Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry known for its simplicity and elegance. In English, haiku are written as three lines, with a syllable count of five, seven, and five on in the first, second, and third line.
In The Green Man's opinion nothing softens the blow of a systems failure better than an error message delivered in Haiku. Consider some examples:
Seeing my great fault
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again
-- Chris Walsh
I'm sorry, there's -- um --
insufficient -- what's-it-called?
The term eludes me ...
-- Owen Mathews
A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski
and perhaps my favourite
Errors have occurred.
We won't tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.
-- Charlie Gibbs
As anyone can see, this adds a sense of elegance to an otherwise exasperating experience. Now researchers at Kyoto have developed a computer program that can write Haiku on your behalf. It may be the dawning of a new era in error messages.
Existing Haiku courtesy of Salon 21
Courtesy of CDC here is a graph of youth firearm deaths by country. If you are a parent who lives in the USA it may be time to ask whether tightening gun laws might be a good idea.
Well Saddam is dead after experiencing the indignity of a kangaroo court. (The Green Man was intrigued to discover that this term was not limited to the Australian idiom.) Of course the injustice of his trial and the nature of his presumed torture and actual execution were so much less than that he inflicted on others that the general opinion seems to be that we should overlook it in the name of the greater good of humanity, which is, of course, what most people will do.
The outrage it seems is not that he failed to receive a fair trial or that he was killed by the state but that we were forced to confront the reality of what was going on via illicit videoing of his execution by some of the attending officials.
Michael Leunig has written and insightful piece in the Age on this very issue.
I believe we now have the unique modern cruelty of the refined and educated Western man; the respected gentleman in the fine suit who has never much dirtied his hands or killed a living creature, never meditated upon a rotting corpse and never had his consciousness infected with the messy organic substances of violent death - yet who can sign with an elegant golden pen the document that unleashes the cowardly invasion and who can then go out to dine on claret and lamb cutlets.
We have the situation where the general consensus was that Saddam should die but that we should be shielded from the sordid reality of the actual event. We choose not to confront the reality of the death of the cow when we pick up the packets of meat in the supermarket and we are outraged when we are confronted with the consequence of our collective belief that this man should die.
I speak from the Australian perspective of course. In America there appears to be much more censorship of what goes to air on television. Perhaps if you are in America you can continue to focus on the greater good and remain blissfully unaware of the fact that we lowered ourselves to his level with the sordidness and cruelty that we sanctioned against this man.
Here is a photo of a young Middle Eastern belly dancer serving at the bush tucker camp. Such a nice juxtaposition and a statement on the sort of images that we like to think typify Australia’s inclusiveness and tolerance.
The National Folk Festival is only 5 km from our national parliament building and a world away from the politicians that occupy it. Sadly our politicians are very selective on those that we are to include and be tolerant of.
The Green Man naively thought that the word “refugee” meant someone seeking refuge. In the eyes of our government it clearly means someone seeking refuge who comes from a country that we are currently vilifying. We just prefer to close our eyes to the human rights abuses by our neighbours and heaven forbid some “illegal immigrants” arrive speaking of such unspeakable things. It is best for all if we just ship them to a remote island where they have little access to the press.
Unlike most Australians, our Prime Miniature takes pride in knowing our national anthem word for word. It is amazing that he does not choke on the words of the second second verse.
For those who come across the sea
We've boundless plains to share
Perhaps he just mumbles that bit.
Oh I know what it is! The West Papuans came across a Straight, Torres Straight, not a Sea. That's why they don't qualify.
America prides itself on the liberty of its citizens however the liberty to choose to end your life several weeks or months before it would inevitably end anyway is one that that groups calling themselves "Right To Life" are trying to deny US citizens (it is one that Australia also denies). The option, known as Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, has been legal in Oregon since November 1997 and is taken primarily by terminally ill cancer patients.
The Green Man thinks that these groups should, perhaps be renamed "Obligation To Life" groups after all a "right" is something that you can choose to forego. In the the US for example, if you are over 21, you have a right to drink alcohol but you don't find many groups protesting over those who choose not to comsume it.
Recent studies have shown that people choosing to end their lives
- are not depressed
- seek assistance only after a deliberative and thoughtful process rather than on impulse
This has not detered those that The Green Man, somewhat unkindly, refers to as "those right wing fundamentalist loonies" from seeking to trapple on the rights of those of their fellow citizens who find themselves in a situation that, it is fair to say, we all dread. Weakened by cancer and chemotherapy, they are near death and with a life expectancy that is counted in days, it is entirely reasonable that these people want to have power over the one thing that is left for them, their death.
The Bush Administration has tried to turn this right into an obligation in the past. John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, announced in November 2001 that the Administration had reversed the response to the Oregon law espoused by Janet Reno, the attorney general in the Clinton administration which stated that
The federal government's pursuit of adverse actions against Oregon physicians who fully comply with that state's Death With Dignity Act would be beyond the purpose of the C.S.A. (Controlled Substances Act)
In summary the Bush Administration went the doctors under this act because they claimed that suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" under regulations of the federal Controlled Substances Act. They failed.
It is now back on the agenda and once more terminally ill patients and those that care for them are faced with an onslaught from those who would deny them their liberty to choose to end their lives a month/week/day earlier than it might otherwise end.
When the patient is a child the emotion and the ethical dilemma is magnified immeasureably. St Judes, a hospital in the US that specialises in pediatric cancer and palliative care of children (how sad that we need such a facility), and Sydney Children's Hospital in Australia have found that child cancer patients as young as 10 years old who are aware that their disease is incurable have the ability to participate meaningfully in discussions of their own end-of-life care with family members and the health care team. They say
These children identified their deaths as an outcome of their decisions to end or limit treatment, understood that they were participating in decisions about the end of their own lives, and recognized the consequences of their decisions.
Staggeringly, faced with all of their troubles and their awareness of their own limited life expectancy, these children and adolescents were motivated more by their concern for others than by their own needs. Entering into a trial of a drug from which she would gain little or nothing one 14-year-old girls said
If I can help someone else, that's wonderful, I think
another said
If I don't take it, my family would support me, but they don't want me to quit. Grandpa said he would worry himself to death if I don't try it. My boyfriend wants me to take it for him. I don't want to do it but for my family.
A parent, of course, will do anything and everything they can to try an cure their child and it takes great courage to withdraw treatment to allow your child respite from the tortuous regime of chemo and radio therapy. A 15-year-old girl with acute lymphoblastic leukemia said
We decided not to go with chemo because I don't want to be sick the rest of my days, and it's not like it is going to cure me, so I just said, 'We'll go home and take it from there.'
These children know they are shortening their lives but they want to actually enjoy the few days that they have left as best they can. They will inevitably, and often quickly, reach a stage where they are in complete agony and are finished with life; they will wish to die. The situation is tragic and far more complex than the simplistic scenario that is painted by the "Right To Life" extremists.
Source New York Times and here St Judes Research here.
Here is a link to a story in Der Speigel. It makes harrowing reading but it is a must read if your are American, British or Australian. Read this and weep that we have become what we detested in Saddam Hussien.
Possibly the most telling comment in this article on the torture of innocent Iraqis is this one by an Iraqi tortured by Americans in Abu Graib
In the past, he says, he believed that forgiveness is always better than revenge, but now he is filled with a hatred that he cannot shake off. The worst thing about it, says Hajj Ali, is that he hates himself for hating others."How can it be," he asks, "that the victims are not being called as witnesses, that no one wants to hear their version of the story? How can it be that someone like Davis gets only half a year in prison?"
"Davis and the others," he says, "killed our souls."
It seems that it is not Islamists turning Iraqis into suicide bombers, it is the Americans.
I could include an image of a lynching here but I think we have been confronted by those images often enough. Some of us are deeply saddened and embarrased by these images of the way in which whites have treated others in the past. Others it seems do not experience similar feelings.
It took the government of America a long time to outlaw lynchings, over 300 bills before parliament. Never-the-less it is now banned but what do you do if you are a community that embraced lynchings. Well it seems you simply exploit the justice system to carry on the practice. Researchers at Ohio State university found that the number of death sentences for all criminals – Black and white – were higher in states with a history of lynchings. But the link was even stronger when only Black death sentences were analyzed.
David Jacobs, an author of the study says
Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past. This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection.
Interestingly in states with a growing black population, the increase in the number of death sentences tracked the increasing black population. Of course the USA is very conscious that it is not seen as racist and this has resulted in a perverse situation where the number of whites sentenced to death also increases with the increase in the black population.
There is an upper limit on this trend. When the percentage of blacks reaches 20% the number of death sentences starts to decrease. Dr Dave suggests that this is because at this level blacks have enough votes and political influence within states to reduce the number of death sentences.
It used to be Personnel when The Green Man started work, all those years ago. Then we experienced the pandemic that was Economic Rationalism, a phenonemon which was mistakenly thought to be a rational approach to Economics but proved to be an extremely economic approach to Rational thinking.
Personnel gave way to Human Resources and mass retrenchment took place of middle aged middle management professionals who knew how to run businesses to make way for the young go-getters who didn't. Many businesses failed because it takes more than green accountants versed in Kanesian economics to run most companies. Of course the "change consultants" who drove this devestating revolution that saw the economic crash of the late 1980's did not take moral or fiscal responsibility for the devastation that they caused.
They lay low for a while and now they are back with their next wave of new age, new fangle claptrap with which to seduce senior executives who are paid far too much to not fall for this modern snake oil. Their salaries are clearly unjustified because they are flocking to learn of the latest trend "Human Capital Management". Guess what? The employees who actually know what they are doing might actually be valuable to an organisation and who better to tell you this than some highly paid consultants. Yep for a mere $3848.90 you can spend 2 days being told that people with existing corporate knowledge are more valuable to you than new recruits. Well that is perhaps underselling the conference, you also get a cocktail party at the end of the second day but I have been to a few of these sorts of things and you never get cocktails only beer and wine. That sums up the whole experience I suppose, promise cocktails and deliver beer.
I know you are ready to sign up so click here.
Sixty years ago at this very time the Enola Gay dropped the worlds first atomic bomb to be exploded in anger over the city of Hiroshima, Japan killing 10's of thousands instantly and eventually 242,437 citizens of Hiroshima. Hiroshima had an estimated population of 350,000 at the time.
It was essentially an act of terror but we don't call it that because our side did it. It had the desired result with the surrender of Japan on August 15th, 1945 and endless debate has been entered into as to whether this rapid conclusion of the war justified the means. (It always comes back to that doesn't it; an argument over whether the ends justified the means.)
So what is the difference between killing 242,437 innocent civilians with an atomic bomb and killing approximately the same number with bayonet and bullet, as the Japanese army did in Nanking in 1937? Nothing of course except that the deaths of the 200,000 - 300,000 chinese killed by the Japanese are laid upon the consciences of a division or more of Japanese soldiers. The deaths of the 242,437 civilians who died from this single bomb rest upon the consciences of the 12 airmen who flew the Enola Gay on that fateful day.
Those amongst you who are of gung-ho inclination may well think that these airmen were fortunate to be able to serve their country in such a fashion and they may have thought exactly the same thing. Clearly however, one has to be a complete psychopath to not feel the weight of 242,437 innocent souls upon ones conscience regardless of how justified the cause. None of these airmen understood fully the power of the device they were carrying until it detonated. As the plane flew away it was hit by a shock wave from the explosion, Co-pilot Robert Lewis looked over his shoulder, he turned to the Pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Tibbets and said "Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!"
Then when the full realisation came upon him he said
"My god! What have we done? If I live for 100 years I will never get this out of my mind."
There were many casualities of this terrible war, and amongst them were the airmen of the Enola Gay.
(Suffix: As I was writing this piece one of my dogs set up a mournful howl in the back yard. It was picked up by some of the neighbouring dogs as well. It is not his normal behaviour, it was quite eerie. What an appropriate auditory backdrop while I was writing.)
In response to the bombings in London, US President George W Bush stated that the USA is firm in its resolve to prosecute the "war on terror". This is, of course, consistent with the position he has held since the aeroplanes crashed into the World Trade Centre in 2001.
As I have said before, this is new use of the word "war", which is defined as
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties
Terror is a state of mind and not a Nation, State or Party of Individuals and, accordingly, it is an inaccurate use of the term "war".
If we however we accept this as a legitimate evolution of the word "war", then clearly the war is being won by the terrorists since, I believe it is fair to say, that people in the west are more scared now than they were in 2000 and possibly even more scared than they were in December 2001.
One could also raise legitimate questions over whether the west, in general, and the USA, in particular, have been guilty of terrorist acts themselves. If the definition of a terrorist act is one
the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear
Is the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq by means of a cluster bomb dropped from a US warplane any less of a terrorist act than the killing of innocent civilians via the detonation of a car bomb? I am not talking about the justification or otherwise for the act but merely whether it could be regarded as intimidating and instilling fear and it is difficult to understand how it could not.
