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Off
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Sale requires reimbursement in money---payment in kind is a barter
deal
Dr. Ashok Sharma 11, Former Lecturer in Commerce Government College, Bahadurgarh, “Contract
of Sale,” Chapter 18(ii) in Business Law, p 191, google books
(1) Sale vs. Barter: When goods are exchanged for goods, it is termed to be a barter deal. A
sale essentially implies reimbursement for
goods sold in terms of money. The cost of goods in a contract of sale needs to be in money
whereas, in a barter contract, goods are paid for in kind (in the form of other goods) and not in
cash. In other words, a barter deal is not a sale. For example, if A exchanges his radio for B’s transistor. it would be a barter deal. But.
If A sells his radio to B for Rs. 500, it would be a sale. But if the consideration of transfer of ownership of movable property is partly ‘n the form of
money and partly in goods, It will deemed to be a contract of sale.
This distinction is key in the context of organs---the term “sale” is
narrower than “valuable consideration” and excludes barter
transactions
Susan H Denise 85, JD from the University of Virginia Law School, “NOTE: REGULATING THE
SALE OF HUMAN ORGANS,” SEPTEMBER, 1985, 71 Va. L. Rev. 1015, lexis
The Maryland
and Virginia prohibitions are worded more narrowly [*1031] than the federal
statute, which prohibits the transfer of organs "for valuable consideration." n129 Maryland
stipulates that "a person may not sell, buy, or act as a broker for profit in the transfer" of a human organ. n130 In
Virginia, it is "unlawful for any person to sell, to offer to sell, to buy, to offer to buy, or to procure
through purchase" a human organ. n131 By using the terms "buy" and "sell," these two statutes
may not prohibit a barter or exchange transaction. Thus, the breadth of transactions these legislatures
intended to prohibit is unclear.
Violation---the plan is an in-kind transfer---distinct from cash
payment
Janet Currie 7, Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and
Firouz Gahvari, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 17 December
2007, “Why In-Kind Benefits?” http://www.voxeu.org/article/why-kind-benefits
Economists have long been concerned with the state’s role in bringing about a just distribution of income. The fact that
many
governments choose to conduct significant redistribution through in-kind rather than cash
transfers is an enduring puzzle. Economic theory suggests that the recipients of in-kind transfers would
generally be at least as well off and often better off given the equivalent amount in cash.¶ Table 1
provides some evidence regarding the percent of GDP that is devoted to five types of in-kind programs in OECD countries. The
largest share of public in-kind spending concerns health care, followed by education. But child care, housing, and active
labour market programs are also important. Most countries have some form of food subsidy program (such as a school
lunch program) as well, although the OECD does not track public expenditures on these programs so they are not included in Table 1.
Vote negative
a) Limits---they allow a slew of affs and advantages centered
around how handing out the incentive is good---creates
unpredictable advantages not tied to the topic area
b) Ground---non-cash incentives give them access to unpredictable
link answers and perception arguments that undermine neg
disad ground
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Topical affs must legalize 95% or more of a topic area
To legalize is to make permissible by law
Oxford Dictionary no date,
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/legalize
legalize¶ Syllabification: le·gal·ize¶ Pronunciation: /ˈlēɡəˌlīz /¶ VERB¶ [WITH OBJECT]¶ Make (something that was
previously illegal) permissible by law:¶ a measure legalizing gambling in Deadwood
“Nearly all” means 95 percent or more
GAO 9, Government Accountability Office Report to the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and
Public Lands, Committee on Natural Resources, House of Representatives, June 2009, “Federal Lands:
Enhanced Planning Could Assist Agencies in Managing Increased Use of Off-Highway Vehicles,”
http://www.gao.gov/assets/300/291866.html
Because of a lack of historical and nationwide information about OHV use on federal lands, we also developed and administered a Web-based survey to
gather federal land managers' perspectives on the management and use of OHVs from fiscal year 2004 through fiscal year 2008 on Forest Service,
BLM, and Park Service lands. The survey was administered to the entire population of national forests and BLM field office units and to Park Service
field units most likely to have OHV use, either authorized or unauthorized.[Footnote 1] To ensure the validity of survey responses, we (1) extensively
pretested the survey to ensure that questions were understood appropriately across all three agencies, (2) pledged to report only aggregate survey
information (as opposed to information that would identify a particular unit), and (3) conducted reliability and validity checks of the survey responses.
We obtained a 100 percent response rate for the survey from all three agencies. A complete tabulation of the results of the survey can be viewed at GAO09-547SP. To characterize the results from our survey in this report, we
assigned specific meanings to the words used
to quantify the results, as follows: "a few" means 1 to 24 percent of respondents, "some" means 25 to 44
percent of respondents, "about half" means 45 to 55 percent of respondents, "a majority" means 56 to 74
percent of respondents, "most" means 75 to 94 percent of respondents, and "nearly all" means 95
percent or more of respondents. Appendix I explains our methodology in greater detail.
Vote neg
a) Limits---they allow a huge number of subset affs that legalize
one instance of an activity---wrecks neg prep
b) Ground---DA links are based on removing all or most of the
prohibition---affs that just exempt one subset dodge our best
arguments
1NC
GOP likely to narrowly re-gain control
Varney 9-19 – ’19 – 24 Year Veteren Reporter @ Times-Picayune
James Varney, The Times-Picayune, September 19, 2014 at 11:23 AM, updated September 19, 2014 at
11:52 AM
Rather quietly, at least in Louisiana where incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu has been sorting out her frequent flying miles and living arrangements, the Democrats
there are visible shoots of a possible liberal surge that would allow the party to hold
the Senate in this fall's midterm election. Remarkably, the party has done it on its own. A lackluster economy and a drifting foreign policy haven't caused a boost in
support. But there has been no boneheaded Republican gaffe (at least yet) that the Democrats could
amplify nationwide. Instead, it's word of a statistical tightening in a number of races that is just the stuff to give the
troops a glimmer of hope. The improving electoral landscape also raises the possibility that the GOP, which seemed headed toward a certain Senate takeover,
peaked too soon. For example, the odds of a Republican takeover of the Senate have shrunk in Nate Silver's estimation. He still has the Republicans
gaining control, but his site, FiveThirtyEight, now puts that chance at, ironically, 53.8 percent. Silver's new number was one a
had a good week. Here and
Washington Post blog used when touting its own model that now puts the GOP takeover odds even lower at 51 percent. That's a significant change in the Democrats' favor,
although a closer look shows some of what is causing the shift isn't exactly cork-popping news. For example, when a Republican senator still has a better than 60 percent chance
of re-election, as The Post says is the situation with Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts, that's still a long shot pickup for the Democrats. Momentum is one thing, but some hills are
high. A factor working to the Democrats advantage is the fact they, once again, have raised a lot more money than their opponents. One might not know it from the way leaders
like Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., demonize conservative spending, but the Democrats' well-oiled campaign fundraising machine is humming. In fact, the Democrats have raised
more money, spent more money and have more cash on hand, according to establishment-GOP cup rattler Karl Rove. Rove maintains a sanguine attitude (at least in print), but a
$24 million gap is one the Republicans will be hard pressed to close. That's especially true when one considers the divisions within the Republican tent. Not long after Rove
detailed the money shortfall in The Wall Street Journal, Mississippi's Haley Barbour sent out the call for checks via the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Massive opposition to the plan --- voters backlash against the GOP
D.L. Segev 10, associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine, and S.E. Gentry, Associate Professor, Mathematics, US Naval Academy, “Kidneys
for Sale: Whose Attitudes Matter?” American Journal of Transplantation Volume 10, Issue 5, pages 1113–
1114, May 2010, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-6143.2010.03085.x/full
But even if we believe that today more than half of the US public supports payment for organ donation, does this change anything for
those seeking to establish a national organ market, or those fighting against it? Should we devote resources to investigating the
nuances of public attitudes toward these markets? Probably not, for two major reasons.¶ First, nothing else is relevant
until physicians support organ sales. And, right now, they don’t. In a recent survey of the American Society
of Transplant Surgeons, only 20% of transplant surgeons—those actually doing the transplants—supported cash
payments for deceased or live donation (2). Similar lack of support was found among physicians from other societies as well (3).
Clearly an organ market will not be much of a market with so few willing to perform the transplants or refer the patients. And a
rift in the transplant community resulting from a marginally supported organ market
will likely be much more detrimental to organ transplantation in the United States than
any putative increase in donation from establishing financial incentives (4). As such, those
seeking to better understand the viability of organ markets should focus first on the physicians.¶ Second, and more importantly from
a logistical standpoint, is that it will take an act of Congress—that is the reversal of the National Organ Transplant Act
(NOTA) of 1984—to make organ markets a reality. And this act will be nearly impossible to come by. Only
once has the ‘valuable exchange’ restriction of NOTA been addressed, and this was in 2008 to clarify that NOTA does not apply to
Kidney Paired Donation (KPD, otherwise known as kidney exchange). In fact, the history of the establishment of a national
KPD system can give us a sense of what barriers would be faced in trying to establish a national organ
market. KPD was suggested in 1986, debated for 14 years, and first performed in 2000 with exponential growth thereafter.
