The Science, Technology, and Ethics of HIV Vaccine Research
An annual report recently released by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS indicated that the number of HIV-infected individuals increased 10 percent in the last year, bringing the number of people worldwide who are now carrying the virus to over 33 million. According to the report, half of these new infections were in people15 to 24 years old, and there were 11 new infections a minute. Sub-Saharan Africa reportedly accounts for two thirds of the infected population and about 12 million AIDS related deaths. There were 200,000 new HIV infections in Latin American and the Caribbean last year and 800,000 new HIV infections reported in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Conversely, there were only 75,000 new HIV infections in the United States, the same number that was reported last year. The burden of HIV is obviously not borne equally by industrialized and developing countries. As illustrated by the dichotomous relationship between the total number of HIV infected adults and the number new HIV infections in industrialized countries versus developing countries the epidemic is disproportionately affecting the populations in developing countries.
The necessity for an HIV vaccine is increasing evident as the epidemic is spreading rampantly in areas of the world where there is limited access to therapeutic HIV treatments, where educational, financial, and governmental resources are inadequate, and where the population may lack a general understanding about the transmission and consequences of the disease. In the United States and other industrialized countries, the number of AIDS related deaths and new HIV infections is declining due to effective therapeuti...
... middle of paper ...
...et. (October 24, 1998) : 743 words. Online. Available: WWW (http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/form/academic/univ_medlabs.html) Information Access Company. On-line database. IAC-ACC-NO: 53146700. 1998.
Portyansky, Elana. “Promising New Research Puts Focus on AIDS Vaccines.” Drug Topics (142.14 : 22) : 815 words. Online. Available: WWW (http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/form/academic/univ_medlabs.html) Information Access Company On-line database. IAC-ACC-NO: 20954683. 1998.
Schoub, Barry D. AIDS and HIV in Perspective: A Guide to Understanding the Virus and its Consequences. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Spier, R. E. “Ethical Aspects of Vaccines and Vaccination.” Vaccine. 16.19 (1998) : 1788-94.
World Bank Policy Research Report. Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
2) Moore, J. (2004). The puzzling origins of AIDS: Although no one explanation has been universally accepted, four rival theories provide some important lesson. American Scientist, 92(6), 540-547. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/stable/27858482
The fourteenth century was an exciting time in Italy. Liberation from old traditions brought about a new interest in the arts and literature. The church's doctrine was no longer the sole basis of scholarly work. New ideas and concepts started to emerge which were unlike anything heard since the fall of Rome. Amongst the great thinkers of this time was a man by the name of Niccolo Machiavelli. (C4. and Wood, p.510) His most famous work was entitled, The Prince. The book is a compilation of historical examples past and present ( present being the sixteenth century), that were intended to guide a prince on the correct way to control his state. It advocated the use of any means necessary to survive in the political world, even if they were not particularly pleasant. (Strathern, p.6)
Yesalis, Charles, ed. Anabolic Steroids In Sport and Exercise. Pennsylvania State University: Human Kinetics, 1993.
The acceptance that the court system often treats female offenders differently than male offenders is an accurate statement; however, it comes with many caveats. Generally, the public views women as nurturers, motherly and incapable of harming a child. Research indicates that female sex offenders capable of committing such acts have serious psychiatric and psychological problems. In comparison, research indicates male sex offenders are more callous, more antisocial, and promiscuous, involved in the criminal justice system, and have more victims (Miccio-Fenseca, 2012, slide 7). The consensus is that men commit their acts for sexual pleasure while women commit their acts due to psychiatric and psychological problems. Law enforcement, juries, and judges tend to empathize more when there are additional mitigating factors such as emotional or psychological problems. Due to these mitigating factors, it appears treatment of female sex offenders is more lenient than male if their crimes are similar in nature. Research by Miccio-Fenseca (2012) indicates that in comparison to their male counterparts, “female sex offenders rarely use force or violence far less than often…rarely use threats of violence to silence victims…rarely use threats o...
There is much debate as to whether a sex offender should be released into the public, this debate stems from the idea that a sex offender cannot be treated and that they are a danger to the public as they are ‘purely evil’ (Burke, 2005), however there is much evidence that sex offenders can be treated and re-introduced into society as a productive member. Sex offender is a general term used to refer to any person who has been convicted of crimes involving sex, from rape and molestation to exhibitionism and pornography distribution. There are many theories which try to explain why people are sexual offenders, these theories along with treatments for sex offenders will be looked at to help explain why people sexually offend and to help evaluate whether sex offenders should be released.