Looking at it dispassionately, it is clear that it is difficult to understand how the tactic of terrorism can be eliminated when those seeking to eliminate it are practicing it themselves. Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway, University of London postulates that terrorist activity
might be the natural endpoint for all modern armed conflicts. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Colombia, which had quite different causes and began as very different kinds of conflict, are developing a characteristic signature of long-term terrorist activity.
Mary Kaldor, a political scientist at the London School of Economics and Political Science agrees. She says
US military action in Iraq has been predicated on the view that it is a war of the sort that was fought until the middle of the twentieth century, where two military states battle for control of a territory. The US failure to understand the reality in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like is immensely dangerous.
If one is to understand how we have arrived at this point and where things are likely to proceed from here it is necessary to put aside our moral position and the fact that we are participants and view the Iraq conflict from the perspect of say a board game. The rise of insurgency in Iraq can be viewed as a direct result of the overwhelming force with which the war was initially prosecuted. Presumeably the intent of the "shock and awe" campaign was to rapidly instill a sense of defeat in the opposition in Iraq. Sadly, its real effect was the fragmentation of the opposition into small cells that are proving a highly effective resistance to the US occupation in Iraq.
"Why is this so effective?" The answer is disconcertingly simple. There appears to be a natural law that governs conflicts that was first enumerated by British mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson around fifty years ago from studying battles within the context of the second world war. Conflicts in Iraq, Colombia and even England, appear comply with this numerical model.
The big question of course is whether there is actually a war to be won. If there is then it will not be won using a 20th mindset on how wars at to be conducted. The Metropolitan Police in London have a different and possibly more constructive perspective on the events that occured in London, referring to them a criminal acts that will be investigated in the same manner as other criminal acts that occur in London and whose perpetrators will be prosecuted using the standard judicial processes that exist within the British justice system. Their mindset is that this is not so much a war as a group of anti-social individuals who must be identified and the risks that they pose eliminated through, most likely, imprisonment.
Whilst currently only authorized in the state of Oregon for terminally ill patients, the practice of doctors prescribing medications for patients to self administer to kill themselves is widespread and common throughout the USA. It is commonly recognised by most doctors that whilst it is illegal it is a part of their role neccessitated by compassion for their patients.
A fascinating study by Dr Robert Pearlman published in of General Internal Medicine provides some insight into the mindset of patients requesting such assistance from their doctor. The study shows some clear commonalities amongst these people:
- They are not depressed
- They seek assistance only after a deliberative and thoughtful process rather than on impulse
There were essentially three major reasons for seeking such assistance:
1. illness-related experience - pain, loss of function, fatigue
2. loss of sense of self or identity
3. fears about the future, particularly as they relate to their disease and loss of bodily function.
The underlying consideration in all of this is the quality of the dying experience. An issue that most of us find confronting to consider, not the least because it forces us to confront our own mortality at a level of detail most of us are not equiped for.
Six Navy SEALs and the wives of two commandos have filed a lawsuit accusing The Associated Press of invasion of privacy and endangering lives by distributing pictures of them with Iraqi prisoners.
It is hard to imagine how publishing the pictures could make these guys any more at risk than they already are, being an occupying force in a country racked with civil and military unrest.
It is also worthy of note that none of the Iraqi prisoners pictured are sueing. Presumeably a number of them are already dead from the torture that the Navy SEALs inflicted so the risk of future death is fairly low for them. For the rest they are probably safer having their photos in the press.
I'm sorry but the self-centred irony and ethical myopia of this law suit beggars belief.
Here is a photo of Sabrina Harman, she was a "specialist" with the US army at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Specialist" is US Army speak for "torturer". She is having fun with the body of a dead Iraqi who most likely died of the abuses he suffered at the hands of Sabrina and the other torturers at Abu Ghraib.
If you ignore the dead body in the foreground this could be the photo of any happy young woman. In fact research shows that it could have been virtually any young woman, or man for that matter. Professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University says
Could any average 18-year-old have tortured these prisoners? I would have to answer, 'Yes, just about anyone could have -- unfortunately.'
I have written of earlier research by Stanley Milgrim that proved this point in a research lab with hypothetical victims, sadly Abu Ghraib gave us a brutal and real life example of the sadism that is a part of us all. What are you thinking right now? Perhaps you are thinking something like "I couldn't/wouldn't torture and murder other person."
Here is the sad reality, given the right circumstances you would and what is more you would enjoy it. Not a comfortable thought is it. Professor Susan says
Ordinary people can engage in incredibly destructive behavior if so ordered by legitimate authority. Subordinates not only do what they are ordered to do, but what they think their superiors would order them to do, given their understanding of the authority's overall goals
No doubt Sabrina is back in the USA now and probably is, or will be, one of the sacrificial lambs who will be prosecuted to ease the collective conscience of the US public. Is she a bad person? Reflect on Professor Susans research before you rush into judging Sabrina. If you have an 18 year old son or daughter it could have been them in that photo, or it could have been you!
I have switched comments back on because I would particularly welcome discussion on this entry.
Read about Professor Susan Fiskes research here.
Here is a excellent link to Stanley Milgrims original work on Compliance kindly contributed by Carol Maltby.
The genie was let out of the bottle when "Dolly" the sheep was cloned in 1997. It was the first time that a mammal had been successfully cloned. Dolly was created from a cell from another sheeps udder.
Now reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has announced at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia that his research team has created cloned monkey embryos. It is the first documented case of a primate being cloned. At this stage none of the implanted embryos survived to the end of pregnancy but it is a significant step forward in cloning technology.
It is only a matter of time until the technology is advanced enough to successfully clone humans. Then it will not be a question of "can we" but "should we". Amongst the vast world-wide academic community there will undoubtedly some who answer "yes".
you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
All right, I know a lot of you have already jumped to a conclusion about what I am going to talk about here and are wondering why I am still harping on about it. But I am not talking about the myth that Saddam was behind 9/11, I am talking about the myth that GWB promolgated the Saddam myth.
New research by Scott Althaus, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Devon Largio, a law student at Vanderbilt University shows that, whilst the Bush Administration was happy to leverage of the myth, they did not in fact create it.
At the time of 9/11 they point to the fact that there was a high level of predisposition by the American public to believe that Saddam was behind most of the dasterdly deeds that were arising at the time. Also analysis of the questions asked in the polls conducted at the time indicated that the wording of the questions overstated the involvement of Saddam reflecting, one presumes, the bias of the organisations conducting the polls. Neither of these two aspects were under the control of the Bush Administration.
There is no doubt however that the climate and the poll results were seized upon by the Bush Administration to bolster the case for launch a preemptive strike against Iraq. Devon Largio identified 27 different rationales the Bush Administration used during the lead up to the war to justify it's desire to launch the war. These changed during the prewar period. She looked at three distinct periods.
1 - 12 Sept 2001 - Dec 2001
2 - State of the Union Address - Apr 2002
3 - 12 Sept 2002 - Oct 2002
In the first period talk of Iraq and their potential involvement in 9/11 was almost exclusively raised by reporters in the form of questions to the Administration. Senator John McCain was the only congressman to actively initiate consideration of Iraq during this period. It is in the second period when Bush does an almost complete change of focus from bin Laden to Hussein. This occured in January 2002 and was adopted by the media in February 2002.
By phase three the Bush Administration was wholeheartedly pushing the line that launching a war on Iraq was the right and appropriate thing to do.
Through the campaign five of the 27 rationales were consistently used
-War on Terror
-WMD
-Lack of Inspections
-Removal of Hussein Regime
-Saddam was not a nice person.
She claims that analysis shows that new rationales were being thought up and introduced through the campaign. The rationale that Tony Blair hung his hat upon, that there was an "imminent threat" emerged in phase 3 in Bush's address to the UN. Rapidly this rationale was adopted by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Lott, Dashle, the Congressional Record and, of course Tony Blair.
Read more of Devons research here. It is quite well written, unlike so many academic papers.
Read more on the bias of Americans against Saddam here.
There is much in the world that is bad and The Green Man often chooses to turn away rather than confront the manner in which certain human beings treat other human beings, however there are instances when this is simply not possible.
This is the photo of a mother at the funeral of her two daughters, aged 11 and 12. They were deliberately machine gunned in the back by terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan. They are dressed in their most special frocks for their funeral.
This was no accident. They were not accidently caught in the crossfire. As they fled the school in which they had been held hostage a gunman took them in his sights and cold-bloodedly pulled the trigger on his automatic weapon. Each sustained multiple gun shot wounds to the back and died as a consequence.
What sort of adult human being does that to two innocent school girls?
I am wracked with grief. Amongst all the horrific things in the world this stands out. We are all lessened by sharing our humanity with such barbarism.
We do not know the full details of incident yet but if, as has been suggested, this is the work of Islamic militants then the religion has a lot to answer for. A climate has been created where individuals, in the name of their religion, think it is acceptable to cause the deaths of 350 human beings, many of them children. Nothing justifies the cold blooded slaughter of innocent children. NOTHING!
There is nothing to say or do except grieve.
Physician Assisted Suicide is the provision by a doctor of a prescription for a lethal combination of drugs that will allow you to end your life at the time of your choosing. In Oregon this is a perfectly legal practice and one that is considered by approximately 17% of people in Oregon who have the misfortune of having a terminal illnes. Ultimately 2% of these individuals formally request the prescription and 1% take advantage of it.
Oregon provides a legally sanctioned option that is illegal in most other places but it is still utilised elsewhere. In most places a person can obtain a satisfactory mixture of drugs to acheive the desired result. So would you recon that legalising the practice in Oregon has lead to a rush in suicides amongst the terminally ill in that state? Paradoxically it has had the reverse effect. PAS is lower in Oregon than in states where it is illegal. Legalising the practice means that various options that are available to the dying person can be explored frankly and openly. Many who consider PAS choose improved medication for pain and depression, others utilise palliative care. Additionally the researchers observe
Another explanation is that Oregon's Death With Dignity Act has significant hurdles and many patients simply can't make it over them.
So who uses PAS? The profile of a utiliser of this facility is younger, white, not very religious and battling cancer. Also those who are already in pallative care and have tried the other options are far more likely to take advantage of PAS.
Sadly many of you reading this will find yourself in the situation of knowing someone in this unfortunate position in the future. The challenge for you is to put aside your own values, beliefs and prejudices and support the person in ways that are meaningful to the person dying. These people are often too sick to fight for what they want for their final days and it is your responsibility to help them make choices that are meaningful and valid for them. It behoves any caring person to assist them in this task and not burden the dying person with their own grief and expectations.
Read more on this research here.
Do you recognise this statement.
I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing.
A doctor would because it it part of the Hippocratic Oath that each doctor takes.
I wrote some time ago on the conflict that exists for US military medical practitioners between their duties as military personnel and their responsibilities as doctors under the Hippocratic Oath.
Sadly and predictably The New England Journal of Medicine reports
There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal.We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners' medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities.
How low has the US military sunk, this sort of behaviour is terrorism. It is no wonder that the US is loosing the "War On Terror" when they are one of its enthusiastic exponents.
The Green Man encourages you to visit The New England Journal of Medicine and read the depressing facts for yourself. He prefers to try and maintain the illusion that we are actually the good guys without too many of the facts to cloud that view.
In Australia we often marvel at the political correctness that appears to burden America, like the guy who got the sack for referring to someone as "niggardly", which is a word that, other than phonetically, is completely unrelated to the word "nigger" and means "Grudging and petty in giving or spending."
Or the long standing computing jargon of a "master/slave" configuration being banned in certain computer installations in California because it might offend black Americans. It is tedious and expensive to remove these references but bowing before the god of political correctness is essentially harmless is, in this case.
Now let us turn our attention to a drug called BiDil that was produced by a Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company NitroMed. It was first trialed in 1980s but was abandoned when it failed to live up to expectations in the treatment of heart failure. The problem is that it is phenonemally efficacious in Black Americans and almost completely useless in White Americans. Sadly the American taboo on suggesting that there are any physiological racial differences between blacks and whites precluded any specific racial testing of the drug, although there were hints from the statistical analysis that these differences did exist.
Anne Taylor of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis has stepped into line of the flame-thrower of public opinion and retested the drug. Testing on 1,000 black heart-failure patients has been shown the drug to be so successful that testing was suspended well ahead of time. With luck the drug will be receive FDA approval in 2005.
This is a case of science bending to the political sensitivities of the community at large and as a consequence a valuable heart treatment has gone unused for 20 years. The pressure on the testers not to distinguish, or factor in, race when testing this drug has cost countless black lives over the last 20 years.
Science must be constrained by ethics but it must be constrained by true ethical practice not by pressure by people and special interest groups with their own agendas to promote.
It is interesting to look at why species become extinct. There are two basic reasons, firstly a key component necessary to their survival is removed, such as warmth, as in the asteroid created global winter that probably lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The other reason is the introduction of a predator to the environment and man is probably the most pervasive predator of all. The introduction of man to New Zealand saw the extinction of the giant moa. In Australia a range of megafauna went extinct with the arrival of the first Australian Aboriginals.