Despite years of struggle by UNOS to clarify NOTA so that a national KPD program could be developed, it took a demonstration that
significant amounts of money would be saved (5) and a bipartisan bill cosponsored by 37 House representatives (unanimously
passed) and 12 Senators (unanimously passed) to finally pass the Charlie W. Norwood Living Organ Donation Act in 2008. Those
involved in this process can attest that passage of the Norwood Act was a herculean endeavor—for a modality
that had no opposition from anyone in the medical community, the general public, or Congress. Considering the
effort required for KPD, one can only imagine the barriers to reversing NOTA for a modality rife with
controversy. Instituting financial incentives for organ donors will undoubtedly require a novel
paradigm that engenders full support of the community.
Triggers GOP loss
Meyer 14 - Chief Washington Correspondent for Scripps News Service, Former Executive Producer
for the BBC’s news services in America and Executive Editor for National Public Radio. 2014 Election
Guide: Cramming for midterms, So far, it doesn't look like a watershed year, DICK MEYER, AUG 11, 2014,
http://www.10news.com/decodedc/2014-election-guide-cramming-for-midterms
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Three months out from the midterm elections, it looks like the theme of
the year might be a negative
Voters disapprove of Congress by record levels, but seem inclined to keep the rascals in. Unless
a political tornado touches down, it does not look like 2014 will be a watershed or what is called a
“wave election.” There is not a single driving issue like Obamacare was in 2010. The economic
picture is schizoid, the national mood sour and the array of thorny global issues confusing. There is an
almost universal consensus among professional election watchers that the
Republicans will hold on to the House and have a good to very good chance to capture the
Senate, albeit by a slim margin.
one:
Crushes the Asia pivot
Zachary Keck 14, Managing Editor of The Diplomat, Former Hill Staffer, The Midterm Elections and
the Asia Pivot: The Republican Party taking the Senate in the 2014 elections could be a boon for the Asia
Pivot, April 22, 2014
There is a growing sense in the United States that when voters go to the polls this November, the Republican Party
will win enough Senate seats to control both houses of Congress. This would potentially introduce more gridlock into an
already dysfunctional American political system. But it needn’t be all doom and gloom for U.S. foreign policy, including in the Asia-Pacific. In fact, the
Republicans wrestling control of the Senate from the Democrats this November could be a boon for the U.S. Asia pivot. This is true for at least three
reasons. First, with
little prospect of getting any of his domestic agenda through Congress, President Barack Obama
will naturally focus his attention on foreign affairs. Presidents in general have a tendency to focus more attention on foreign policy
during their second term, and this effect is magnified if the other party controls the legislature. And for good
reason: U.S. presidents have far more latitude to take unilateral action in the realm of foreign affairs than in domestic policy. Additionally, the 2016
presidential election will consume much of the country’s media’s attention on domestic matters. It’s only when acting on the world stage that the
president will still be able to stand taller in the media’s eyes than the candidates running to for legislative office. Second,
should the
Democrats get pummeled in the midterm elections this year, President Obama is likely to make
some personnel changes in the White House and cabinet. For instance, after the Republican Party incurred losses in the 2006 midterms,
then-President George W. Bush quickly moved to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the less partisan (at least in that era) Robert Gates.
Obama followed suit by making key personnel changes after the Democrats “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm elections. Should the Democrats face a
similar fate in the 2014 midterm elections, Obama is also likely to make notable personnel changes. Other aides, particular former Clinton aides, are
likely to leave the administration early in order to start vying for spots on Hillary Clinton’s presumed presidential campaign. Many of these changes are
likely to be with domestic advisors given that domestic issues are certain to decide this year’s elections. Even so, many nominally domestic positions—
such as Treasury and Commerce Secretary—have important implications for U.S. policy in Asia. Moreover, some of the post-election
changes are likely be foreign policy and defense positions, which bodes well for Asia given the
appalling lack of Asia expertise among Obama’s current senior advisors. But the most important way a Republican
victory in November will help the Asia Pivot is that the GOP in Congress are actually more favorable to the pivot
than are members of Obama’s own party. For example, Congressional opposition to granting President Trade
Promotional Authority — which is key to getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership ratified — is largely from Democratic legislators. Similarly, it is the
Democrats who are largely in favor of the defense budget cuts that threaten to undermine
America’s military posture in Asia. If Republicans do prevail in November, President Obama will
naturally want to find ways to bridge the very wide partisan gap between them. Asia offers the
perfect issue area to begin reaching across the aisle. The Republicans would have every incentive to
reciprocate the President’s outreach. After all, by giving them control of the entire Legislative Branch, American voters
will be expecting some results from the GOP before they would be ostensibly be ready to elect them to the White House in 2016.
A Republican failure to achieve anything between 2014 and 2016 would risk putting the GOP in the same
dilemma they faced in the 1996 and 2012 presidential elections. Working with the president to pass the TPP and strengthen
America’s military’s posture in Asia would be ideal ways for the GOP to deliver results without violating their principles.
Asia pivot key to prevent nuclear war
Colby 11 – Elbridge Colby, research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, served as policy advisor
to the Secretary of Defense’s Representative to the New START talks, expert advisor to the Congressional
Strategic Posture Commission, August 10, 2011, “Why the U.S. Needs its Liberal Empire,” The Diplomat,
online: http://the-diplomat.com/2011/08/10/why-us-needs-its-liberal-empire/2/?print=yes
But the pendulum shouldn’t be allowed to swing too far toward an incautious retrenchment. For our problem hasn’t been overseas commitments
and interventions as such, but the kinds of interventions. The
United States’ ‘liberal
US alliance and partnership structure, what the late William Odom called the
empire’ that includes a substantial military presence and a willingness to use it in
the defence of US and allied interests, remains
a vital component of US security and global stability and
prosperity. This system of voluntary and consensual cooperation under US leadership, particularly in the security realm,
constitutes a formidable bloc defending the liberal international order. But, in part due to poor decision-
making in Washington, this system is under strain, particularly in East Asia, where the security situation has become tenser even as the region
continues to become the centre of the global economy. A nuclear North Korea’s violent behaviour threatens South Korea and Japan, as well as US
forces on the peninsula; Pyongyang’s development of a road mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, moreover, brings into sight the day when
North Korea could threaten the United States itself with nuclear attack, a prospect that will further imperil
stability in the region. More broadly, the rise of China – and especially its rapid and opaque military build-up – combined with its
increasing assertiveness in regional disputes is troubling to the United States and its allies and partners across the region.
Particularly relevant to the US military presence in the western Pacific is the development of Beijing’s anti-access and area denial capabilities,
including the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, more capable anti-ship cruise missiles, attack submarines, attack aircraft, smart mines, torpedoes,
and other assets. While Beijing remains a constructive contributor on a range of matters, these capabilities will give China the growing power to
deny the United States the ability to operate effectively in the western Pacific, and thus the potential to undermine
the USguaranteed security substructure that has defined littoral East Asia since World War II. Even if China says today it won’t exploit
this growing capability, who can tell what tomorrow or the next day will bring? Naturally, US efforts to build up forces in the western Pacific in
response to future Chinese force improvements must be coupled with efforts to engage Beijing as a responsible stakeholder; indeed, a strengthened
but appropriately restrained military posture will enable rather than detract from such engagement. In short, the
United States must
increase its involvement in East Asia rather than decrease it. Simply maintaining the
military balance in the western Pacific will, however, involve substantial investments to improve US
capabilities. It will also require augmented contributions to the common defence by US allies that have long enjoyed low defence budgets under the
US security umbrella. This won’t be cheap, for these requirements can’t be met simply by incremental additions to the existing posture, but will
have to include advances in air, naval, space, cyber, and other expensive high-tech capabilities. Yet such efforts are vital, for East
Asia
represents the economic future, and its strategic developments will determine which
country or countries set the international rules that shape that economic future. Conversely, US
interventions in the Middle East and, to a lesser degree, in south-eastern Europe have been driven by far more
ambitious and aspirational conceptions of the national interest , encompassing the proposition that failing or
illiberally governed peripheral states can contribute to an instability that nurtures terrorism and
impedes economic growth. Regardless of whether this proposition is true, the effort is rightly seen by the new political tide not to be
worth the benefits gained. Moreover, the United States can scale (and has scaled) back nation-building plans in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and the Balkans without undermining its vital interests in ensuring the free flow of oil and in preventing terrorism. The lesson to be
drawn from recent years is not, then, that the United States should scale back or shun overseas commitments as such, but rather that we must be
more discriminating in making and acting upon them. A total US unwillingness to intervene would pull the rug out from under the US-led
structure, leaving the international system prey to disorder at the least, and at worst to chaos or dominance by others who could not be counted
on to look out for US interests. We
need to focus on making the right interventions, not forswearing them
completely. In practice, this means a more substantial focus on East Asia and the serious security challenges
there, and less emphasis on the Middle East. This isn’t to say that the United States should be unwilling to intervene
in the Middle East. Rather, it is to say that our interventions there should be more tightly connected to concrete objectives such as protecting
the free flow of oil from the region, preventing terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies, and forestalling or, if
necessary, containing nuclear proliferation as opposed to the more idealistic aspirations to transform the region’s societies. These
more concrete objectives can be better met by the more judicious and economical use of our military
power. More broadly, however, it means a shift in US emphasis away from the greater Middle
East toward the Asia-Pacific region, which dwarfs the former in economic and military
potential and in the dynamism of its societies. The Asia-Pacific region, with its hard-charging economies and growing presence on
the global stage, is where the future of the international security and economic system will be set, and
it is there that Washington needs to focus its attention, especially in light of rising regional security challenges. In light of US
budgetary pressures, including the hundreds of billions in ‘security’ related money to be cut as part of the debt ceiling deal, it’s
doubly important that US security dollars be allocated to the most pressing tasks – shoring up
the US position in the most important region of the world, the Asia-Pacific. It will also require restraint in
expenditure on those challenges and regions that don’t touch so directly on the future of US
security and prosperity.
