 4 Potential Uses of Animal-Human Chimeras in Disease Modelling Scientific research is not always accepted as they require the use of controversial methods to obtain the necessary results. The methodologies behind creating chimeras have ethical and moral dilemmas primarily due to the use of animals. There is a large emphasis on animal welfare, although the use of animals as chimeras or in general medical research is considered very valuable as they help the medical community to better under the effects of treatments (drugs or otherwise) on living organisms. The matter still finds itself to be the subject of a very heated debate; as those opposing the use of animals animal rights extremists and anti-vivisectionist groups-believe that animal experimentation is unnecessary and cruel regardless of its benefits ergo the opposition want total abolition of animal research and if the majority supports this view then there will be severe consequences for scientific research. (Festing Wilkinson, 2007) On the other hand, the UK has gone further than most countries in regards to the ethical framework by introducing the Animals (Scientific Procedure) Act 1986 which regulates the use of animal research. Along with this, there is more and more public awareness as polls run by Ipsos MORI state that in 2005 64% of the population agreed with the use of animals in research if the research objectives are important and the animals experience minimal suffering and all alternatives are considered. (Department for Business Freeman, 2014) Another bioethical view that must be considered is `whether we treat the chimeras as animals or human? this arises as some chimeras require the altering of cognitive capacities. The chimeras are to be used to develop a better understanding of diseases such as Parkinsons and Dementia which affect 850 000 people every year (Anon., 2014) Unfortunately, the research is very slow due to moral views as some people regard this form experimentation a violation of human dignity and the order of nature as well as, the initial disagreement of using chimeras in the first place. (Hermern, 2015) Opportunely, there is some support for the use of animal-human chimeras as previous medical techniques that are widely accepted today allow the use of porcine, bovine and equine biological heart valves are implanted in those with cardiac valve dysfunction. Moreover, insulin extracted from porcine pancreas is routinely used with those with diabetes. And so, the prospect of a pig carrying a pancreas or liver of human origin should be justifiable. (Bourret, et al., 2016) Alternatives A lesser conventional view is the alternatives to chimeras, these methods do not require the use of animals to carry out medical research, which hopefully, should eliminate bioethical arguments. The issue that arises with this is the efficiency and viability of the results. The alternatives to chimeras include cell cultures, human tissues and computer models. Almost all cell types can be recreated in laboratory conditions and these can be coaxed to grow into 3D structures- miniature organs. Cell cultures have also been used to create `organs-on-chips which can be used to study disease mechanisms, as well as, drug metabolism. This form biotechnology has already managed to mimic the heart, lungs and kidneys. The goal is to be able to this for all organ systems. The idea is already aided in the development in the production of vaccines, and drug testing on top of aided research in the study of cancers, sepsis and AIDS. Human tissues can be donated by both healthy and diseased volunteers through surgeries such as biopsies, cosmetic surgery and transplants or via post mortem- such as brain tissue from a patient with Multiple Sclerosis to help better understand a large variety of diseases furthermore the tissues can make more effective models than through chimeras as they will contain only human DNA thus providing a more relevant way of studying human biology. Finally, computer models can be used to create virtual experiments based on existing information. Models of the musculoskeletal systems, heart, lungs etc. already exist. Inopportunely, this method isnt as effective as testing in vivo as the concept is very theoretical. (Anon., n.d.)