Of course a new predator does not usually drive a species to extinction, the typical outcome is that initially population numbers plunge as the species adapts to the presence of the predator. Over time the population recovers as it evolves strategies for coping with the predator's presence, although often they do not recover to what they originally were because of the changed dynamics of the environment.
It is easy to overlook the fact that these fundamental laws of nature apply equally to humans as to any other species. For humans, however, predators are not now large carnivores, we have long since developed ways to manage our interaction with these animals. The predators that we have never fully conquered are microscopic, bacteria and viruses. A great predator facing the human species at the moment is AIDS, although interestingly malaria rivals AIDS in deaths and infections, causing more than 300 million acute illnesses and at least one million deaths annually.
Next week, over 15,000 delegates will converge on Bangkok for the XV International AIDS conference. Taking a dispassionate view of this pandemic it is interesting to speculate why there is no similar body for malaria. The answer is probably that we understand and have a cure for malaria. In other words we can control it in areas where people are wealthy enough to do so. AIDS is the bogey man because we do not know how to control it. Even the wealthy are susceptible to this virus and no amount of money can cure it at this stage. When the wealthy feel their mortality, that is when there is some real action.
We can overlook the poor starving to death or dying of a curable disease. On the other hand their death by a disease that could also strike us is completely unacceptable because it reminds us that we are a vulnerable and mortal animal that is at the mercy of nature, the same as all the rest.
If you are interested in following the AIDs conference visit Nature who is covering it.
If you would like to find out more about malaria and its impact on the human population then visit The World Health Organisation.
The western system of justice, which the USA and others are attempting to install in Iraq, contains the concept of a presumption of innocence. It also contains a concept of a fair and impartial trial. These are two significant impediments to him ever actually being found guilty. As Ewen MacAskill observes in The Guardian
The problem is in tying Saddam and Milosevic to actual crimes. Both established the climate in which these crimes took place but legally it is difficult to establish guilt. The law becomes confused with the politics of the time.
The other problem is finding a jury who you could legitimately claim would approach the trial with an open mind. In most western judicial systems he would never go to trial for exactly this reason.
Here is a gigantic challenge for the USA. If, in a USA style of justice, Saddam should be released would the USA support such an action. The Green Man seriously doubts it and as such their claim to want justice for the people of Iraq, including Saddam, is mere window dressing.
Following World War II work was undertaken by a number of psychologists in a bid to understand how the horrors of Nazi Germany came to happen. How was it that such a large percentage of the German population participated in these horrors so willingly? Was it a flaw in the collective German psyche? Could it happen again in a different context?
One of the key players in this research was an American psychologist called Stanley Milgrim. In summary he found that, rather than a flaw in the Germans, it is part of the psychological makeup of all of us. Given the right circumstances most of us could be perpetrators of almost unspeakable horrors. These torturers and murderers were ordinary people like you and me who picked up their brown paper bag lunch, kissed their wife and children good-bye in the morning and took the bus to work. A night they came home, had dinner and enjoyed a happy family life.
Many people find this a very uncomfortable mental image; it is so much easier to imagine them as monsters. The hard fact is that though that, placed in an appropriate situation, most of us are capable of these horrific acts. Think of the ordinary Americans perpetrating torture in Iraq at the moment. They are just ordinary folks doing what they were told to do.
The sorts of experiments that Stanley Milgrim undertook would probably not be allowed to be undertaken today, at least, not in the form that he conducted them. If you feel a little uncomfortable about me suggesting that you might be capable of torture imagine how the participants in the experiments felt. They had it proved that they were capable of these appalling acts. That is a difficult thing to reconcile and some were undoubtedly scarred by the experience of participating.
The fact that we could not/would not conduct the experiments today does not mean, however, that we cannot benefit from the research. This research sheds a valuable light on the human psyche. It is a dilemma that faces German reproductive researchers to this day. Part of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during WW II was a scientific program called 'Rassenhygiene', known today as eugenics, or the breeding of a master race. Today we view this as completely unacceptable yet that does not mean that there was not valuable information that arose from this form of research. It is, however, a brave researcher that delves into this source of data. No matter how valuable and valid the information is, it is so tainted with the Nazi stain that it risks discrediting any research that is based upon its findings.
This is reflected in the almost complete lack of research in reproductive science that took place in post-war Germany until the early 1980s. It is the topic of a paper by Professor Rolf Winau, director of the centre for humanities and health sciences at the Charite medical school in Berlin to European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. It has also given rise to Germany having some of the most draconian reproductive legislation in the developed world, including the banning of many common reproductive practices including the freezing of embryos, use of surrogate eggs or sperm, and screening for genetic diseases. Perhaps it is time to move on, we should not forget the past but we should not allow it to unnecessarily cripple future science either.
I am sorry, I am trying really hard not to post on the abuse and torture of prisoners by the USA, it is getting so much coverage elsewhere and it so depressing. Here is one small slip in my resolve.
The Smoking Gun has posted a copy of a memo to Donald Rumsfeld requesting authority to use certain techniques on the inmates of Guantanamo that the ICRC has defined as torture including
removal of clothing, using dogs to intimidate inmates, and the use of stress-positions (like standing), for a maximum of four hours.
Donald Rumsfeld did give his approval reluctantly. He was reluctant because he did not feel they were harsh enough. One could give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he did not appreciate the full reality of what he was approving but how likely is that?
There was a big cufuffle a week or so ago because of some words uttered by a child on PlaySchool, which is a superb preschool childrens program on the Australian federal broadcaster, ABC. The little girl was telling about a trip
I’m Brenna, that’s me in the blue. My mums are taking me and my friend Merrin to an amusement park. Lots of different rides to go on. Here’s the merry-go-round. This is one of my favourite rides. I love riding the merry-go-round
In a staggering display of a collective Freudian slip the conservative side of politics expressed outrage at the introduction of a lesbian theme to the preschoolers program. I say "Freudian slip" because nowhere in the program did it indicate that it was, in fact, a lesbian relationship. Brenna could have been referring to her adoptive mother and her biological mother or to her biological mother and her biological father's new wife or a number of other family configurations that have nothing to do with a lesbian relationship. In spite of this there is a reasonable chance that her biological mother was in a lesbian relationship and that the other woman was her mothers partner.
In a blow to those who were living under the delusion that the ALP were any less socially conservative that the Libs, their current leader Mark Latham was similarly outraged.
It is important to understand exactly what the outrage is about and it is not about the exposure to the existence of lesbian relationships since children are increasingly exposed to this in their real life kindergarten experience. Noone in their real mind would suggest that children growing up in a lesbian household should be denied access to preschool learning at a kindergarten and, as such, other children will know and talk to children with two mums. The outrage is presumably that including it in a television program somehow legitimises it in a way that experiencing it in real life at kindergarten does not. A bit of a tenuous argument in The Green Man's opinion.
It seems that many people in Australia cling to the myth that all Australians are blonde haired and blue eyed and grow up in a heterosexual family with two loving biological parents. Your children know that this is not the case. They experience the diversity of the Australian family experience at kinder and at school.
It makes The Green Man pleased that he lives in such an enlightened and free society. There are repressive regimes where freedom is restricted in these things and parents have their children taken away from them pursuing a relationship with another of the same sex. Sadly, once again, the bastion of the free world, USA, falls into this category. Liz Ditz of I Speak Of Dreams reports on the fate of a resident of the State of Idaho who is allowed access to his two children only if “...the defendant does not reside in the same house as his homosexual male partner.” Read his story here.
Following that logic he is presumably allowed to engage in homosexual acts in private to his hearts content but live alone and he can have access to his children. On the other hand he could be perfectly celebate but share a house with another man and he is not allowed access to his children. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems in Idaho you can emotionally abuse and/or neglect your children to your hearts content if you are heterosexual but you are not allowed to love them if you are homosexual. How sad!
The Green Man sits firmly in the heterosexual camp and yet he does not feel threatened by the existence of homosexuals nor does he feel the need to pretend that they don't exist. Further he cannot understand why other heterosexuals do.
The New York Times reports on Lea Fastow, former assistant treasurer of the Enron Corporation, who has been sentenced to 12 months in the Federal Detention Center in Houston for fraud. She will be sharing the facility with approximately 1,100 other inmates. It may not be your regular sort of community but it is a community never the less. The main distinguishing features of this high security community are
- the violent nature of many of its members
- the racist, hardline and sexist views that predominate
- that whites, like Lea, are a minority group and she can expect to suffer accordingly.
This will undoubtedly be a very difficult time for her and one wonders what she will draw from it. It is an opportunity for a woman from the ruling class, who is used to living in a luxury mansion with servants and all mod cons, to gain an insight into what life is like for the poor and disenfranchised of her community. It will be a difficult trial for her but, as The Green Man has observed on other occasions, great jewels of wisdom are only confered by way of great trials. She has an opportunity to have her life transformed and enriched by the experience if she has the strength of character for it. The Green Man hopes she has because she has the capacity and resources to do great good in her community when she is released from prison.
The final episode of Angels In America was on last night. What a magnificent, intricate, artistic piece of drama. This is why we fund the ABC out of public money, to have a television station with the courage to show artistic works of such high quality. In Australia commercial television is infested with reality shows and sport. The occasional local drama is an apology for dramatic work when stacked up against a production like this.
The show was so rich in thematic material that it seems unfair to single out one incident however there was one that particularly resonated with me.
A man is lying in his hospital bed dying of AIDS. In his life he has been a complete bastard and, amongst other things, campaigned vigorously for the execution of Ethel Rosenberg, who was convicted of being a Soviet spy and passing nuclear secrets to the Russians.
As he lies there the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg visits him and he pleads for forgiveness. As he slips further from reality he mistakes her for his mother and pleads with her to sing to him. At first she just laughs at him; she is full of scorn for this man who had been instrumental in her execution. As she sits with him in that room her attitude gradually changes to one of pity; he once was terrible but now he is a poor sick old man and worthy of pity. She sings to him. When she finishes he sits up in bed and says
"Ha, got you one last time, you sucker"
When he sinks back down in his bed he realises that he has made a terrible mistake. He has given her the greatest gift available, the opportunity to forgive him, and in doing so, as a spirit, she is liberated.
It takes great strength to forgive someone who has caused you great ill. It is not however the receiver of the the forgiveness that is the beneficiary it is the bestower.
Your lifes goal is to self-actualise, that is to be the most complete person you can be. Like all true goals it is achieved via a series of tests and one of the most difficult of these is to seek out the person who has done you the most harm and to truely forgive them.
Bene of the esteemed blog Bene Diction Blogs On is acting as a not so secret agent for Dr. Mark Vincent of Augustana College in the US. He is conducting a survey of Christians and the concept of "Loving Thy Neighbor". An admirable Christian concept that seems singlularly in short supply when it comes to Iraq but I digress.
The survey is on line and you can go to it via Bene. Those of you amongst the readership who are Christians, which it seems is a considerable number, should toddle over there, check it out and take the survey, or go straight to the survey here.
If we are to expect sensible discourse from our academics it behoves us to spend some time indulging their curiousity.
What is life worth if it has little or no quality? Not much apparently. A survey by the University of Pittsburgh has found that towards the end of their lives most people would trade quantity for quality, that is they would prefer to live less long if they could depart this world in a caring and supported environment.
Palliative care is one of the more confronting areas of medicine for your average westerner. We spend large chunks of our life denying, or at least ignoring our mortality. To visit a dying relative or friend forces the reality of our own mortality upon us. Faced with this confronting situation we may end up spending more time on our own fears than on supporting the person who is dying.
This is possibly the most precious time of a persons life. They can no longer ignore their mortality, they must make decisions that most of us refuse to even consider because they are too confronting, and they are trying to reconcile themselves with the life they have lived, the things that they never achieved and the mistakes they made as much as their successes.
In this situation, where they have prepared themselves and accept that they are about to die we must seriously question our own actions and motives. Are we subjecting them to discomfort or humiliation in an attempt to keep them alive for another week or another month for their benefit or for ours? At this most precious time of a persons life it sometimes takes great courage to put aside your own expectations, beliefs, values and respect the wishes of your friend or loved one.
This is a demonstration of what an operator will see of you when you walk through a scanner at an American airport. That is they will effectively see you as if you were naked.
Given the general phobia about nudity that pervades the USA, how do you think the American public would react to this gross invasion of their privacy? Well, such is the fear of another 9/11 type attack, that Americans gladly embracing the concept that they are being viewed naked as they pass through security at the airport. Not only have they embraced it but they are less satisfied going through the machine when it electronically obscures their body shape, even though it does not alter the effectiveness of the machine.
The most interesting aspect of this whole debate is the psychology of it. It seems that the actual effectiveness of the measure does not have a great deal to do with how ready the public are to sacrifice their privacy and embrace it. It seems that the logic behind it is that "The bigger the sacrifice of my privacy I make then safer I must be". It leaverages off our subconscious and erroneous belief in fairness and balance. It is also why we have so much trouble coming to grips with random tragedy and the reason that many people are so desparate to have someone punished, to balance their grief.