1NC
Legalized organ sales is just the next step of neoliberal exploitation of
the poor’s resources---the result is state-sanctioned necropolitical
violence
Ayan Kassim 13, University of Toronto, Terrains of Terror and Modern Apparatuses of Destruction:
Transplantation, Markets, and the Commoditized Kidney,
digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=auchs&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3D%2522organ%2Bsale%2522
%2Bcapitalism%26btnG%3D%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%252C14#search=%22organ%20sale%20capi
talism%22
In this particular formulation, coercion operates covertly. Although vendors seemingly go
to the market by ‘choice’, dire economic constrains is the most important factor in why massive
populations were now willing to alienate a portion of them self to survive; this is what makes
this particular market destructive. Resource extraction from the Global South is not novel but an
integral characteristic in industrial capitalism. If we are to put resource depletion in
historical context, one cannot forget the resounding legacies of environmental and
human depletion and exploitation through colonization and imperialism.36 What marks the
shift that materialized with the emergence of the black market was the changing nature of resources extracted, the ‘surplus’ kidney, through an increasingly
global system that facilitates this trade. Extracted is another resource from the poor, mostly racialized,
and destitute populations of the world. Though in order to execute the consumption of the kidney, there needed to be fixed structures
in place to make trade possible.
New Trajectories: The Strange Career of the Illegal Kidney With legal strictures enacted in more and more countries to stifle the trade of kidneys for profit, its movement was
limited. Yet voracious demand and new incentives for sellers that were unleashed could not be suppressed. Driven by the complexities of transplantation and the clandestine
fashion in which black markets operate, a concomitant medical phenomena emerged to facilitate the movement of the kidney as a commodity transnationally. Transplant
tourism, defined as “the purchase of a transplant organ abroad that includes access to an organ while bypassing laws, rules, or processes of any or all countries involved”, 37
became the typical means of organ traffic. With transplantation now operating in a transnational space, this appended market in the commercial traffic of living donors and their
kidneys saw a tertiary element emerge that mediated exchange between sellers and recipients: the body broker. 38 It suffices to say that a ‘broker’ need not be limited to just
individuals: organized crime, doctors, medical technicians, border control, and even complicit state bodies can all be considered brokers. Though here I focus on the individual,
non-state or medical, broker. Characteristic of the vigor within the black market is how brokers, recipients, and sellers can all find places to trade goods. Intermediaries need to
coerce both sellers and buyers, in addition to cultivating vast networks with actors at both the national and international level to traverse and usurp geopolitical and territorial
boundaries of nation states,39 a phenomena very similar to the brokers that precipitate the traffic of whole persons (sex workers, migrant labourers) in modern forms of
slavery.40 If successful, the impunity in which these intermediaries operate with is unprecedented. This is part in parcel due to their detailed understanding of how the market
works, exploiting the high the stakes of survival for both sellers and buyers, and capitalizing on the lucrative nature of the trade; in some places body brokers can sell a kidney for
up to 15-20 times what they pay, without the buyer and seller really knowing how much profit was up for grabs.41 In the context of the illegal kidney trade there is an important
relationship between power and sight; actors conferred with optimal visibility wield unprecedented power.42 The body broker is granted this power of ‘sight’ in their mediation
of these high stake transactions.
Furthermore, spatial distance and division between a would-be seller and a would-be recipient is just as salient in
precipitating the trade. In the space of a five-star transplant hospital/hotel where all three ‘actors’ converge, the donor and recipient never meet.43 Kidney
traffic hinges on division of both the body and of the space in which the body is fragmented. No longer a ‘gift’, the commercialized kidney
renders social relationships through exchange irrelevant. With the division of space which
renders donors anonymous, there can be mindful distance of the recipient taking one’s kidney
for their own use; this mindful distance is bolstered by the act of monetary compensation to the
seller as well as keeps the broker relevant.
New Policy: The Iranian Model and the Dangers of Precedent As the growing realities of the black market surfaced, medical experts and scholars began arguing that a legal,
Transparency, by eliminating shadowy brokers, and the
realities of the black
market. But was that the case? Iran, the only country in the world that has implemented a state regulated
legal trade in kidneys is then an important site of investigation.
regulated market in kidneys would provide the strictures needed to properly facilitate an equitable trade.
hope of alleviating the ‘shortage’ of kidneys by allowing the choice of would-be sellers to sell legally, seemed a better option than the current
The Islamic Republic of Iran sanctioned its legal trade in kidneys as a response to the high rates of renal disease, scarce and expensive materials for dialysis, and growing
income disparity amongst classes; its first organs bank appeared in 1998.44 In this system, kidneys are procured from three sources: living related donors (LRD), living
unrelated donors (LUD), and cadaveric donors (CD), yet the consistent kind of donor is the LUD.45 Compensation for living related and unrelated donors is critical in
precipitating this procurement system yet kidneys from cadaveric donors (i.e, families of the loved one) are not compensated by the government.46 This poses a problem. With
compensation only being offered to living donor populations, cadaveric donation systems are undermined. In addition, although financial incentives are offered for those family
members who decide to give their kidney to a loved one, why put a loved one at risk of invasive surgery if you can simply receive a kidney from a donor in which you have no
social ties to? This state implemented organ procurement strategy legitimates the hierarchization and fetishization of the LUD kidney.
Further, Iran merits special international attention as it was recently said that their waiting list for kidneys has been eliminated. Widely read media outlets like The Economist
published stories in 2006 on the country’s innovation and logical system to procure kidneys,47 citing Dr. Ahad J. Ghods 2002 study in which he claimed Iran elimination of
their waiting lists through a government facilitated trade should be applied in the US.48 Although praised by many as being in the vanguard of eliminating the suffering of those
new scholarship detailed that this idyllic situation may
not the reality on the ground. Anne Griffin recently detailed the dubious parameters in the criteria
used to define the waiting list as ‘eliminated’ in Ghods’s study. Griffin described that poor patients, who
largely have to wait for cadaveric donation, since they cannot afford to compensate LRD or
in the throes of renal disease, while ‘adequately’ compensating donors,
LUD’s, were still waiting on kidney transplants; the wait was only over for those with fiscal
means.49 In addition, the market solution to the growing problem of income disparity between classes in Iran is troubling. If the waiting list is indeed eliminated, it is
indicative of the desperation in which people are willing to sell their kidneys for compensation. In Iran, supply far outpaces demand in which
has spurred fierce competition amongst would-be donors, with sellers willing to drive down the
price of their kidney to seem more marketable to would-be recipients, has become remarkably
common.50
Employing Mbembe’s concept of necropower, the means in which the sovereign employs the destruction of
certain populations 51, suffices immensely in this context; here state sanctioned violence
against its largely impoverished subjects is legitimated through state policy.
Although the intentions of facilitating this trade was meant to help both donor and recipients,
studies of kidney vendors in Iran demonstrated that vendors typically never see their profits
make any real impact on their lives.52 This state authorized destruction, by integrating and
ultimately justifying this systematic violence and fragmentation of bodies via kidney
transplantation, is extremely problematic and irresponsible, particularly since there remains a lack of longitudinal studies of the psychological and
social impacts of nephrectomy on sellers. Further, the precedent that the Iranian model set internationally has subsequently given traction to those echoing the need of a legal
market for kidneys, and organs more generally, to keep up with the ‘shortages’.
New Debate The shifting paradigms within the life sciences that markedly informed new modes of seeing and understandings of the body directly impacted discourse
surrounding the legal/illegal, regulated/ unregulated market in kidneys in both the scholarly and public realm.53 The sale of humans is largely considered morally abhorrent
and illegal, but the notion of legalizing the sale of organs quickly gained momentum in medical communities. As Scheper-Hughes details, publications in prominent medical
journals like The Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association saw more experts arguing for a market in kidneys over the years.54 Why? Again, transplantations
ability to literally fragment the body, transforming its old meanings and ascribing it new ones, has made this exchange palatable and less morally repugnant to more and more
people in realms such as economics, bioethics, and the transplant community. Further, as Moniruzzaman articulates, “with vested interests, the neoliberal market economy
turns many medical specialists into a “three-in-one man” (a businessman, politician, and doctor).”55
Mostly, proponents argue that incentives for kidney procurement are needed in order to solicit more kidneys. It is argued that this form of sale should no longer be perceived as
repugnant. The repugnance has now shifted to the “sad reality of patients dying and suffering while waiting for a kidney” which is considered unnecessary.56 Most interestingly
in this debate was the reluctant surrender of Robert Veatch, a medical ethicist, former anti-market stance to procure kidneys. In arguing that liberals should now become
proponents of the market solution to renal failure, Veatch’s details that his perspective shifted as the growing failures of social policy in the US drastically increased stratification
of economic classes.57 Because of this failure, Veatch believes the opportunity to sell one’s kidney to become a visible economic actor should no longer be illegal, since social
policy will never be equitable.