Machiavelli's writings dealt with many issues that had not been attacked in his time, and utilized his distinct brand of political philosophy to try and change the politics and government that shaped his era. The Prince, regarded as his most controversial and successful work, spelled out a method of amelioration; whether positive or negative, virtuous or severe, a prince was to uphold the strength of a nation and a government. The next few pages will take a closer look at the life that has followed Niccolo Machiavelli, the use of historical allusions and the explicitness used in The Prince.
The AIDS epidemic has reached disastrous proportions on the continent of Africa. Over the past two decades, two thirds of the more than 16 million people in the world infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa. It is now home to the largest number of people infected, with 70 percent of the world’s HIV infected population. The problem of this ongoing human tragedy is that Africa is also the least equipped region in the world to cope with all the challenges posed by the HIV virus. In order understand the social and economic consequences of the disease, it is important to study the relationship between poverty, the global response, and the effectiveness of AIDS prevention, both government and grass roots.
Despite good behavior some sex offenders may exhibit, this one standard is not merely enough to allow offenders back onto the streets and into the lives of potential vic...
Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their crimes(Oakes 99). This presents a
U.S. National Library of Medicine, 26 Sept. 2011. Web. The Web. The Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
In recent history, the last fifty years or so, modern businessmen and politicians have given Machiavelli a Renaissance of his own. Professional politicians have written novels they claim to be on the same philosophical level of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Gary Hart, in his book The Patriot: An Exhortation to Liberate America From the Barbarians attempts to update Niccolo to the modern age with his own political philosophies, and attempts to credit Machiavelli by quoting him frequently. “Hart makes an effort to mimic the form, if not the spirit, of the most famous work by his Florentine ‘mentor.’…There is a dedicatory le...
It is commonly believed by both lay people and political philosophers alike that an authoritative figure is good and just so long as he or she acts in accordance with various virtues. If the actions of a ruler are tailored toward the common good of the people rather than himself, then that ruler is worthy of occupying the status of authority. By acting in accordance with social and ethical norms, the ruler is deemed worthy of respect and authority. Niccolò Machiavelli challenges our moral intuitions about moral authority in his work, the Prince, by ruthlessly defending the actions made by the state in an effort to preserve power. In particular, all actions made by the state are done in order to preserve its power, and preserving the state’s power preservers its people. In doing so, whatever actions the state exercises are justified with this end goal in mind. Although such reasoning may seem radical, it is practice more readily that most people are inclined to believe. Machiavelli's moral philosophy is deeply embedded in the present day justice administration. Due to this, Machiavelli’s political thought can serve as a reference for illustrating how today’s administrators can benefit from following the examples of other great leaders, such as on matters of global warming.
“The Prince”, by Niccolo Machiavelli, is a series of letters written to the current ruler of Italy, Lorenzo de’ Medici. These letters are a “how-to” guide on what to do and what not to do. He uses examples to further express his views on the subject. The main purpose was to inform the reader how to effectively rule and be an acceptable Prince. Any ruler who wishes to keep absolute control of his principality must use not only wisdom and skill, but cunning and cruelness through fear rather than love. Machiavelli writes this book as his summary of all the deeds of great men.
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly known as HIV/AIDS is a disease, with which the human immune system, unlike in other disease, cannot cope. AIDS, which is caused by the HIV virus, causes severe disorder of the immune system and slowly progresses through stages which disable the body’s capability to protect and instead makes it vulnerable for other infections. The first blood sample to contain HIV was drawn in 1959 in Zaire, Africa while molecular genetics have suggested that the epidemic first began in the 1930s (Smallman & Brown, 2011). Currently, according to the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, 35.3 million people worldwide are living with HIV. In 2012, an estimated 2.3 million people became newly infected with the virus and 1.6 million people lost their lives to AIDS (Fact Sheet, UNAIDS). It is due to the globalized international society that a disease which existed in one part of the world has managed to infect so many around the world. Globalization is narrowly defined by Joseph Stiglitz as "the removal of barriers to free trade and the closer integration of national economies" (Stiglitz, 2003). Globalization has its effects in different aspects such as economy, politics, culture, across different parts of the world. Like other aspects, globalization affects the health sector as well. In a society, one finds different things that connect us globally. As Barnett and Whiteside point out (2000), “health and wellbeing are international concerns and global goods, and inherent in the epidemic are lessons to be learned regarding collective responsibility for universal human health” (Barnett & Whiteside, 2000). Therefore, through all these global connections in the international society, t...
The AIDS virus is the most common disease, and with no cure, an infected person will die. It is estimated that 90 to 95 percent of AIDS infections occur in developing countries where the world’s worst living conditions exist.