Via Wired.
You can read more about the machines here.
New Scientist has an interesting analysis of the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners by some senior pyschologists. Here are some quotes.
A lot of people had to be in the know for this to happen. The very fact people felt confident enough to take pictures suggests that this was not something which was a secret. Ian Robbins, a consultant clinical psychologist at the traumatic stress service at St George's Hospital in London, UK
In all organisations, all teams, troops and people will replicate in some way the personality of the number one person in charge - whether it's the President, down to the general, down to the head of the jail. If you know there's going to be trouble, you won't do it." Simon Meyerson, director of the Institute of Psychology in London
the abuse "indicates the Bush administration's indifference to laws and rules and regulations" Stansfield Turner, former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency
And, continuing on in an ethical vein, or is that artery, we get to the vexatious question of generating children to help their siblings. In Chicago at least 5 babies have been born who were conceived specifically because they will be able to assist their, already existing, sibling with some genetic complaint by serving as stem cell donors.
The real area of contention here is that these babies were specifically selected from a group of in-vitro embryos because they possessed the genetic characteristics necessary to save their endangered sibling. Other embryos that did not meet the criteria were frozen future potential future use. Common sense says that some of these other embryos will later be discarded.
So here is the dilemma. If you have more IVF embryos than can be implanted, is it ethically wrong to implant the ones that provide the greatest benefit to the family through being able to assist a sibling. (Don't say that they should not have been created because the fact is that they already exist and that argument is irrelevant) To help you clarify your thoughts, would you expect an exisiting sibling to help another, if in need. If so, what is the difference?
We live in an imperfect world and the problem with fundamentalist beliefs is that they fail to take this into consideration. Ahhh the delights and complexities of the grey in which we all live.
hmmm, so it is very distressing seeing a man with his head covered in a hood and, what are obviously electrical, wires attached to various parts of his body, including, probably, his genitals. Donald Rumsfeld calls it Un-American. Such a great term that. How can it be Un-American when it is America's finest that thought it up and executed it. It is quitenessially American. What Donald meant was it was not the image of America that they wanted splashed across the press.
The thing about the photo is that it is so dramatic. America, at least the power players in America, don't want that. They want the objective achieved in much more insidious ways. Ways that don't make good media footage and what better way than dirty munitions, that is bombs that are packed with spent nuclear fuel, the sort that America dropped on Iraq.
Donald can say with assurance that these skirmishes we are currently experiencing in Iraqi are a temporary aboration. He is right, many of the potential combatants will be too sick in a year or two to care about their country or freedom or anything else for that matter.
"Just a rant" you say. Well Peter Zimmerman of King's College London and Cheryl Loeb at the National Defense University in Washington, DC disagree. They have found that this material is far more deadly than first thought. Material analysed in Brazil showed that even those not directly exposed to the initial material were at risk of illness and death.
Michael Levi, who is a physicist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank, points out that the situation is not as bad as it looks. If you receive treatment within several days of exposure then the effects will be minimal. I am sure that is a great comfort for those who were in the vacinity of the US bombings in Iraq in March last year. They may die in agony but at least they wont make good media subjects for our newspapers and media reports.
So, The Age reports that a Canadian study found that on measures of quality of life Australian Aboriginals were the second worst in the world, only China fared worse. That sets The Green Man a thinking. If only China was worse that means that those poor beleaguered individuals in Iraq actually have a better quality of life, and probably did have under Saddam, than our own indigenous community.
Now that the WMD have not turned up, the focus of the justification for the invasion has changed to the liberation of those poor oppressed peoples. Imagine that, it seems that a section of our own community is more even oppressed. How embarrassing. No doubt John Howard will be flying into Alice Springs or some other centre of Aboriginal poverty for a photo opportunity, just like his recent trip to Iraq for ANZAC day.
And speaking of his recent trip to Iraq, it just shows how little The Green Man knows of the complexities of national security. It seems that it was OK for Channel 9 to invited along on the PMs secret trip to Iraq because he could be guaranteed good coverage. The ABC, on the other hand, which is our publicly funded national broadcaster did not even get told about it. And, by way of a further demonstration of the complexities of the security involved, it seems that photos of the PM in his flak jacket did not endanger his security. Photos of him in a helmet that did not fit him properly and made him look like a bit of a dork on the other hand were banned on the grounds they breached security.
To drift into the serious for a moment, it is extremely disappointing that our esteemed Prime Minister could not see past his potential personal tragedy of not being re-elected at the next election to the greater tragedy of all those poor boys, 8,400 to be precise, who were suckered into volunteering and then sacrificed shores of Gallipoli on the whim of some pampered English private school graduate who regarded the soldiers from the colonies as less important or valuable than his English mates. ANZAC day is a day to mourn and should be above such petty grabs for photo opportunities.
The Green Man knows a lot about America. After all he gets to look at it every night on the television, Australia having largely foregone its TV industry in favour of purchasing mostly American and some UK television programs, not to mention the sheep dog trials from NZ TV1. (That was a joke, we don't actually get the NZ sheep dog trials however I understand they are still popular in the land of the wrong white crowd as the Moaris have start to refer to their land.)
Anyway, based on the TV, The Green Man knows that America consists essentially of LA and New York so it came as a big surprise that 20% of Americans live in a rural setting. That is 56 million Americans which is an aweful lot. Cornell University has decided this is a significant group of people and have released a new book, "Challenges for Rural America in the 21st Century", which examines rural people and communities and the disadvantages they suffer in quality-of-life measures.
This is a diverse book looking at the rural American life experience from a number of perspectives, you can read more about it here.
Staying with ethical issues for the moment, we will journey into the realm of IVF. (That’s Invitro Fertilisation to you)
Baby making is usually a fun, and often impromptu, activity. It is not so for those couples who are desirous of offspring but are having trouble conceiving. For them it is a scientific process and, as usual, nature has dealt the man the best card. Let's face it getting sperm outside the male body is what it is all about for men and men derive great pleasure from said activity. For women however, eggs are meant to stay safely tucked away inside and getting them out is an intrusive and uncomfortable experience.
It is only natural then that women particularly want the whole IVF process engaged in as few times as possible and multiple births are often seen as a desirable way of achieving this objective.
Ted Chapler Professor of Reproductive Endocrinology in the UI Carver College of Medicine, and Director, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility at UI Hospitals and Clinics thinks that, when forming the desire for achieving multiple birth pregnancies, many couples do not understand the increased risks both to the mother and to the babies in multiple birth pregnancies. Twins, triplets etc have more risks of infant death and long-term disabilities such as cerebral palsy than births of single babies do. A study by Ted found that less that 50% of parents were aware of the increased risk of cerebral palsy and less that 30% were aware of increased risk of infant death.
On to money for a moment. He found that
lower family income played a role in increased desire for twins, which may indicate that some couples feared they might not be able to afford further treatment and wanted to build their families quickly with multiples
Ironically, the health care costs associated with child of multiple birth pregnancies is approximately 100 - 200 times that of a child from a single birth.
The nature of IVF is, as the name implies, that embryos are created outside the body, that is what "invitro" means. Doctors have a choice on how many of these embryos to implant at any one time in the mother. Cognisant of the risks involved many doctors are now choosing to fewer embryos, thus reducing the incidence of multiple births. This desirable practice must be accompanied by better education for couples entering IVF on the risks that are present in all aspects of the process.
We have an excellent understanding of the value of a sheep kidney, at least for the purposes of devilled kidneys for breakfast. A delicious spicy dish that is so tasty it has to be bad for you. We do not, however have a value of a human kidney for the purposes of putting inside someone who does happen to have a working one at the moment.
"Trading in human organs is not a butcher shop type activity, or at least it shouldn't be" I hear you say, well some of you anyway, and The Green Man agrees, however it does not mean that a human kidney does not have a value. Today, sadly, everything must have a monetary value to be important and you will be interested to know that the value of a human kidney is US$90,000. This is according to Mark Schnitzler, an assistant professor of health administration at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Not being one to get too bogged down in this ethics stuff he set up an mathematical model to work out the value of a kidney taking into consideration the saving in costs of medical treatment for the recipient and their increased quality of life. They concluded,
For the recipient of a living, unrelated donor kidney transplant, the estimated medical expense for 20 years following transplant is $277,600. The expected medical cost for a dialysis patient for that long is $372,179.The difference of $94,579 is the expected savings that would be generated by a living, unrelated donor that could be paid to the donor without increasing costs.
This does not even take into account the value of the improved quality of life of the recipient. If you factor that in, the value of the kidney rises to US$176,000.
There are currently 55,000 US citizens waiting for a kidney donor and altruistic kind are pretty few and far between. Hence Dr Schnitzler's journey into the ethical minefield of exploring the possibility of paying for kidneys.
It is easy to jump up and down and get emotional about this but the reality of the situation is that it does little or no harm to the donor to donate a kidney and there a lot of people for whom $90,000 could improve and extend their lives. Given it does no harm how is it different from being paid for your hair by a wig maker?
Look at these photos they are of a baby in the womb, produced by ultrasound. Ahh aren't they cute, so much better than the ones the doctor does. That is because the doctor is so scared of the potential damage that ultrasound might do to a fetus that he uses very low power ultrasound. These photos are by a shopping mall equivalent. They have no such qualms. They use high power ultrasound, the type that has proved efficacious in the heal of bone and soft tissue damage.
Doctors know that this high powered ultrasound alters the way bone behaves when it is repairing itself following an injury. They have no idea what it does to a developing fetus. Not to worry I am sure that the used-car salesman with a fetish for large pregnant women who is now providing this invaluable service at the mall knows exactly what he is doing. He must do, afterall he has just shelled out $100 000 for the machine.
Unfortunately those wowsers at the FDA (that's US Food and Drug Administration) are not so sure it is a good idea. Nor is the The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine which "strongly discourages the non-medical use of ultrasound for psychosocial or entertainment purposes." You see ultrasound is high energy radiation and any form of radiation at this level can be safely assumed to have an adverse affect on a fetus.
Yes I know it seems silly that those doctors waste all that time at university learning about the physiology of the human body and don't give you nearly as good pictures as the aforesaid used-car salesman. Let's just assume they have your baby's welfare at heart shall we.
You can read an analysis of the FDA report in the BMJ here or read the original FDA report here.
The Green Man has had it in his mind for some time to buy a fake PhD. It would be a huge lark, well except for the fact that money is a bit too hard to come by to waste it so frivilously.
The Government Affairs Committee of the US Senate is not so sure that it is as humerous as The Gren Man finds it. By way of investigation Sen. Susan Collins purchased herself a number of very prestigous degrees (see here) She says
No applicant for a job -- whether it's in the private sector or federal government -- should lose out to a candidate because that candidate holds a bogus degree. Moreover, our tax dollars should not be spent on helping federal workers obtain substandard degrees.
Of course not all polititians are quite so picky about the qualifications of their staff. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Jack Corrie to a high-level information technology position in the state's Department of Motor Vehicles. Corrie's credentials include a bachelor's and a master's from the University of Palmers Green, which is a fake university, according to John Bear, an expert on online learning and diploma mills. It is unclear whether Gov. Schwarzenegger was aware of this and, if so, whether he thought that it mattered.
The Green Man would like to assure his readers and potential suckers (err sorry students) that the PhD in Ancient Forest Technology offered by The Green Man University has nothing to do with this illicit trade in fake qualifications and that the "print your own" MS Publisher certificates are completely legit.
Read more in Wired.
Wired magazine reports on a group in the USA called Perverted Justice that have taken the law into their own hands vis-a-vis the internet paedophile problem.
Posing as teenagers the group attempts, often successfully, to entrap men who enter chat rooms looking for teenagers to exploit. Their method is to set up a meeting with the man. The meeting is attended by two or more substantial males from Perverted Justice and video taped. The tapes and chat room conversations are then posted on their site.
It is very easy to feel a sense of righteousness over this behaviour however it does interfere with the proper prosecution of these individuals. The purpose of criminal prosecution, as well as punishment, is to remove the threat to society that these men pose. The Perverted Justice approach does little to achieve this second objective. It also abandons the concept of "presumption of innocence" that is the corner stone of British derrived justice systems such as US, UK, NZ and Australia.
Freedom of the press is one of the sacred cows of modern democracies. We expect that the press will report on world events “without fear or favour”. Of late this has come into question with the demonstrated bias of certain media outlets over the war in Iraq, such as Fox News for example.
The press have always practiced self-censorship however. One of the criteria that editors use to make self-censorship decisions is the current state of public sensibilities. These change over time. Images and content that, 50 years ago, would have been completely unacceptable are now regularly printed with little or no complaint. There are still important news images that go beyond the limits of current acceptance and the media now have the ability via digital technology to modify these images to utilise them without causing widespread offence.