Disturbing is this advocacy of prominent experts who have clout in (re)formulating policy. Especially in the wake of publications from medical and ethnographic studies
of kidney vendors in India 58, Bangladesh 59, Iran 60, and Moldova, 61 variations of the same story
were told: selling a kidney never made any significant impact on donor’s economic lives, despite
what many economists, bioethicists, and medical professionals claim. What vendors did
experience were lost wages, from the post-operative pain and sickness many vendors felt,
feelings of deep regret, and societal expulsion in some grave cases.62 Thus, to promote the dismemberment
of the economic underclass as a means of being economically ‘visible’ is both ethically and
morally irresponsible. Moreover, rarely mentioned in literature advocating legalized markets (regulated and unregulated) are the risks of nephrectomy to
donors or strategies focused on prevention of renal disease.63 These gaps perpetuate idyllic understandings of the grim
realities of post-transplantation success. Realities of the long term impact and costs of antirejection medication and bleak survival rates from when the kidney is purchased and
transplanted is remarkably understated.64
the marketization of society makes massive structural violence and
extinction inevitable
Henry A. Giroux 13, Beyond Savage Politics and Dystopian Nightmares, http://www.truthout.org/opinion/item/19025-beyond-savage-politics-and-dystopian-nightmares
What kind of society emerges when it is governed by the market-driven assumption that the only
value that matters is exchange value, when the common good is denigrated to the status of a mall, and the social
order is composed only of individuals free to pursue their own interests? What happens to democracy when a government inflicts on the
American public narrow market-driven values, corporate relations of power and policies that impose gross inequities on society, and condemns young people to a life of precarity in which the future
begins to resemble a remake of dystopian films such as Mad Max (1979), Brazil (1985), RoboCop (1987), Minority Report (2002), District Nine (2009), Comopolis
(2012) and The Purge (2013). What makes American society distinct in the present historical moment is a culture and
social order that has not only lost its moral bearings but produces a level of symbolic and real violence whose
visibility and existence set a new standard for cruelty, humiliation and the mechanizations of a mad war
machine, all of which serve the interests of the political and corporate walking dead - the new avatars of death and
cruelty - that plunder the social order.[i] Unfortunately, the dark and dire images of America’s dysimagination
machine made visible endlessly in all the mainstream cultural apparatuses have been exceeded by a society rooted in a savage politics in
which extreme forms of violence have become both spectacle and modus operandi of how American
society governs and entertains itself. Evidence of the decay of American democracy is not only found in the fact that the government is now controlled by a handful of powerful
right-wing and corporate interests, it is also increasingly made manifest in the daily acts of cruelty and violence that shroud that American landscape like a vast and fast-moving dust storm.
Unspeakable violence, extending from the murder of young people and children at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University and
Sandy Hook Elementary School, to name a few, to the recent mass shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and the Washington Navy Yard
give credence to the notion that violence now becomes the most important element of power and
mediating force in shaping social relationships. Mass violence has become so routine that it no longer
evokes visceral responses from the public. For instance, when such violence engulfs major cities such as Chicago, the public barely
blinks. And as the mass shootings increase, they will barely be covered by mainstream media, who have no critical language by which to engage such events except as aberrations with no systemic
The line between the spectacle of violence and the reality of everyday violence has become blurred, making it
Violence has become
so normalized that it no longer has a history. That is, its political and economic structures
have become invisible , and the painful memories it evokes disappear quickly among the barrage of spectacles of violence and advertisements addressing us not as moral beings
but as customers seeking new commodities, instant pleasure and ever-shocking thrills. At the same time, violence in America is fed by a culture of fear shaped, in part, by a preoccupation with surveillance, incarceration and the personal security industry. And, as a result, American society
has made “a sinister turn towards intense social control,”[ii] and a “political culture of hyper punitiveness.” [iii] The tentacles of this high-intensity violence, now normalized,
reach into every aspect of society - a spectacle that does not unsettle but thrives on more shocks,
more bloodshed and more suffering. The political, corporate and intellectual zombies that rule America love
death-dealing institutions, which accounts for why they rarely criticize the bloated military budget and the rise of the incarceration and punishing state. They embrace the demands of
an empire that kills innocent people with automated drones and sanctions torture and are all too willing to
raise their voices to fever pitch to promote war as the only viable tool of diplomacy. Witness the almost-hysterical displays of
public anger by Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham over President Barack Obama’s decision to avert bombing Syria in favor of a diplomatic solution. State violence is now the
sanctioned norm of rule in a society in which political fanatics , such as Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio define policy
according to a friend/enemy distinction and in doing so transform politics into an extension of war. Unrelenting in their
role as archetypes of the hyper-dead, the Tea Party fanatics and their gutless allies spectacularize hatred and trade in fear, lies and
misinformation while trying to hold the American public and the government hostage to their fanatical
market-driven principles. We are witnessing the militarization of all aspects of American politics
and life, and one consequence is a growing authoritarianism in which democracy becomes its ultimate
victim. No sphere is immune from this madness. For instance, Ohio State University, as a result of a gift from military surplus, has added an armored
causes.
difficult to respond to and understand the origins of symbolic and institutional violence in the economic, political and social formations that now rule American society.
military vehicle to its campus security forces - all the better to inculcate not only the values of militarization in young students but also a culture of fear, violence, thoughtlessness and insecurity.[iv] Local police
forces now resemble SWAT teams and make clear that force is the most important way to address not just criminal behavior but also social problems.[v] Images of the police do not simply saturate television
violence is not just visible in the spectacle of entertainment or in the
deep-rooted economic inequalities arrogantly defended by the rich; it is also discernible in the everyday actions
and small change of daily interactions as the punishing state injects the ideology of violence into
legislation designed to cripple and impose pain upon large segments of the population regarded as
disposable, excess and unworthy of social supports. For instance, the cutting of $40 billion from the food stamp program (SNAP) by the mostly wealthy, white, right-wing extremists that make up
dramas, they have become the most visible humans occupying public schools. Needless to say,
visibility of
the Republican Party members of the House of Representatives exemplifies the new face of a savage politics. In responding to the cuts, Timothy Egan, an opinion writer for The New York Times, stresses rightly the
cruelty implicit in this piece of legislation and what it says about the extremists driving the Republican Party. He writes: The Republican-dominated House passed a bill that would deprive 3.8 million people of
assistance to buy food next year. ... A Republican majority that refuses to govern on other issues found the votes to shove nearly 4 million people back into poverty, joining 46.5 million at a desperation line that has
failed to improve since the dawn of the Great Recession. It’s a heartless bill, aimed to hurt. Republicans don’t see it that way, of course. They think too many of their fellow citizens are cheats and loafers, dining out
on lobster.[vi] What Egan fails to point out is that “an estimated 210,000 children will lose access to free school lunch programs and 55,000 jobs will be lost in the first year of cuts alone.”[vii] He also fails to
the war being waged on food stamps by the Republican Party is symptomatic of a larger war waged
against the poor. Being poor in America means that one has no moral stature and is subject to a variety of state intrusions, such as drug testing, that assume that the poor are criminals.
Being poor has become a crime, and when coupled with the now-commonplace racially inflected
language of "us vs. them" so prominent among right-wing politicians, the ugly poison of bigotry and racism once
again is on full display as part of an effort to promote Jim Crow legislation, revealing the white
supremacist ideology that characterizes the extremists leading the Republican Party. The new extremists are not
simply political loons out of touch with America, as some critics describe them. They are the face of the emerging counter-revolution taking over the
nation - an updated and kinder version of the fascist brownshirts now dressed in suits carrying black
briefcases and living in guarded communities. They are the dark angels of violence, and they trade in the mass psychology of fear and hate. They
mention that
despise compromise and live by a take-no-prisoners political sensibility. They want to eliminate any vestiges of the government that provide social protections. As I mentioned previously, they also want to shut
down the government and strip the American public of health care benefits while consolidating power in the hands of a party that, as former President Jimmy Carter pointed out, removed America from the
Behind Obama’s facile smile and Ivy League civility lies a not-sohidden form of authoritarian politics and a mode of ethical barbarism that allows him to believe he has
the right to kill people without any recourse to due process, destroy civil liberties and implement the policies of
Wall Street gangsters. Whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning who are repulsed by the moral and political abuses of government and have
courageously spoken out against such practices are labeled as traitors by the dominant media and many of the politicians bought off by the lobbyists who have made the Congress and White
pretense of being a functioning democracy.[viii] But they are not alone.
House their second home.[ix] Similarly, the same administration that refused to prosecute those government officials who tortured, maimed, imprisoned and abducted thousands of innocent human beings now
The increasing militarization
of American society is matched by its increasing depoliticization and its increasing incapacity to
make moral judgments and act with compassion against the most shocking injustices. George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling are right in arguing that
condemn those whistleblowers such as Manning, Snowden, and Aaron Swartz, who exposed the political conditions that created them in the first place.
conservatives view the public as immoral and can imagine democracy only as “providing the maximal liberty to seek one’s self interest without being responsible for the interest of others. ... Lack of success implies
Moral responsibility is now in full flight condemned to a bygone era
when the social contract actually had some meaning. A moral coma has engulfed the United States, as individuals can no longer
connect private troubles to broader social and systemic issues. The art of translation, which is crucial to any viable democracy, dissolves into the septic
lack of discipline and character, which means you deserve your poverty.”[x]
tank of celebrity culture and the dead zone of a market society exemplified in the growing infantilization of a citizenry shaped by the rapid proliferation of a culture of idiocy, civic illiteracy and authoritarianism.
Casino capitalism and its right-wing apostles lack any sense of ethics or respect for the social contract
and spew feverishly an endless rhetoric of hate and vile over the airwaves . The unapologetic discourse
of racism, humiliation and cruelty has become an industry for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin and
politicians of the same ilk who relentlessly describe immigrants as vermin, denounce young student protesters as un-American, argue that women are undeserving of any control over their reproductive rights,
resurrect the legacy of Jim Crow by denying poor minorities their voting rights, and take pride in shaming those on welfare as lazy and undeserving of social benefits. For instance, “Georgia state Rep. Terry
England compared women to farm animals while discussing an abortion measure on the Georgia state house floor.”[xi] But there is more at stake here than the poisonous rhetoric of racism and class warfare.
This is a punishing machine
whose mad violence elevates a hyper-punitiveness over any sense of compassion or respect for the other,
especially those who are in need of decent health care, social services and the most basic right to a decent job and life of dignity.[xii]
Mass shootings have become the new index of violence in America, but they pale in terms of human destruction and mass
suffering with the infliction of hardship and misery imposed on millions of people daily in the United States
under the regime of casino capitalism. Evidence for the death of the American dream is everywhere: Millions of people have lost their homes, and young people
are living with the nightmare of a future without jobs, hopes and security, if not dignity. At the same time, many soldiers returning from the senseless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and
suffering from a wide range of illnesses are given shoddy and sometime death-dealing treatment by the veterans’ hospitals. In some cases, they are turned
There is also the rise of a punishing state, which now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 700 people per 100,000 in prison.
into drug addicts because the hospitals, in their efforts to keep them quiet rather than give them proper treatment, overprescribe painkillers. Unfortunately, such neglect does more than keep them quiet; it often
Poor children are denied proper health care and school lunches . The poverty rate in
America grows to unimaginable numbers matched only by the increasing growth in income and wealth by
the super-rich. The corporate educational reform movement teaches young people how to be stupid and dissolves all vestiges of creativity in the mad frenzy of an audit culture. At the same time,
results in their needless deaths.
students find themselves in a job market that offers them little but dashed dreams and low-skill jobs, if they are lucky enough to find one. The small change of human cruelty and a savage politics was evident
recently in newspaper accounts about the rise of expensive condos in the Upper West Side of Manhattan that have one entrance for the rich and another for “working people who won a city lottery to obtain
affordable apartments in the building.”[xiii] There is a larger politics at work here than the obvious class and racist implications. Connect the dots of this particularly racist and class-based policy to the rapidly
proliferating decisions on the part of Tea Party politicians to produce policies that force the frail, poor and aged to choose between medicine and food. Or the decision on the part of the state of Nevada to dump
“1,500 mental patients onto other states by putting them on Greyhound busses and sen[ding] them over state lines with no prior arrangements with families or other mental hospitals once they arrive.”[xiv]
This is a new kind of authoritarianism that does not speak in the jingoistic discourse of empowerment, exceptionalism or nationalism. Instead, it
defines itself in the language of cruelty, suffering and fear, and it does so with a sneer and an unbridled
disdain for those considered disposable. Neoliberal society mimics the search for purity we have
seen in other totalitarian societies. Right-wing market fundamentalists want to root out those considered
defective consumers and citizens, along with allegedly unpatriotic dissidents . They also want to punish the poor and remove their
children from the possibility of a quality public education. Hence, they develop schools that are dead zones of the imagination for most children and highly creative classroom environments free of the frenzy of
empiricism and test-taking for the children of the rich. It gets worse. In Pennsylvania, right-wing Gov. Tom Corbett and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter are intent on destroying the public school system.
Instead of funding public schools, Corbett and Nutter are intent on crushing the teachers union and supporting vouchers and charter schools. They also are fond of claiming that money can’t help struggling public
schools as a pretext for closing more than 23 schools “while building a $400 million state prison.”[xv] As Aaron Kase reports, “Things have gotten so bad that at least one school has asked parents to chip in $613
per student just so they can open with adequate services, which, if it becomes the norm, effectively defeats the purpose of equitable public education, and is entirely unreasonable to expect from the city’s poorer
neighborhoods.”[xvi] Vouchers and under-regulated charter schools have become the unapologetic face of a vicious form of casino capitalism waging war on the imagination while imposing a range of harsh and
The vast stores of knowledge and human
creativity needed by young people to face a range of social, economic and political problems in the future
are not simply being deferred, they are being systematically destroyed. When the emancipatory potential of education does emerge, it is often couched in the
deadening discourse of establishing comfort zones in classrooms as a way of eliminating any pedagogy that provokes, unsettles or educates students to think critically. Critical knowledge and
pedagogy are now judged as viable only to the degree that they do not make a student uncomfortable .
There is more at stake here than the death of the imagination; there is also the elimination of those modes of
agency that make a democracy possible. In the face of such cruel injustices, neoliberalism remains mute,
disdaining democratic politics by claiming there are no alternatives to casino capitalism. Power in the United States has been uprooted from any respect for public
punitive disciplinary methods on teachers and students, particularly low-income and poor white minorities.[xvii]
value, the common good and democratic politics. This is not only visible in the fact that 1 percent of the population now owns 40 percent of the nation’s wealth or took home “more than half of the nation’s
income,” it is also evident in a culture that normalizes, legitimates and thrives in a politics of humiliation, cruelty, racism and class discrimination.[xviii] Political, moral and economic foundations float free of
constraints. Moral and social responsibilities are unmoored, free from any sense of responsibility or accountability in a permanent war state. Repression is now the dominant mantra for all of society. As Zygmunt
the American public has been turned into “security addicts,” ingesting mistrust,
suspicion and fear as the new common sense for a security state that seems intent on causing the
Bauman and David Lyons point out,
death of everything that matters in a democracy.[xix] The surveillance state works hard to not only monitor our phone conversations or track our Internet communication but to turn
us into consumers, ratchet up the desire to be watched, and enforce new registers of social exclusion between those inside and outside the official temples of consumerism, social rights and captainship itself.
Confining, excluding and vigilantism is one register of the new face of authoritarianism in the US. As America enters a historical era dominated by an authoritarian repressive state, the refugee camp as a symbol of
exclusion and suffering is everywhere, visible in the material encampments for the homeless, urban ghettoes, jails, detention centers for young people, and in the tents propping up alongside highways that hold
The refugee camp also has become a metaphor for those who
question authority, because they are increasingly rendered stateless, useless and undesirable. Critical
thought is now considered dangerous, discomforting and subject to government prosecution, as is evident in the
war being waged against whistleblowers in the name of national (in)security.[xx] The technologies of smart missiles hunt down those considered
enemies of the United States, removing the ethical imagination from the horror of the violence it inflicts while solidifying the “victory of technology
over ethics.”[xxi] Sorting out populations based on wealth, race, the ability to consume and immigration status is the new face of America. The pathologies of inequality
have come home to roost in America.[xxii] Moreover, as suffering increases among vast swaths of the
population, the corporate elite and rich use the proliferating crises to extract more wealth, profits and
resources.[xxiii] Crises become the new rationale for destroying the ideologies, values and institutions that
give power to the social contract. [xxiv] The ethos of rabid individualism, hyper-masculinity and a
survival-of-the-fittest ethic has created a society of throwaways of both goods and people. The savage
the new refugees from the suburbs who have lost their jobs, homes and dignity.
ethic of economic Darwinism also drives the stories we now tell about ourselves. The state of
collective unconsciousness that haunts America has its deepest roots not only in the writings of Friedrich Hyek, Ayn Rand,
Milton Friedman and other neoliberal philosophers but also in the increasing merging power of private-sector
corporations that, as John Ralston Saul has argued, has its roots in the “anti-democratic underpinnings of Fascist Italy in particular, but also
of Nazi Germany.”[xxv] Today this “corporatism [is] so strong it that it has taken the guts out of much of daily
democratic life.”[xxvi] Combined with the power of the national surveillance state, it is fair to say, again quoting Saul, that “corporatism, with all of the problems attached to it, is digging itself ever
deeper into our society, undermining our society.”[xxvii] Clearly, those words echoed a few years ago were not only prescient but vastly underestimated the growing authoritarianism in the United States, in
We now live in a society in which leadership has been usurped by models of corporate management,
self-interest has triumphed over the ethical imagination, and a respect for others is discarded for the crude
instrumental goal of accumulating capital, regardless of the social costs. Intellectuals in too many public spheres have become
either dysfunctional or they have sold out. Higher education is no longer the city on the hill. Instead it has become a corporate boardroom/factory in
which Bill Gates wannabes govern the university as if it were an outpost of Wall Street . Outside of the boardrooms, intellectual
particular.