The recent bomb blast in Spain was an excellent example of consistent self-censorship across the mainstream British media. Reuters provided an image that was used by the major London daily news papers. The original contained, in the left foreground, what appears to be a bloodied severed limb, probably an arm.
All newspapers used this image but altered the image to remove or reduce the impact of the said limb. The Guardian recoloured it grey so that it blended into the background gravel.
The Times and Telegraph removed it entirely, replacing it with gravel.
This practice may be viewed as relatively harmless or it may be viewed with a degree of caution and suspicion. The removal of the limb has made the picture, at the same time, more acceptable and a false record. To try and maintain a balanced view of world events we need to be continually reminded that we are seeing them through the a lens that has been focused by a small number of people who have their own agendas and biases and decide what is fit for us to see.
Images courtesy of The Guardian (who are now making you register which is most annoying)
The US House of Representatives has voted 276-139 for a bill that would prevent lawsuits against the food industry for making people fat which has become known as the "Cheeseburger Bill".
In the fine US tradition of suing someone else for your own stupidity or lack of self control over the last little while a number of US citizens had sued particular fast food organisations for making them fat.
Currently two-thirds of the US population is overwieght or obese and obesity is set to overtake smoking as the leading cause of death in the US. That being said, it seems that only in the US would someone seek to shift their personal responsibility for their actions to a third party in such a fundamental aspect of their behaviour. For 99% of the population the solution is exceedingly simple, exercise more and eat less.
Here is a simple start, don't eat any fast food at all. Make your own meals, that way you know what is going into them and at least you get the exercise of preparing them.
| Actual Causes | Actual Causes of Death* United States, 1990 | Actual Causes of Death† United States, 2000 |
|---|---|---|
| Tobacco | 19% | 18.1% |
| Poor Diet/Physical Inactivity | 14% | 16.6% |
| Alcohol consumption | 5% | 3.5% |
| Microbial agents (e.g., influenza, pneumonia) | 4% | 3.1% |
| Toxic Agents (e.g., pollutants, asbestos) | 3% | 2.3% |
| Motor-vehicles | 1% | 1.8% |
| Firearms | 2% | 1.2% |
| Sexual behavior | 1% | 0.8% |
| Illicit drug use | <1% | 0.7% |
Do wear a ribbon to symbolise your support for a cause, breast cancer research, sudden infant death, third world debt, refugee rights, that sort of thing? You are obviously not alone many people do and it is part of the malais that is afflicting our society according to the UK think tank Civitas.
A recently published study by Patrick West suggests that we have relieved ourselves of the need to "do good" by replacing it with "conspicuous compassion". His proposition is that public displays of grief particularly for significant public figures or global events have surplanted the actual doing of good at a local level.
Breast cancer research, for example, is a great and noble cause but buying a $2 ribbon should not be used as an excuse for your ignoring the immediate needs of people in your community. This is where your true resonsibility lies. Concern yourself less with third world debt and more with poverty and homelessness in your own community.
Read more in The Guardian
If you have a close relative or friend who has terminal cancer visiting them can be a trial. It is nothing compared to what they are going through of course but we find it a confronting experience. It is important to think about why we go. We like to think it is to provide support but new evidence suggests that we may inadvertently doing the exact reverse.
Home grown wisdom points to the importance of the patient maintaining a positive attitude. We seem to have accepted the concept that it will improve the quality of what life they have left. The more extreme even suggest that it can prolong life.
New research by Penelope Schofield, a research fellow at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne suggests that this is complete fiction. Not only do people maintaining a positive attitude not live any longer than those who didn't but the expectation that they maintain a positive attitude places an additional, unnecessary burden upon them.
We have to ask ourselves whether we are expecting terminally ill patients to maintain a positive attitude for their benefit or for ours. It is much more comfortable to go and visit if the person is happy and optimistic. Some time you may be in the position of having to provide support to a friend or relative that finds themselves in this unfortunate situation. Try providing quality support by not placing the burden of your expectations and your comfort upon them, they have enough to bear already.
Danish researchers announced that they have bred a plant that is capable of detecting landmines. The leaves of the genetically engineered plant turn red when the roots of the plant encounter explosives.
Now this is going to be a bit of an ethical dilemma for the rabid "anti-genetic engineering" crowd. Many of them are also members of the peace movement. Are they going to oppose the introduction of a plant that will save hundreds of thousands from preventable death and maiming?
If they oppose it then they are showing a disregard for the sanctity of life and safety of a significant percentage of the third world population. If not then they have fundamentally compromised their blanket opposition to genetically engineered plants.
Oh the hand wringing and angst. The high moral ground can be so slippery at times.
Those wacky Hollywood script writers, fancy thinking that truth in advertising would ever be successful. That, of course, was the theme of the 1990 film "Crazy People" starring Dudley Moore, who went downhill after separating with Peter Cooke in The Green Man's opinion, and the undeniably cute Darryl Hannah. Not long ago Professor Richard Tait, after a long day in the research lab, borrowed it on video.
Professor Richard Tait, who is Director of Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University, UK., had been grappling with the problem of the declining voter turn out and general disengagement of the UK citizenary with the whole political process. Tucked up in his favourite armchair, wearing his beige cardi and watching his rented video, "Demented Dick", as he is rapidly becoming referred to in the halls of Westminster, decided that telling the truth might work for the UK polititians too. At this stage it was mere speculation because it was so long since a polititian had actually used this approach that it was a subject of research in the English History Department.
Should he have a degree of success in this endeavour to convince a polititian to actually tell the truth, the next challenge will be to communicate to the population of the UK. Turning to the mass media may not be that successful because they are distrusted even more than the polititians, with only 13% of the population trusting what they say, which makes the 19% polititians scored positively fantastic.
"It is easier to have freedom of thought in a concentration camp than in America today."
So said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In 1970 he won the Nobel Prize for literature and is the author of a number of books that are insightful, both on the nature of the Russian political system and of the human psyche when placed in situations of extreme hardship. In 1974 he fled Russian persecution for the land of the free and the home of the brave. To his astonishment he discovered a land where freedom of thought was no greater than in Russia. There was a difference only in the nature of the restrictions on his freedom of thought not on the extent. Of course the natural response is to say “like it or leave it”, that is, if he thinks it is so crook then leave (which is actually what he did, returning to his native Russia after the fall of communism.) Our friends, however, are not the ones that tell us what we want to hear, but those who tell us what we need to hear.
He made this statement many years ago. It is interesting to consider whether it is more or less appropriate today. Are we more or less able to question the behaviour of our country’s respective leaders without being labelled UnAmerican/UnAustralian. Solzhenitsyn wrote in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
"The fellows at the top thought about everything for him, and it was kind of easier like that."
It is time for you to consider how much you are allowing the government of your country to think for you. You have the freedom to think for yourself, to question what is being done on your behalf. You have the right to stand up and say what you think without fear of persecution or of retribution, or do you? Take a look at how vocal critics of recent actions of the government have been portrayed. I will leave you with a quote from George W Bush.
If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.
The World Health Organisation has released a plan to tackle global obesity rates. The plan includes acheiving cuts in salt, fat and sugar intake in diets across the world.
The initial focus of the campaign is to encourage a reduction in the amount of fat and sugar used in the food industry in the production of packaged food items. This is to be supported by changes to advertising and tax policy to promote healthier diets.
It all sounds very positive however one country is proving to a the blow-fly stuck in the low calorie jam. It fundamentally objects to the singling out of fat and sugar in food for reduction. "Now which country would that be?" I wonder. Possibly the country that gave us the big Mac and the Whopper perhaps. Possibly the country where 50% of its teenage girls and 47% of its teenage boys are obese or overweight. Possibly the country where the mighty dollar holds sway over all domestic and foreign policy matters even the health of its own citizens.
Yep it is the USA. The country that is charging headlong into an generation long obesity driven health crisis. Call me a cynic but I suspect the gym and dieting sectors are joining with those well known hamburger chains to scuttle this important WHO initiative.
Read more on BBC here.
Visit WHO obesity iniative here.
Ruth Webster had a baby daughter Ellen who died in Leeds General Infirmary in England. Unbeknown to her, following the autopsy, the hospital retained the baby girls organs instead of replacing them for burial/cremation with the rest of the body. She says she wants Ł5,000 in compensation, the hospital has only offered Ł1,000 compensation.
This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened, Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool offered Ł5,000 in compensation to parents when it came to light that they had been indulging in a similar practice. Ms Webster is using this as the precident.
In Australia, The Royal Childrens Hospital in Victoria has retained up to 1,000 hearts without consent, for education of young doctors - a practice it claims has been standard across the world for decades. Before you get too outraged, reflect on the fact that the RCH is a world leader in research in congenital heart defects and that the knowledge and skill that they have acquired through this practice has save the lives of thouands of children.
It is inappropriate not to seek consent of the parents before retaining organs but it is equally clear that it is an important and necessary practice for education and research which is vital to the ongoing provision of quality care at the hospital. The National Health and Medical Research Council has released strict guidelines to manage the practice into the future.(click here to see them.). In Victoria the Department of Human Services has released guidelines stating
. If it is proposed that whole organs or other parts of the body be kept after the post-mortem examination for testing, this needs to be explained to the next-of-kin and informed consent obtained
How sad that our society has got to a stage where it thinks that everything can be compensated for with money, even our children. I have not experienced the death of my child so I can only speculate on how I would feel but asking for money from the hospital would seem to me to be profiting from the death of my child which I would regard as highly inappropriate and distasteful. I think/hope my response would be to tell them to keep the Ł1,000/Ł5,000, put it into research into child health, and place a small plaque as a memorial to my child somewhere appropriate.
Read more in The Guardian here.
The invasion of Iraq has been labelled part of the "War on Terrorism" which is, of course, jingoistic spin since a war is
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
and terrorism is not a nation or a state or even a collection of individuals, it is a military strategy usually adopted where other military options are unavailable.
Incidents of terrorism are documented in the wars fought by Alexander The Great in 300BC. The French and Italian resistance fighters used it against the Nazis in World War II and were later hailed as heros. The bombing of Dresden in Germany by the English in World War II could be described as terrorism since it was not a military target. Like other military strategies, it is deemed to be "evil" when the other side uses it and "justified" when we use it.
If you want to accept the spin and say a "War on Terrorism" is possible then it can never be won. Like any other military strategy terrorism will be continued to be used into the future, particularly by people who have no other means of resistance to military force. Reading the implications behind comments on my post on Gun Deaths in USA and elsewhere we see that a significant percentage of Americans would happily resort to terrorism if their country was invaded and they had to defend themselves against an occupying force. Should GWB declare war on them as well?
Barnardo's, a childrens charity, has been order to withdraw an advertisement they were running depicting a baby with a cockroach crawling out of its mouth. The advertisement symbolised the poverty and depravity in which some babies and small children exist.
The advertisement drew 466 complaints and the Advertising Standards Agency, ruling it was likely to cause "serious or widespread offence", ordered it to be discontinued.
It is an indictment on our society that babies and children living in squalid conditions do not cause "serious or widespread offence". Let's all just pretend they don't exist shall we? That way on Christmas day, after demolishing the food and drink that are making our table bend at the knees we can settle down in front of the tele without seeing any nasty visual images to exacerbate the indigestion we are undoubtedly experiencing.
The Green Man did not know that such a thing existed but it does and women are risking permanent disability to improve it. But that's not all some women are having parts of their toes lopped off to fit into the latest Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos. Both of which are, apparently, brands of shoes and it seems that their designers no longer feel constrained to construct shoes that hold a normal foot.
Dr. Rock Positano, director of the nonoperative foot and ankle service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan said that his waiting room is increasingly filled with women hobbled by failed cosmetic foot procedures, those done solely to improve the appearance of the foot or help patients fit into fashionable shoes.
Dr. Suzanne M. Levine, an Upper East Side podiatrist who is an advocate of the procedures says, in response,
Some of these women invest more in their shoes than they do in the stock market,Take your average woman and give her heels instead of flats, and she'll suddenly get whistles on the street,
The feminist movement has made so much progress hasn't it?
Read more on injuries from foot cosmetic surgery in The New York Times.
Remember today is Buy Nothing Day. It is a celebration of consumer awareness and simple living. People in more than thirty countries make a pact with themselves and, as a personal experiment and public statement, step out of the consumer stream for 24 hours.
Too hard for you? Then perhaps you can try and cut down a bit. Are those essentials really all that essential?
Ah, you have got to love the political correctness in America. It is something to marvel at.
Those of you who are blessed with grey hair that has been derived from many years in the computer industry will know that peer-to-peer network communication that is so common today is a relatively new phenomenon. Traditionally one computer has been "in charge", co-ordinating the other computers and devices with which it communicates. This has always been known as a "master/slave" relationship.
It appears however that there are some cultural prima donnas in Los Angeles County and this is no longer acceptable. A memo dated 18 Nov 2003 states
One such recent example included the manufacturer's labeling of equipment where the words "Master/Slave" appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.
So if you want to do business with Los Angeles County you are going to have to come up with a more “culturally sensitive” way of describing the relationship, The Green Man suggests
MAMMOSNIPTD/PIMIIANE
being “My Ancestors Made Money Out Of Slaves Now I Pretend They Didn’t” and “Poor Illegal Mexican Immigrant I Am Now Exploiting”
See the full Los Angelos County email at Snopes.
Nature reports that Craig Venter and his team at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Maryland have build a virus from scratch in 2 weeks.
The team used enzymes to glue the oligonucleotides together accurately into the complete 5,386-base genetic strand, and to copy it many times. When the synthetic viral genome was injected into bacteria, the bacterial cell's machinery read the instructions and created fully fledged viruses.
If that doesn't scare the proverbial out of you then you haven't thought carefully enough about the consequences.
Read the article in Nature here.
Here is a consise history lesson for my non-Australian readers, if you are Australian and don't know this you should learn more about your country. In the 1890's concern was rising over the number of chinese that were entering Australia in search of gold. Australia instituted the "White Australia Policy". The purpose of this was to limit people entering Australia who were not of western European descent. It lasted until 1970 when it was finally dismantled.
The initial intend was to ensure that, amongst other things, immigrants to Australia could speak English and had English values. Accordingly part of the entrance test was an oral examination. Conveniently the legislation did not specify English for the test so, if your skin was a bit too yellow, or too brown, then they would ask you to do the test in, say, Swahili, if you passed they would then ask you to do it in Bengali, and so on until they found a language you couldn't speak. Then they declared you to have failed and you were expelled.
Two days ago a boat load of Turkish Kurds arrived in Northern Australia by leaky boat. Both the foriegn minister and the immigration minister stated unequivocally that "The passengers of the Minasa Bone did not claim asylum in Australia" This is in spite of the fact that we can be reasonably certain that at least one of them was begging a Turkish interpreter, in Turkish, to be allowed to stay.
Either two ministers of the crown lied to the Australian public or the Turkish Kurds failed to use Swahili when they were asking for asylum (or both).
Of course this sort of inhumane behaviour is necessary to stem the tide of illegal immigrants that is swamping Australia. What is the count again, oh, that's right 14 people in 2 years.
The Liberal party in the past embodied justice and compassion you can read about how they have changed here. Unfortunately the Labor opposition is of the same mind on this one meaning that the only real alternative is an informal vote.
There is a place in America that you won't find mentioned in the US media all that much. It is Dover, Delaware and it's claim to fame is that it is home to the US military mortuary. All the US soldiers killed in Iraq are brought there.
The reason you won't hear it mentioned is that George W Bush is enforcing the complete media isolation of the mortuary. Current deaths are very bad for the presidential popularity and GWB is ensuring, where ever possible to keep the media focus away from the specifics in this matter. The Achilles heal of the US in war related matters is the American publics refusal to accept deaths of American soldiers as the natural consequence of the pursuit of US military objectives. It seems that the war dead are only valuable to an American president after they have been dead some time.
Strategically it is a very good move. George Bush, the other one, suffered a massive backlash when a number of TV stations across America, during Gulf War I, showed a split screen with him joking and laughing with the press corps on one side and body bags arriving on the other. Needless to say he was outraged and did what the president of any country valuing free speach would do. He banned the media from the area of the mortuary.
Twelve years on, in March, before the war began, the Pentagon handed down a directive that made it perfectly clear that the media exclusion from the area would be rigidly enforced during this military entanglement.
One can only speculate as to how much George Bush knows or cares about the soldiers who are dying in Iraq but is known that he has not attended the funeral of a single soldier slain in the war and refers to the casualties only in general terms. When news of the downed Chinook came through on Sunday he stayed in his ranch and let defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld meet the press.
If you are an anti-Bush type person then it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that this is a demonstration of callous disregard for the welfare of the soldier but I suspect you would be wrong. I think that it is probably an inability on his part to deal with emotion on a scale that would qualify him for citizenship as an honorary Australian male. This dispassionate approach to dealing with emotive issues is, however, causing public disquiet. The White House is attempting to hose this down but opinion polls show with little effect.
Flanders poppies in the fields from which they drew their name. One spring three generations ago the torn up soil of the fields of Flanders in Belgium presented a spectacular display of natures indifference to human folly. Rich with the fertilization of human blood and bone they presented a spectacular display of wild poppies.
It is the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Time for us to pause and remember those adolescents and young men who died in war. Of course few of us were alive in the first world war and the numbers in the second world war are falling. I was not alive for either of these so I can only imagine not remember.
Now is a time to put aside the "war novel" image and confront the reality. Boys as young as 15 were sent to fight battles on behalf of their nation. These boys on leaving aboard ships were full of youthful enthusiasm for the great adventure they were embarking upon. They were full of expectation, life was still one of almost boundless opportunity.Take the trouble to picture a boy that you know who is 16, 17, or 18. It might be your son/brother, or the boy next door, or the boy who packs the bags at your supermarket. Do you have a specific boy in mind? Don't read on until you have.
Now picture him on a battlefield, caught in barb wire, his legs shot off, dying alone and frightened as the battle rages around him. His corpse hanging on the barbed wire for a day, or days, until a truce was called to allow his body to be collected. This was the reality for many young men and boys but they were not the unknown soldier. They were your son, your brother, the boy next door.
We should remember them and we should also do them the honour of not allowing the span of time to surplant the brutal reality of their final moments with some glorified and nostalgic image of the mighty hero.
Donna Kite and Dr. Graham Tyson, School of Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst have done some interesting work when it comes to the sensitive issue of child sexual abuse. Surveying police they found that the gender of the perpetrator of the sexual abuse was particularly important in determining how seriously the offence was perceived.
Unsurprisingly it was the males who fared poorly, after all the stereotype of a child sexual abuser is that of a male. The research found that cases of alleged sexual abuse perpetrated by females tended to be underestimated or dismissed as unimportant by police. This is consistent with findings in other countries.
Clearly there needs to be some serious work done. I would have thought that the objective was to protect children regardless of the gender of the perpetrator.
Read more here. (but you will have to search for it)
Child sexual abuse is not the only place we see this bias though. Generally, female offenders are more likely to be cautioned rather than charged than are male offenders for the same offence. It seems that we are far more lenient with a woman's criminal behaviour than a man's. In the juvenile justice system actions against male juveniles is 500% that of female juveniles and yet evidence suggests roughly similar nature and level of criminal behaviour in both groups.
Here is an interesting study by Australia Institute of Criminology.
The School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University has just completed research into the efficacy of the "embedded journalism" that was a characteristic of the recent invasion of Iraq. The results indicate that the British public was basically happy with the objectivity of the coverage, in particular, it was found that the reports from embedded journalists were generally more accurate and informative than the military briefings. The major criticism found was that
many viewers felt that the front-line footage provided by embeds was like watching a "war film" rather than capturing the reality of war. Many viewers wanted less of this kind of coverage, and more time looking at the wider issues – especially the attitude of the Iraqi people themselves.
Pauline Hanson has been released from gaol after 11 months when she was aquitted on appeal of fraudulently registering a political party before the 1998 Queensland election.
Pauline Hanson has, in the past, occupied the extreme right of Australian politics, calling for harsh prison sentences and mandatory imprisonment. It was a chastened and wiser Pauline Hanson we saw yesterday. The reality of prison life is now a personal experience for her. "The system let me down like it let a lot of people down." she said.
Finally she understands that criminal justice is not a political plaything with which to garner votes of the ignorant bigots in our community. It is a high price she has had to pay for this wisdom but if she has genuinely learnt from the experience she may now make a responsible and just polititian.
Corruption at a national level can be described simply as the extent to which bribes form part of the process of doing business in that country. If you were thinking of doing business in Nigeria, for example, you could expect be parting with a lot of dollars to government officials to oil the wheels of the bureaucratic processes. But what if you were dealing with Australia, UK or US would you expect to be parting with cash?
Well yes you would, apparently, but not nearly as much. In Corruption Perception Index developed and published by Transparency International they fare well but not as well as they should. It makes interesting reading and not all countries fall where you might expect. The USA only just pips Chile for 16th spot. Australia and UK, at 10 & 11, fall well below New Zealand at number 2.
Click here to see the full list of countries.
Does being religious preclude you from being on a jury? Yes, if your too carried away with it apparently. This is from the US but since most of you lot are from there I'll post on it anyway.
On October 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that it was OK to eliminate jurors who are very religiously involved. As you are probably aware attorneys can spit the dummy if they get jurors that they find distasteful on the jury. The question is which forms of distaste are constitutionally acceptable and which not.
Since you are reading The Green Man you are obviously intelligent and have good taste so clearly you will be familiar with the 14th amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Here's a hint (Rights Guaranteed Privileges and Immunities of Citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection). This would seem to prevent exclusion on basis of religion, as well as race and gender.
US Court of Appeals has deemed that it is not a problem because it is a matter of degree of commitment not of the religion you belong to. I think we can all accept that there are some religious nutters out there and I don't think we want them on a jury, either in the US or here in Australia.
What's happened? Common sense wins out in the judicial system? The Green Man proceeds to pick himself up off the floor.
Those of you of a legal bent might be interested in a legal discussion of this point of law and it can be found at FindLaws site.
The US Department of Homeland Security has released it's new technology for entry ports to the USA.
By capturing more complete arrival and departure data for those who require a visa to enter the United States, the US-VISIT program will enhance the security of our citizens and visitors while expediting legitimate travel and trade.
This is government speak for fingerprinting and photographing everyone who enters the USA. Doesn't this have at least a slight stench about it. The Green Man has a general distrust of governments ability to restrict the use of information collected to its intended purpose. It has to be a real deterent to visiting the USA.
Regarding the current war in Iraq a recent study by PIPA found that 60% of the US population believed one of the following:
* that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq,
* that Saddam Hussein worked closely with the September 11 hijackers,
* and that most people in the world supported the war in Iraq.
All are false.
So how do so many Americans come to believe these falsehoods? A fair guess is that the media have something to do with it. So an interesting exercise would be to look at where these misinformed Americans sourced their misconceptions. PIPA though so too, here are the results.
| Fox | CBS | ABC | NBC | CNN | PBS | ||
| No Misperceptions | 20 | 30 | 39 | 45 | 45 | 53 | 77 |
| 1 or more misperceptions | 80 | 71 | 61 | 55 | 55 | 47 | 23 |
In summary, 80% of people who watch FOX had at least one incorrect peception of the war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine how you could describe Fox's presentation of the war as fair and balanced when so many of their viewers have a wrong perception of the war.
PIPA is a Joint Program of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.
Read their press release here.
A group of New Zealand mothers is not happy about the lifting of the ban on genetically engineered milk in NZ and they have responded with a controversial set of billboards to go up around NZ adjoining their highways.
What they are really upset about is the insertion of human genes in cows to provide some human proteins in the milk.
The group, called MadGE (Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment), produced the billboards but it remains unclear as to which one of the members of the group actually posed for the picture. They have received a number of complaints about the billboards but remain definiant.
"It is definitely degrading to women, but more degrading to women is putting human genes in milk," their spokeswoman, Alannah Currie said. "It's punk art."
It seems to The Green Man that there are a number of people that will find the image quite unsettling. Of course there is that subset of males that will find the image quite erotic, an effect that I am sure they were not aiming to achieve.
James Grifo of New York University School of Medicine working in China at the Sun Yat-Sen University of Medical Science in Guangzhou has been experimenting with taking the nucleus from one fertilized egg and placing it in another fertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed. This is sooooo close to cloning that it has been condemned by mainstream scientists.
You'd find it hard to find people that support it,
says reproductive-medicine researcher Chris Barratt of the University of Birmingham, UK.
Doctors implanted five such eggs in a woman, three of which grew large enough for a heart beat to be detected. One was subsequently removed for the mothers safety. Of the two remaining, one died at 24 weeks and the other by 29 weeks.
Cloning and related activities such as this are high risk and their practice on human subjects breaches ethical standards almost everywhere. It seems however that the genie is out of the bottle and unethical scientists will always be able to find somewhere to practice.
Do you buy things on eBay. I haven't personally, too many bad stories for my liking. I tried selling a sculpture I made once but I didn't get a single bid. Shows you what appalling taste in sculpture the average eBay user has.
You can buy all sorts of things apparently. Nice clean wholesome things like Biggles books and clothes that have only been sweated in once. If your tastes are of a more bohemian flavour then you can venture into the risque, there are copies of Playboy, Penthouse and Oui magazines for example. All except the August 1977 edition of Qui. Of all the soft porn mags available on eBay this single edition is banned from eBay.
In an interesting co-incidence this edition contains an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he boasts of, amongst other things, his sexual prowess and describes his conquests with obvious pride. Obviously the banning would not be the result of pressure from Mr Schwarzenegger, or one of his supporters, it must be something else in this particular edition that makes it so unpalatable to eBay.