violence prevails aimed largely at faculty and students, who are reduced to either grant writers or consumers. To make matters worse academic knowledge is drowning in firewalls of obtuseness, creating a world of
dysfunctional intellectuals, at least those who have tenure. Those who don’t have such security are tied to the harsh rhythm and rituals of contingent subaltern labor and barely make enough money to be able to
pay their rent or mounting debts - never mind engage in teaching critically and creatively while writing as a sustained act of dissent. At the same time, the wider culture is sinking under a flood of consumer and
celebrity idiocy.
vote negative to open up space for resistance against neoliberalism
Roland Bleiker 2, professor of international relations at the University of Queensland, Politics After
Seattle: Dilemmas of the Anti-Globalisation Movement, conflits.revues.org/1057
46 While engendering a series of problematic processes, globalisation
has also increased the possibility to engage
political issues. Before the advent of speed, for instance, a protest event was a mostly local issue. But the presence of global media
networks has fundamentally changed the dynamics and terrains of dissent. Political activism no longer takes
place solely in the streets of Prague, Seoul or Asuncion. The Battle for Seattle, for instance, was above all a media spectacle, a battle for the hearts and
minds of global television audiences. Political
activism, wherever it occurs and whatever form it takes, has
become intrinsically linked with the non-spatial logic of speed. It has turned into a
significant transnational phenomena.¶ 47With the exploration of new terrains of dissent, global activists also face a
series of political dilemmas. This essay has addressed two of them : the tension between violent and nonviolent means of resistance, and the issue of
unequal representation, the question of who can speak for whom. Rather than suggesting that these issues can be understood and solved by applying a
pre-existing body of universal norms and principles, the essay has drawn attention to the open-ended and contingent nature of the puzzles in question.
Protest acts against the key multilateral institutions of the world economy will continue, and so will debates about
the nature of globalisation and the methods of interfering with its governance. Keeping these debates alive, and seeking to
include as many voices, perspectives and constituencies as possible, is a first step towards something that may one day
resemble globalisation with a human face.¶ 48But making global governance more humane, more transparent and more
democratic is no easy task. Principles of transparency and democracy have historically been confined to the territorial boundaries of the sovereign
nation state. Within these boundaries there is the possibility for order and the rule of law. But the space beyond is seen as threatening and anarchical that is, lacking a central regulatory institution. The standard realist response to these perceptions is well know : protect sovereignty, order and civility at
the domestic level by promoting policies that maximise the state's military capacity and, so it is assumed, its security.68 It is questionable to what
extent realist policies remain adequate - and ethical for that matter - at a time when process of globalisation have lead to a fundamental transformation
of political dynamics.¶ 49The Battle for Seattle, and the media spectacle that issued form it, may well demonstrate that the
struggle for
power takes place in a realm that lacks a central regulatory institution. But realist interpretations make the
mistake of embarking on a fatalistic interpretation of this political realm, constituting conflict as an inevitable element of the system's structure. It may
be more adequate - and certainly more productive - to characterise the international system in the age of globalisation and transnational dynamics not
as anarchical, but as rhizomatic. For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari a rhizome is a multiplicity that has no coherent and bounded whole, no
beginning or end, only a middle from where it expands and overspills. Any point of the rhizome is connected to any other. It has no fixed points to
anchor thought, only lines, magnitudes, dimensions, plateaus, and they are always in motion.69 How, then, is one to reach a moral position in a world
of webs, multitudes and multiplicities ? Are the lines, dimensions and plateaus of the rhizome so randomly arranged that we are no longer able to
generate the kind of stable knowledge that is necessary to advance critique and, indeed, dissent ? Is the very notion of political foundations still possible
at a time when social consciousness gushes out of five-second sound-bites and the corresponding hyperreal images that flicker over our television
screens ? Are there alternatives to realist approaches that protect domestic order by warding off everything that threatens it from the outside ? Answers
to such questions do, of course, not come easy. And they may not be uniform either. But an adequate
response will need to engage
in one way or another with the search for political engagements beyond the territorial
boundaries of the nation state.¶ 50 An extension of democratic principles into the more
ambiguous international realm is as essential as it is difficult. It will need to be based on a
commitment to democracy that goes beyond the establishment of legal and institutional
procedures. William Connolly has pointed in the right direction when arguing for a democratic
ethos. The key to such cultural democratisation, he believes, "is that it embodies a productive ambiguity at its very centre, always resisting attempts
to allow one side or the other to achieve final victory."70 Such a model is, of course, the antithesis of prevailing realist wisdom, and perhaps of modern
attitudes in general, which seek to achieve security and democracy through the establishment of order and the repression of all ambiguity.71¶ 51Rather
than posing a threat to human security, the rhizomatic dimension of the international system may well be a crucial element in the attempt to establish a
democratic ethos that can keep up with the pace of globalisation. Some
aspects of democratic participation can never be
institutionalised. Any political system, no matter how just and refined, rests on a structure of exclusion. It has to separate right from wrong,
good from evil, moral from immoral. This separation is both inevitable and desirable. But to remain legitimate the respective
political foundations need to be submitted to periodic scrutiny. They require constant
readjustments in order to remain adequate and fair. It is in the struggle for fairness, in the attempt to
question established norms and procedures, that global protest movements, problematic
as they are at times, make an indispensable contribution to democratic politics.¶ 52 The
political significance of protest movments is located precisely in the fact that they cannot be
controlled by a central regulatory force or an institutional framework. They open up
possibilities for social change that are absent within the context of the established
legal and political system.72 The various movements themselves are, of course, far from unproblematic. The violent nature of
recent actions against neo-liberal governance may well point towards the need for greater political awareness among activists.
But such awareness can neither be imposed by legal norms or political procedures . It needs to emerge
from the struggle over values that takes place in civil society. The fact that this struggle is
ongoing does not detract from the positive potential that is hidden in the movement's
rhizomatic nature. These elements embody the very ideal of productive ambiguity that may well be essential for the long-term survival of democracy.
1NC
Courts are currently reluctant to recognize individuals’ property
rights to sell their body parts despite commercialization of body
products like blood and hair
Remigius N. Nwabueze 11, Senior Lecturer at Southampton Law School, Visiting Prof of Law at
Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, “Legal paradigms of human tissues,” Chapter 9 in
Human Tissue Research: A European perspective on the ethical and legal challenges, p 92-3, google books
As regards non-regenerative transplantable organs, judges tend to be reluctant to
recognize property rights in human tissues. However, non-property protection exposes an organ, such as a kidney, awaiting transplantation to
unauthorized expropriation or destruction by third parties. Consider the case of an excised kidney donated to a done and awaiting lodgement in the body of the intended recipient.24 If the kidney is deliberately or
negligently redirected to a third-party recipient, a wrong has been committed, but it is not clear that legal remedies are available to the donor and the done (Nwabueze 2008). In the absence of statutory and
criminal law considerations, significant remedial problems arise. In the case of deliberate (or intentional) redirection or misdirection, the act in Wilkinson v. Downton25 might apply, but its utility is undermined
by current controversy regarding the principle of the case; it is not yet clear whether Wilkinson actually established a cause of action for intentional tort. There are suggestions that Wilkinson established only a
cause of action for negligence.26¶ A claim in negligence, on the other hand, suffers from problems relating to causation and proof of damage. Arguably, battery claims are not applicable to separated body parts or
organs. In any case, the initial consent to the harvesting of the organ is likely to defeat an allegation of battery. Consent-based actions might not be of much avail since consent does not confer continuing control
over human tissues (Laurie 2002; Price 2003). An action in unjust enrichment is unlikely to succeed unless the misdirection was for the benefit of the wrongdoer, for instance to benefit a relative of the transplant
surgeon. A claim in privacy is probably unavailing. The complaint is that an organ donated for the benefit of a particular recipient is lost through its misdirection, not that the donor or donee’s privacy is infringed.
Similarly, a claim in contract is hardly relevant. The misdirection is tortious but not contractual. Moreover, the statutory regulation of organs based on the principles of altruism (in most jurisdictions) militates
against importing contractual principles into the context of organ transplantation. The above outline seems to leave property-based actions as the most opportune for the claimant in the hypothetical case under
Matthews (1983) observed that where non-renewable organs are removed from the
body ‘one would have thought that as with blood, hair and the like that person had the
first and best right to possession, though presumably one might transfer that right, as blood donors transfer it to
consideration. Interestingly,
a hospital or blood bank’; accordingly, he concluded that ‘parts of the body once removed should be regarded as the “property”, at least in a possessory sense, of the person from whom taken’ (ibid.:227).
Unfortunately, the courts have not generally treated kidneys and other non-renewable
organs as property. The Colavito line of cases is illustrative.27 There, the court held that no
property right existed in a misdirected, but histo-compatible, kidney.¶ 9.4.2 Human tissues for research¶ Where human tissues are
destined for research or employed in the research process, the courts are more likely (probably on policy grounds) to deny the
property rights of sources as against those of the users. This judicial inclination is evident
in Moore and Greenberg above. A more recent example is Washington University v. Catalona,28 where Dr.
Catalona, an established cancer researcher at Washington University, moved to Northwestern University and sought to take with him some (cancer research) tissues from Washington University’s biorepository.
Tissues in the biorepository came from many sources, including participants in cancer research conducted by Dr Catalona. Before moving to Northwestern University, Dr. Catalona got some of his research
participants to sign documents which purported to mandate Washington University to release their tissues to Dr Catalona or Northwestern University. The claim was resisted by Washington University.