By the way, if you want to know what he actually said you can read the Oui interview on line at The Smoking Gun
(via The Memory Hole)
Well if you are British the answer is a resounding "No!". Based on the post 9/11 coverage I suspect that the answer would be the same in Australia and quite different in the US. (I'll try and track down some solid research)
The BBC has come under quite some fire lately both from the UK government and from across the Atlantic. By the current facts they handled the Dr Kelly saga poorly and you might suspect that the public trust in the organisation has been damaged.
This does not seem to have been the case however. Regardless of these errors 47% of Britons said the BBC had the most informed and reliable coverage. They were most favoured by both war supporters and opponents alike. Sky News came a distant second at 12.5%. Those prefering Sky were three times more likely to be war supporters suggesting that it was providing more partisan view.
Overall 92% of Britons believed that TV news should be objective and impartial when covering war. From the numbers it appears that the BBC is still best at delivering this.
Read more here. (same link as the previous entry)
During the Iraq war 83% of Britons said they supported the war. With major hostilities now over, hopefully, what is the view from the streets of London? Of the 83% who said they supported 46% have changed their minds. Blair is now in big strife and the decision to go to war may be a significant negative factor for his government in the next election.
If we take the cynical view for a moment that, at least in part, Bush, Blair and Howard had one eye on the polls when they made the decision then there are some important lessons to be learnt here. Even from a less cynical stand point they all made allusion to public support for initiating aggression in Iraq.
Here is the breakdown of the reasons for change in attitude by the British.
30% only said they were for the war because they felt they had to support their troops. That no longer being the case they have withdrawn their support.
9% have withdrawn their support because no WMD have been found
6% who did not originally support the war now do, primarily because of the benefits that regime change has brought to the Iraqi people.
The betrayal of Dr Kelly and his subsequent suicide played an role in the change of opinion on the war of 20%.
In wartime people of a nation will always pull together, even when they are the initiator. Polling during this time to assess the level of support will always produce biased results.
Why am I interested in this? Not only am I not from California, I am not even from the USA. Can't help it I am afraid.
University of Maryland have released a report indicating that the touch sensitive screen voting system, produced by Diebold, for use in the upcoming gubernatorial elections in California is "at high risk of compromise,". They found that "the Diebold software was badly written and full of serious security flaws,"
Alameda Registrar of Voters Brad Clark said "We don't care if the vote goes to the wrong person as long as it records the vote." Well, he didn't actually say that but he might as well have. My understanding of the word "democracy" is so much better now.
Read the University of Maryland report here.
Read a more detailed report at Wired News
Who said that John Howard was insignificant on the world political scene? John has made his mark, up there with leaders of USA and England. In fact the Guardian reports that Tony Blair may even be "learning from the master" so to speak.
Speculating on the inability of Mr Blair to utter the "s" word the Guardian cites precedents in political history, Nixon, Clinton and, you guessed it, John Howard.
The exact wording used tends to be of supreme importance in these cases, treading a fine line between doing what sounds like the decent thing and accepting culpability.The Australian prime minister, John Howard, would only go as far as to express regret for the treatment of the country's Aboriginal population,
It seems that Mr Howard has achieved his goal of being a notable Prime Minister but not, perhaps, for the things he wanted.
The company Diebold Inc. is a leading American manufacturer of voting machines that register votes in elections. Who could forget that chad debarcle in Florida during the last US presidential election. All that talk of nipples had The Green Man's imagination off on flights of fancy when he should have been concentrating on other things.
Anyway, back to Diebold. If you visit their site (click here) you will see that patriotism is something that they have embraced with enthusiasm. In a move that would have me a little unsettled if I was a US citizen, Wally O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, whose machines are critical to probity in the US presidential election, has written to all Ohio Replublicans in support of President Bush and soliciting funds for the next presidential campaign.
Maintaining an arms length distance between candidates and the voting system doesn't appear to be quite as important in the USA as we would view it here in Australia.
Hypertension is persistent high blood pressure and it contributes to a number of conditions including heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, stroke and kidney disease. None of these conditions are a barrel of laughs for those unfortunate individuals that suffer them and it important to identify those at risk early so that preventative strategies can be put in place. Racial differences are present with black Americans being far more likely to suffer hypertension than white and, when they do, onset is earlier and more severe.
The American Physiological Society report on research into why this is the case. This is the first step in developing effective intervention strategies.
Soon valuable research into disease prevention like this may not be possible in the land of the politically correct (California). Proposition 54, soon to go before the people effectively nobbles research of this nature by banning the categorisation of people based on race. It would be laughable if it was not so sad. Presumably the individuals presenting this proposition are well meaning but they are damaging the very people that they are trying to protect. Politically correct science is worthless science. Scientists need to be able to ask questions that others may find uncomfortable, for the good of us all.
Read more on Proposition 54 here.
The Guardian reports that in the UK there are around 50,000 children taking antidepressant medication. Of these at least 3,000 are taking a drug called Efexor in spite of recommendations that it not be prescribed to individuals under 18 years.
Studies have shown that Efexor can cause children to have suicidal thoughts or to become hostile, a word which in the context of clinical trials can mean homicidal.
In the USA there are between 1.5 million and 3 million children on anitdepressants for treating ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) alone. The rapid rise in the rate of diagnosis of this disorder has prompted concerns that it is being misdiagnosed and that many children receiving the medication have unrelated problems that may have been more effectively treated with counselling/therapy.
Clearly there are some children for whom medication is effective and essential however in many cases we are treating the symptom not the problem. If we took the time to understand the child we might identify cause of the childs behaviour and be able to address it. Our rush to medicating away a problem is meaning that many children will unnecessarily experience the bulk of their childhood through a medicated haze.
Economic rationalist theory seems to have pervaded almost all aspects of our culture except the sentencing of convicted criminals it seems. New research in the UK indicates that tougher sentencing of young offenders achieves exactly the opposite of what economic rationalism expects of a system, it costs more and has a lower success rate than alternative methods of punishment.
Reoffending rates for young offender institutions are as high as 84%, with a six month custodial sentence costing the taxpayer an average of Ł21,000."By comparison, alternative non-custodial options for a similar six month period cost as little as Ł6,000 and have markedly lower rates of reoffending."
So, it costs 4 times as much to imprison a youth and, in doing so, instead of fixing the problem, you increase the chance of them reoffending by 25%. Sounds like your classic "lose-lose" situation. Perhaps it is time to put aside our primitive need for vengence and look to alternatives from which everyone benefits.
A new York Judge has given the go ahead for relatives of the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center to sue the airlines for negligence in as much as they should have forseen the possibility of a terrorist hijacking a plane.
Personally I see this as the lowest form of money grubbing. Fortunately I knew no-one who suffered in the attacks but, if I did, my feelings would be of grief not of how I could much money I could make out of the tragedy. If my son, or brother, or wife, had been killed no amount of money could compensate me for that and to place a value on their life is to diminish it.
No-one is arguing that the relatives of the victims have suffered but the suffering cannot/should not be compensated with money. To do so cheapens the lives of those who have died.
No, I am not talking about the TV show here. Being the educated lot that you undoubtley are, you will be familiar with the origin of the name. It was coined by George Orwell in a novel entitled "1984". If you have not read it then you should do so. It is, at once, enthralling and terrifying. One of the main concepts is Big Brother, a state organisation that monitors our every move. There is no escape from the total supervision of every person.
Literary lesson over! The European Space Agency are prototyping a black box that could be fitted to a car. Once fitted to every car in Europe these black boxes could be monitored continuously by a satellite tracking system. The proposed system is scheduled to be tested towards the end of 2004 and if successful your road taxes and insurance costs could be calculated on where you travel and the distance travelled.
With privacy and personal rights currently in the process of being flushed down the drain along with the terrorist bathwater I am thinking that this system will be used for far more than a more equitable taxing of motorists. The omnipotent state moves one step closer.
This is like watching a car crash. You can see the impending destruction of something and there is nothing you can do. Still, horrified, you stand there transfixed. We are currently witnessing the technological destruction of individual privacy. What this means for our future psychological wellbeing, who can say.
Read more about the satellite tracking of motorists here.
During a war people are encouraged, through propaganda, to dehumanise the enemy, it makes it easier to kill them that way. The fact is, though, that they are human beings. After the second world war many Germans claimed they were just following instructions when they committed the many atrocities that occured. Naturally, citizens of US, Aust, UK etc, were still thinking of them as monsters and this suggestion was laughed off.
About this time Stanley Milgram was a young PhD student in Pyschology at Harvard University. Of Jewish descent he had it in his mind (we suppose) to prove that there was some flaw in the German psyche that enabled them to obey instructions to torture and murder Jews and Gipsies the way they did. By way of proving that decent US citizens would not do this he constructed an experiment in which participants, ordinary US citizens, believed they were delivering increasingly high voltage electric shocks to subjects. (they weren't of course but they didn't know that)
Even when the "subjects" were displaying agony and screaming for mercy the volunteers, under instruction, continued to increase the voltage they thought they were delivering. 60% of participants continued to a level that they knew may kill the subject. These were ordinary US citizens "torturing" other US citizens! The experiment has been repeated in other countries with similar results. Interestingly best results are obtained when the person instructing them is wearing a white coat.
We like to think that we are capable of independant thought and judgement but the fact is that, when someone in authority tells us to do something, few of us have the strength to say "No".
PS. The experiment scarred some of the participants for life. It is not easy learning that you are capable of torture and murder simply because someone in a white coat tells you to. We could not ethically perform this experiment today but it taught us some valuable things about ourselves.
No-one in Australia who has experienced a mouse plague, or even seen it documented on TV, doubts that an effective control mechanism for exotic European pest is desparately needed. Scientists in Canberra at the Pest Animal Control-Cooperative Research Centre are holding a biological weapon that could solve the problem in the blink of an eye. It is a man made virus designed to replicate and spread through the mouse population that causes sterility in the mice. The big question is whether to release it. Australia's track record in biological control is not good, one example being the cane toad that is now ravaging natural ecosystems across Queensland, Northern Territory and Northern New South Wales.
We will be releasing a living organism that we have created that is then free to mutate and evolve in ways that cannot be predicted or controlled. This is scary stuff. If it hopped species into an indigenous species it could result in extinction of that species in one generation.
Science has always played with the unknown and sometimes with disasterous consequences. Let us hope that, in these enlightened times, our scientists are treating the power they now have with the awe and respect that it deserves.
Some of you may find this old news but I think it is interesting and worthy of comment anyway.
On May 22nd the US President George Bush signed a Presidential Executive Order that specifically gave US oil companies unlimited access to Iraqi oil and gave them complete immunity from prosecution in relation to Iraqi oil in the areas of "extraction through transportation, advertising, manufacture, customer service, corporate records and payment of taxes"
As well as the obvious, it also means that they cannot be prosecuted for enviromental destruction, oil spills and labour rights violations.
If the war in Iraq was not about oil then what is this executive order all about? I can see no possible justification for granting these corporations legal immunity when, in the past, have displayed questionable ethical behaviour, at the very least. If, as it is now claimed, the invasion was for humanitarian reasons then this action is completely inconsistent with the objective of returning the justice and the rule of law to Iraq.
You can read a detailed critique of the order here.
Several days ago Pauline Hanson was imprisoned in Australia for electral fraud. She falsely claimed, when registering a political party, that there were 500 members of the party when in fact there were only three. She received over $500,000 in funding arising from electral wins.
She was imprisoned for 3 years and there is outrage in the community about the harshness of the sentence and I am at a loss to understand why. Forget the $500,000. By fraudulently registering a political party this woman launched an attack on our democracy. She showed contempt for the democratic process and a readiness to ignore to laws of our society in an area that should be held sacrosanct. These are the first few steps on a path that leads to the destruction of our democracy.
It is for the judicial process to decide on sentences and I trust that it works reasonably well. In this case I think there is no reason to question it.
The Age reports President of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgery Dr Alfred Lewis as saying of penis enlargement
It's a completely and absolutely unnecessary operation which I think in the patient requesting it is showing a fairly profound psychological disturbance
Of women, on the other hand, he said
Breasts are public organs and the penis isn't - it's a private organ, women don't want to have big breasts to look right out of clothes, they want to have big breasts to look right in clothes, in public.
Just as well we have these middle aged men, with little or no training in pscyhology, to decide whether the desire to augment a particular body part represents a psychological disorder or not.
The people requesting these operations have a poor self-image and a spare $5,000-$10,000, that is why they are doing it.
The Green Man has a secret approach that costs about the same, involves much less pain and acheives the same result. You have a number of choices
• Save a third world child from poverty and death
• Contribute to the protection of an endangered species
• Help keep a refuge for the homeless open
In the end the size of the penis/breast is not as important as the size of the heart. The way to happiness and a good self-image is not through getting bigger bits but through doing good.
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Voltaire
A notable and noble sentiment, and one clearly not embraced by some very angry Americans.
Artist John Steins has been kicked off eBay and received substantial hate mail for daring to produce linograph parodies of the "Axis of Evil" deck of cards, entitled the "Axis of Weasels" and featuring likeness of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney etc. They seem quite innocuous to me, one might speculate that such a violent over reaction is a pointer to a deeper issue.
Why, if you were supremely confident of the correctness of your countries actions, would you not look at these and think "interesting but misguided social commentary"?
As an aside he seems a skilled and talented artist.
(via Bene-Diction)
The verdict against Amrosi is in. Unsurprisingly he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Listening to the radio on the way in to the city I hear a relative of one of his victims say it didn't make her feel as good or as satisfied as she had expected. Well sur-prise sur-prise (a Gomer Pile'ism that has made it into the lexicon even in Aus).
The thing about satisfaction derived from vengence is that it is only acheived when the amount of pain and suffering exceeds the original. (The logic seems to run along the lines that the equal amount is the justice bit, the bit extra is the punishment bit.) It is easy to see how rapidly this can spiral out of control.
Also, it is clear from the video images that this man does not fear death, for whatever reason. The pain these people are feeling will ease but it will take many years. How can the execution of a man who clearly relishes the prospect equate to that pain?
Here is the irony. To assist these people in healing, if that is what we want, then they should be helped to forgive him and show him some compassion. The gift they give themselves by this act will be far greater than anything they give him.
The article below focuses on the role of revenge in punishment but, as I implied there, revenge is slippery slope, revenge begets revenge. One would hope that, in a civilised society, the principal role of punishment is the removal of risk to society.
Clearly the cheapest and most effective method of doing this is to have the offender remain in society and stop offending. From memory, it costs society around $60,000 per year to keep an offender in a low security gaol, much more for high security.
Some types of crimes are clearly related to an individuals inability to manage anger, road rage and barroom brawling are examples. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that, in an inspired moment Municipal Judge Frances Gallegos of Santa Fe is giving offenders in this category the opportunity to take Tai Chi classes as their punishment. Teaching self control and calm to these offenders can revolutionise their lives and deminish, rather than exacerbate, their violent behaviour and their danger to society.
Small rays of enlightment in dark times.
Amrosi, if you didn't already know, is one of the alleged bombers of the nightclubs in Bali last year. The general expectation is that he will be found guilty and that he will be given the death penalty.
On the radio this morning I heard a relative of a victim say "We want him to suffer the way our daughter suffered". This is, of course, quite a natural reaction, particularly given his apparent complete lack of remorse, but is it justice. I have read numerous articles from the West claiming that Islam is not a civilised religion. By calling for this venegeful treatment of Amrosi are we not doing two things:
1. Making ourselves exactly what we claim to detest in the Islamic states.
2. Giving Amrosi and the radical Islamic faction exactly what they want, a martyr.
Clearly people of this ilk must be isolated from society but the temptation to indulge in a feast of vengence will only result in reciprocation by the other side, as we have already seen at the Marriott.
The death of an individual evokes strong emotions amongst those who were close to the person in question. Relatives, and sometimes friends, seek the services of their GP to help them understand and deal with these, often complex emotions. This can take the form of medication or at least someone to talk to.
If you stop and think about this for a minute you will see that one of the people with the most complex set of emotions over the death may well be the doctor himself/herself. Whilst eveyone else is grieving at the loss, the doctor may be trying to cope with feelings of inadequacy mixed with loss and sorrow.
When do doctors experience the most sever emotional response to death? As you might expect it is when they have treated the patient for a long time and grown to know them as a person. This is most typically the GP who treats people of years or even decades.
Interestingly, there is a culture of silence in the medical profession over the emotional response of doctors to grief. This, amongst other factors, is what leads to substance abuse in doctors.
The British Medical Journal has an interesting article. Read it here.
The hypocratic oath, in case you are unaware, is taken by doctors when they graduate and sets out moral and ethical obligations of doctors to their patients vis-a-vis the sanctity of human life, relief of suffering etc.
So if you are a US military doctor and you are witness to practices that are in violation of your hypocratic oath, such as the alleged torture of prisoners at, or near, the Iraq airfield, which comes first, your loyalty to your country or your obligations as a doctor.
Jerome A Singh, a senior lecturer in law and bioethics, says it is the latter.
Singh refers to the questionable interrogation techniques reported in a December 2002 Washington Post article, and the deaths of two detainees in Afghanistan in March 2003. While he makes clear that there has been no proof of US military physician complicity in the alleged detainee abuse Singh asserts that "if physicians witness or suspect the abuse of detainees, they should consider it their ethical duty… to document and report such abuse."He warns that "the American government's openly negative views towards terror suspects and the Afghan detainees could influence state physicians to not want to provide reasonable care to, or protect the interests of, such detainees. This mindset could conflict with the physician's ethical duty."
Singh's concern is that doctors, like members of the public, are susceptible to "a loss of moral perspective". He warns against the moral disengagement that can come from the negative labelling or devaluing of a group because of their political culture, and against "victim-blame" where detainees in pain or suffering are considered to be responsible for their own fate.
Doctors in the military face the ultimate ethical dilemma, they particularly, must protect themselves against the scapegoating Phil at Signposts refers to.
It seems to me that the perennial calls for harsher penalties, ie longer terms of imprisonment, are doing the rounds again at the moment. It is predictable and understandable for relatives of the victim to be dissatisfied with a sentence, vengence forms part of our makeup after all, and they want to see the offender punished.
Calls from the general community for harsher penalties however are more to do with the deterent aspect of imprisonment. They think, somewhat simplistically, that increasing the punishment will deter others and reduce the overall crime rate. Paradoxically this often has the reverse effect. This is seen clearly in 18th century England where stealing a handkerchief could result in death or transportation. Crime was flourishing.
Here is a question for you to think about? Why do we imprison criminals? There are four reasons I can think of (feel free to flame if you come up with more)
1. Remove risk to society - This is a short term benefit if, when they are eventually released, they are worse than when they went in.
2. Punishment - Important from a closure perspective of the victim, but in most cases no punishment is enough for the victim.
3. Rehabilitate - Possibly the most important reason and the one that is least likely to be acheived.
4. Deter others - What the community wants but is not acheived.
On point 4 research from Canada points to the fact that criminals are detered by the chance of being caught not the severity of the punishment if you are caught. Makes sense really, if you think there is little chance of being caught what does the punishment matter. You can read about it here.
It has been hypothesised in the macro-ecology domain for some time that AIDs may be a biological control mechanism for the human population. All populations, with the partial exception of human beings, wax and wane in response to the enviromental pressures of the ecosystems in which they live.
The South African government is clearly embracing this approach to population management. They are set to ban a WHO supported drug that prevents the transmission of AIDs from a pregnant women to her child during child birth.
This government has a track record of denial of the AIDs problem and has, at times, been quite obstructionist in the treatment of this pandemic to the extent that they went through a phase of denying it even existed.
Death is an inevitable consequence of life, but this decision will see many African children unnecessarily confronting the reality of their own mortality before they are even old enough to understand it.
You can read more of this depressing story here.
The trouble with ethics is that what starts out simple turns out to be much more complicated when all the messy facts of real life are mixed in. Here is the tale of two men for your consideration.
Man 1: This man killed two other men. It was during an armed conflict but he did not kill them in battle or fearing for his life. They were men who stood before him bound and, in cold blood, he shot each of them in the back of the head.
Man 2: This man killed 30, including a 12 year old boy. Also during an armed conflict, he planted a terrorist bomb. He blew up a marching band that was marching along playing for the locals. He killed many of the band and quite a few locals including the 12 year boy.
Have a think about these two acts of violence and decide what you think about the two acts relative to each other then click on continue reading to put a more complete context.
Man 1 was a German soldier who executed the two Italian men in retaliation for deaths of a German even though the men in question had nothing to do with the death of the German. Before you get too indignant reflect on how the deaths in Iraq may, in part, be retaliation for Sept 11, 2001 even though Iraq had nothing to do with that event.
Man 2 was a member of the Italian resistance. In desparate circumstances they resorted to these terrorist acts as the only weapon they had against the overwhelming superiority of the facists and their German allies. Before you feel too much of a swelling of pride at how he faught and conquered in the face of a far superior force think about how you would have felt if I had said that he was a member of the Iraqi resistance fighting against the invasion of the US in his country.
By way of interest, Man 1 is imprisoned for life and Man 2 is a hero.
And a final question for you to ponder. How does whether your side won or not effect how ethical your behaviour was?
And you thought the ethical debate on IVF was complicated already!
Scientists are close to being able to create sperm and egg cells in-vitro (which is what the IV in IVF stands for and literally means in glass - vitrum is glass in Latin).
Up until now we have relied on harvesting sperm and eggs from adult humans, either the parents or donors.
The sperm and egg are, in a way, cloned but this is not cloning because the resultant embrio does not have the same genetic blueprint as another individual and it raises a complete new set of ethical dilemmas.
I was going to post on the fact that in the USA alone there are 200 companies that will take you on a hunting trip where you get to shoot a tethered game animal. If you have done it you are pathetic! (you can tell I'm not a happy little vegemite today)
But here is a lighter story which is probably an urban myth but you just hope it isn't.
An American in Moscow hooked up, through the black market, with a guy who said he would take him hunting bears. The guy arrives on a pushbike at a forest near Moscow. There are no bears living here but the American was not to know that. Anyway, to the pleasure of the American and the surprise of the guide, they come across a bear. The American take aim, fires and misses. The bear, quite naturally, is off and the hunter and guide are in hot pursuit. They loose the bear temporarily. As it happens their pursuit has lead them in a large circle and they arrive back at where the guides bike was parked only to find the bear disappearing into the distance on the bike. Apparently the bear had escaped from a circus and was quite skilled on the push bike.
I found this via j-walk blog.
Nim Chimpsky, named after the great linguist Noam Chomsky, was the first chimpanzee to learn American sign language. Nim became famous, and was the subject of numerous books and television specials. But when the researchers had no more use for him, they opted to sell him to a hepatitis research lab, where he would have been the subject of painful experiments and eventually killed. Nim enjoyed looking at magazines, watching television, and putting on hats and shoes.Our scientists have taken this chimp and developed its sense of self-awareness to far above what it would normally have been. To an extent where it could, arguably, appreciate it's suffering more. Then tortured it and killed it. Some things make you ashamed to be a human being really.
Read of more primates we have abused here.
The Australian reports the 67% of Australians believe that they are being fed bullshit by our political leaders and a third of the population believe it is deliberate. In spite of this John Howard is overwhelming favourite for PM and the opposition aren't within a bulls roar of winning government next time round.
Could it be that the opposition in general, and Simon Crean in particular, are seen as so incompetent that the bulk of people prefer a government and PM who cannot be relied upon to tell the truth?
Or is it that we have taken apathy, a well entrenched characteristic of the Australian psyche, to new levels?
What is the primary objective of a country? There is hours of debate in such a simple question but one might argue that it is to facilitate the wellbeing of it's citizens.
If we accept this, which we will because I am writing the entry and I accept it, then it is possible to measure how a country is performing. Once again endless debates can be had about the relative importance of the various aspects of providing for your citizens. Dr Rchard Estes of the University of Pennsylvania has saved us the trouble by compiling a list of measures of wellbeing of a population. In summary they are concerned with:
Education of population
Health of population
Status of Women (strangely the status of men doesn't matter)
Defense Effort in protecting its citizens
Economic Strength
Age Demographics of population
Environment, that is the health of it.
Social Chaos, civil liberties, death in arm conflict, corruption etc
Cultural Diversity
Welfare Effort
(you can read the full definition of indices here.)
So how do we stack up? If you want to live in a country that really looks after you try a scandenavian country, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland took out the top four spots.
Curious about your country? Well if you are reading this there is a 67% chance you are from Australia or USA.
Australia comes in at 22nd down from 13th in 1970 well behind our trans Tasman rivals (NZ) who are 16th.
USA comes in at 27th down from 23rd in 1970, tying with Slovenia and Poland and falling just behind Canada at 26th.
Check out the table for yourself here.
Dr David Kelly, a respected former United Nations weapons inspector who advised the British Government on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, died on Thursday after slashing his wrist near his home in Oxfordshire, England. He had been under pressure from the British Government over allegations that he told the truth to the BBC. Predictably, those who were opposed to the war in Iraq are baying for government blood over this.
I have been alternating between being appalled and amused, in a macharbe way, over the manipulation of information to justify the Iraq war. We are not yet in a position to judge whether the war was in the long term interest of anybody but it is interesting to watch the spin in action.
The use, however, of Dr Kelly's death by the anti-war lobby as a weapon against the Blair government is equally appalling. To state the obvious, Dr Kelly's action in committing suicide was based on extremely personal reasons that we will never know. Every sane person is responsible for their own behaviour and Dr Kelly was no exception. Mr Blair may have many deaths on his conscience, that is for him to decide, but Dr Kelly's should not be one of them.
Dr Kelly may well have been a respected scientist but he was also a man in a high suicide risk group. If we are to gain from his tragic death it should not be in political pointscoring but in highlighting how at risk men in this age group are of suiciding and doing something about it.