Interestingly, all the parties in the case based their claims on property. As Limbaugh, the Senior District Judge realized, the ‘sole issue determinative…of this lawsuit is the issue of ownership’ (ibid.994).
Allowing compensation for organs necessarily shifts common law
toward recognition of property rights in the body
Laurel R. Siegel 2K, JD candidate @ Emory University School of Law, Sumer 2000 “REENGINEERING THE LAWS OF ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION,” 49 Emory L.J. 917, lexis
Compensation systems would change the nature of altruistic organ donation. The theory states that people may be more willing to provide
organs if they receive compensation. n283 Several types of compensation systems have been proposed, each attacking the organ shortage in a slightly different way, but
with the same ultimate goal - to provide remuneration. Compensation systems require development of common law to
increase the property rights of individuals after death. Additionally, a compensation system
could only go into effect if NOTA and the 1987 UAGA amendments are repealed or amended.
n284 NOTA, however, allows all other participants in the organ procurement and transplantation process, except the donor, to receive compensation. Arguably, the donor should receive compensation as well.¶
Compensation systems have several advantages. First, they help to make up for the organs wasted under the donative system. n285 Second, if a person sells his organs, there may be less emotion and tension
involved than if an altruistic donation was made out of love or guilt. n286 ¶ Primarily, dissatisfaction with the proposed compensation systems concerns the lack of the customary altruism. n287 Critics fear that the
lack of altruism would upset society as well as reduce the organ supply. n288 Selling organs would take away from the traditional notion of providing a generous act in the face of tragedy. n289 Allowing sales of
organs encroaches into a sacred area where such sales are controversial. The notion of profiting from the sales of body parts is repulsive to many. Critics of compensation systems have a serious concern with
coercion of the poor. n290 Destitute people, who otherwise might not chose to donate organs, might feel compelled to sell their organs. n291 Another concern involves the allocation of organs. Under a
compensation [*951] system, those who could afford organs would have a greater chance of receiving them. n292 Finally, allowing sales of organs could promote family strife due to pressure to sell organs. n293¶
a. Inter Vivos Market for Organs¶ In an inter vivos organ market, organs would be considered an ordinary commodity to be sold for a profit. System regulators would have to decide where to draw the line - selling
non-essential organs such as kidneys versus selling essential organs such as the heart. The theory for such a system is based on the notion that all parties in the organ donation process are compensated, thus the
donor should be included as well. n294¶ Creating a market for organs may actually fail to increase the supply because otherwise altruistic donations may be curtailed. n295 It also risks offending many citizens and
A futures
market would allow healthy individuals during life to contract for the sale of their body tissue for
delivery after their death. n296 Under this regime, if the donor's organs are successfully harvested and transplanted, the donor's estate would receive payment. n297 Like the current
takes advantage of the poor who may not otherwise choose to donate or sell organs.¶ b. Futures Market¶ A less controversial version of a compensation system is a futures market.
donation system, people would sign donor cards, but unlike the current system, the donor or vendor would receive compensation. n298 Proponents of this system claim it avoids ethical problems. First, by not
using live donors, proponents claim it does not exploit the poor. n299 Second, the system does not deal with allocation so the [*952] rich will not have greater access to organs than the poor. n300 Third, people
This system requires creating and legally enforcing
property rights in the decedent's body. This system is only hypothetical and has not yet been attempted in any jurisdiction. If implemented in the current
will be selling their own organs, so relatives will not have to participate. n301¶
system, it would clearly violate NOTA, because it involves sales of organs. In addition, it might exploit the poor because only the poor would have incentive to sell their organs, unless the price was high enough for
moderately wealthy individuals to be interested. Even though the system does not deal with allocation, the poor will naturally be discriminated against because they may be unable to afford the organs if Medicaid
or other government assistance does not cover them.¶ c. Death Benefits¶ A death benefits system, while not market-based, is a third type of compensation system. Such a system would merely provide incentives
to relatives of the decedent in exchange for donating the decedent's organs. n302 Examples of incentives include estate tax deductions, funeral expense allow-ances, and college education benefits. n303 As
illustrated above, Pennsylvania is experimenting with a death benefits system in its newly enacted legislation. n304¶ Proponents argue that a death benefits system does not conflict with the current altruistic
system. n305 Proponents also assert that a death benefits system does not violate NOTA's prohibition of organ sales, because Congress did not intend to include this kind of compensation. n306 With respect to
the Pen-nsylvania law, proponents claim funeral expenses could be a reasonable expense exempted from the NOTA prohibition. n307 They claim that because money does not go directly to donors or beneficiaries,
the payment is not technically for organs. n308 Opponents claim that a death benefits system con-stitutes the sale of organs; indirect compensation is given in exchange for one's [*953] organs. This proposal, set
up as a pilot program administered by individual states, is promising.¶ B. Suggestions¶ First, solutions must be found for the problems of the current system, in which an outright market is inappropriate, but in
which incentive programs and public health education could serve as successful boosts to the organ supply. For the second stage, after technology alters the status and supply of organs, society can plan a solution
for the future. Only at that point could a full-fledged market be an acceptable, ethical medium to exchange organs.¶ 1. The Current System¶ As illustrated above, problems are inherent in the current organ
transplantation system. Society must cope with the problems as they exist today, using currently available technology and resources. The best way to address the immediate organ shortage is to administer pilot
programs providing incentives for organ donations, following the lead of Pennsylvania. Congress should propose an Amendment to NOTA that would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to
oversee pilot programs. Compensation would rise incrementally, beginning with small payments, such as funeral expenses or hospital bills. The prohibition of sales of organs should remain in place for live organs
because allowing sales of live organs jeopardizes existing life and brings into play many ethical issues. Thus, the amendment would only apply to organs of decedents.¶ In addition to avoiding the ethical problems
inherent in a market for organs, allowing an incentive system would probably increase awareness of donation, increase actual donation, and fairly and tactfully compensate the donor. The approach is an important
bridge to the future when engineered organs will make compensation systems viable. Most importantly, more patients, who would otherwise die, will benefit from receiving life-saving organs.¶ Organ donation
does not have to be perceived as a grim, avoidable topic; donating organs transforms death into a positive experience - essentially bestowing the gift of life. In addition to the pilot programs, governmental efforts
should focus on public health education. If the public is made more aware of the plight, the decision to donate organs would be made prior to death. This tactic would avoid difficult, uncomfortable situations for
families and doctors, which often prevent donation. Many states already have [*954] implemented organ donor awareness funds, funded through donations when renewing driver's licenses or filing taxes. n309
Similar programs must be established. Public health officials should talk to high school students about organ donation. Special task forces could explain the organ transplant system to people, in the form of
television commercials or advertisements in magazines. The erection of billboards with organ donation messages would implant the seed in people's minds.¶ 2. The Future System¶ The current solution only
affects organs from decedents. In the foreseeable future, technology will create live organs from existing cells and biodegradable scaffolds. When that occurs, the organ shortage will no longer be a problem. But in
order to have potentially unlimited organs, cell donation must occur. This may eventually be done individually at birth, but phased in by adults contributing to a generic pool. Will these donors be compensated for
their pre-organ donation? The donation of cells differs from a functioning organ and probably lies outside of organ transplantation laws. Most likely, providing compensation for this stage would be allowable and
allowing incentives
to donors is a sound idea. This can only become a reality if the common law develops, allowing a property
right in live tissue and organs. This will be established in the marketplace as long as
common law and statutory law do not prohibit sales.
beneficial. An individual donating his cells would face no risk to his health by donating. Fewer ethical issues are involved. Therefore, for the organ system of the future,
that wrecks medical research---researchers will scrap projects for
fear of lawsuits
IBA 87, Industrial Biotechnology Association, Amicus Curiae brief in Moore v. Regents of the
University of California, Biotechnology Law Report 8(2): 83-143,
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/blr.1989.8.83?journalCode=blr
Faced with potential liability for conversion, researchers will undoubtedly shrink from using
or transferring any human tissue, cell line or DNA for which clear title cannot be established.
Existing research might have to be scrapped, and years of effort and development time lost. For the future,
hospitals would either have to present every patient with a complicated consent or release form transferring title for all purposes, or adopt special forms
to be executed before each use of an actual specimen. In either event it
would become necessary to establish a
comprehensive nationwide recording system to track and verify each cell line's chain of title each
time a preserved specimen is desired for research, and to inform former patients of newly discovered commercial possibilities.¶ Such
requirements will obviously be difficult to meet given the transient nature of modern society, and the fact that the commercial potential of any given cell
line may not be discovered until years after an initial excision from the source individual. (Human Tissue Research, p. 251.) Moreover, there are likely
to be many instances in which the
need for identification and record-keeping will conflict with the duty of
patient confidentiality. The likely result will undoubtedly be that many hospitals will
withdraw from participation in research involving excised tissue due to the cost and
potential liability associated with nonconsensual use of human tissue.¶ Altogether, it is difficult to estimate how damaging the lower
court's decision will be to medical and scientific research, but the prospect of significant damage is certain.
Medical research and innovation is key to solve environmental
pathogens
Gerard A. Cangelosi 5, Prof of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and Adjunct Prof of
Epidemiology and of Global Health at the University of Washington, PhD in Microbiology from UC Davis,
Nancy E. Freitag, PhD, Prof in the Dept of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois
Chicago School of Medicine, and Merry R. Buckley, Ph.D. in environmental microbiology at Michigan
State University, “From Outside to Inside: Environmental Microorganisms as Human Pathogens,”
http://academy.asm.org/index.php/environmental-microbiology-ecology-evolution/553-from-outsideto-inside-environmental-microorganisms-as-human-pathogens
The key difference between environmental pathogens and other human pathogens is their
ability to survive and thrive outside the host. Their widespread occurrence in the environment makes them difficult to monitor and
control. Inroads have been made to understand the persistence of these organisms in the environment, the reservoirs they inhabit, the ways they exchange virulence factors, and
a great deal more research is needed. By grouping together phylogenetically diverse organisms
the umbrella of "environmental pathogens," it is hoped that the topic can gain the critical mass
needed for sustained progress. ¶ Colloquium participants examined other research needs for the field, including the diagnostic and environmental
their diversity, but
under
technologies that will be necessary for taking the next steps. It was agreed that because of the complex nature of studying organisms that can exist in the environment and in
human hosts, work in this area is best carried out in an interdisciplinary fashion with coordinated input from medical, molecular, and environmental microbiologists, specialists
The development of improved diagnostic
techniques is critical for accurate assessment of health risks and potential human or animal
population impact associated with environmental pathogens. ¶ If the impacts of these diseases are to be
effectively controlled, the techniques used to monitor and control infections by
in host responses, epidemiologists, ecologists, environmental engineers, and public health experts.
environmental pathogens—including interventions, exposure controls, drugs, and vaccines—
require improvement. The processes surrounding drug and vaccine development must be tailored to the special problem of environmental pathogens,
which often strike small numbers of individuals or individuals in less developed areas of the world and, therefore, offer less potential for drug development profit than more
common diseases. A challenge exists, therefore, in meeting the need for targeted, specific interventions, including development of drugs and vaccines for infections by
environmental agents, in the face of a lack of financial incentive for development of these tools.
Causes extinction---disease defense doesn’t apply
Arturo Casadevall 12, M.D., Ph.D. in Biochemistry from New York University, Leo and Julia
Forchheimer Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, former editor of the ASM journal Infection and Immunity, “The future of biological
warfare,” Microbial Biotechnology Volume 5, Issue 5, pages 584–587, September 2012,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-7915.2012.00340.x/full
In considering the importance of biological warfare as a subject for concern it
is worthwhile to review the known
existential threats. At this time this writer can identify at three major existential threats to humanity: (i) large-scale
thermonuclear war followed by a nuclear winter, (ii) a planet killing asteroid impact and (iii) infectious disease. To this
trio might be added climate change making the planet uninhabitable. Of the three existential threats the first is deduced from the
inferred cataclysmic effects of nuclear war. For the second there is geological evidence for the association of asteroid impacts with
massive extinction (Alvarez, 1987). As to an existential threat from microbes recent decades have provided
unequivocal evidence for the ability of certain pathogens to cause the extinction of entire
species. Although infectious disease has traditionally not been associated with extinction this
view has changed by the finding that a single chytrid fungus was responsible for the extinction
of numerous amphibian species (Daszak et al., 1999; Mendelson et al., 2006). Previously, the view
that infectious diseases were not a cause of extinction was predicated on the notion that many
pathogens required their hosts and that some proportion of the host population was
naturally resistant. However, that calculation does not apply to microbes that are acquired
directly from the environment and have no need for a host, such as the majority of fungal
pathogens. For those types of host–microbe interactions it is possible for the pathogen to kill off every
last member of a species without harm to itself, since it would return to its natural habitat
upon killing its last host. Hence, from the viewpoint of existential threats environmental microbes
could potentially pose a much greater threat to humanity than the known pathogenic microbes, which
number somewhere near 1500 species (Cleaveland et al., 2001; Taylor et al., 2001), especially if some of these species acquired the
capacity for pathogenicity as a consequence of natural evolution or bioengineering.
1NC
The Department of Health and Human Services should issue
regulations requiring the United Network for Organ Sharing to:
-Modify organ allocation procedures such that individuals who refuse
to donate after death are eligible to receive only those organs not well
matched to any potential recipient who agrees to donate,
-Create a national organ registry to record individuals’ organ sharing
preferences,
-Instruct medical professionals to defer to the registry rather than
next of kin when deciding whether to recover organs.
The United States should adopt a default assumption of consent for
deceased organ donation, and ban the practice of cloning and human
organ harvesting.
The counterplan’s mutually reinforcing reforms solve the organ
shortage
Christopher Tarver Robertson 7, JD from Harvard Law, PhD from Washington University, Fall
2007, “FROM FREE RIDERS TO FAIRNESS: A COOPERATIVE SYSTEM FOR ORGAN
TRANSPLANTATION,” Jurimetrics Vol 48 No 1,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1416950
This article draws on many of these ideas but proposes an integrated system for procuring and
distributing cadaveric organs, based on the notion of a cooperative project. Under this paradigm, individuals would join
the organ system as both potential suppliers of cadaveric organs and potential recipients of
organs. This cooperative system should operate on an opt-out basis, so that all people would be
participants unless they chose to remove themselves. Those who decide to exclude
themselves from the cooperative system would only be eligible for surplus organs (that is, those that are
not well matched to those within the system who need organs). UNOS would create a national
registry to record people’s organ sharing preferences (not unlike the current national registry for those who need
organs), thereby replacing the fragmented state-by-state systems. Finally, medical professionals would
cease the practice of asking next of kin for the organs of their loved ones and instead always defer to the
registry.¶ Because these policy reforms reinforce each other to create a robust and
coherent organ transplantation system, they forestall objections and problems that arise when
piecemeal proposals are considered individually. Altogether, this approach respects autonomy, resolves the
injustice of violating reciprocity, promotes the value of cooperation, and holds promise for minimizing the shortage.
Competes and avoids the net benefit---no statutory change is
necessary
Christopher Tarver Robertson 7, JD from Harvard Law, PhD from Washington University, Fall
2007, “FROM FREE RIDERS TO FAIRNESS: A COOPERATIVE SYSTEM FOR ORGAN
TRANSPLANTATION,” Jurimetrics Vol 48 No 1,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1416950
Politically, this proposed organ system may seem daunting. Yet, an act of Congress may
not even be necessary. Current Federal law requires that UNOS “work actively to increase the
supply of donated organs.”174 The statute authorizes the establishment of “membership criteria
and medical criteria for allocating organs.”175 The provision for nonmedical criteria would allow the
screening of those who opt out.
Case
adv 2
“No value to life” doesn’t outweigh---prioritize existence because
value is subjective and could improve in the future
Torbjörn Tännsjö 11, the Kristian Claëson Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University,
2011, “Shalt Thou Sometimes Murder? On the Ethics of Killing,” online: http://people.su.se/~jolso/HStexter/shaltthou.pdf
I suppose it is correct to say that, if
Schopenhauer is right, if life is never worth living, then according to
utilitarianism we should all commit suicide and put an end to humanity. But this does not mean
that, each of us should commit suicide. I commented on this in chapter two when I presented the idea that
utilitarianism should be applied, not only to individual actions, but to collective actions as well.¶ It is a wellknown fact that people rarely commit suicide. Some even claim that no one who is mentally sound commits suicide. Could that be
taken as evidence for the claim that people live lives worth living? That would be rash. Many people are not utilitarians. They may
avoid suicide because they believe that it is morally wrong to kill oneself. It
is also a possibility that, even if people
lead lives not worth living , they believe they do . And even if some may believe that their lives, up
to now, have not been worth living, their future lives will be better . They may be mistaken about this. They
may hold false expectations about the future.¶ From the point of view of evolutionary biology, it is natural to assume that people
should rarely commit suicide. If we set old age to one side, it has poor survival value (of one’s genes) to kill oneself. So it should be
expected that it is difficult for ordinary people to kill themselves. But then theories about cognitive dissonance, known from
psychology, should warn us that we may come to believe that we live better lives than we do.¶ My strong belief is that most
of us live lives worth living. However, I do believe that our lives are close to the point where they stop being worth living.
But then it is at least not very far-fetched to think that they may be worth not living, after all. My assessment may be too optimistic.¶
Let us just for the sake of the argument assume that our lives are not worth living, and let us accept
that, if this is so, we should all kill ourselves. As I noted above, this does not answer the question
what we should do, each one of us . My conjecture is that we should not commit suicide. The explanation is
simple. If I kill myself, many people will suffer. Here is a rough explanation of how this will happen: ¶ ... suicide
“survivors” confront a complex array of feelings. Various forms of guilt are quite common, such as that arising from (a) the belief
that one contributed to the suicidal person's anguish, or (b) the failure to recognize that anguish, or (c) the inability to prevent the
suicidal act itself. Suicide also leads to rage, loneliness, and awareness of vulnerability in those left
behind. Indeed, the sense that suicide is an essentially selfish act dominates many popular perceptions of suicide. ¶ The fact
that all our lives lack meaning , if they do, does not mean that others will follow my example. They
will go on with their lives and their false expectations — at least for a while devastated because of my suicide. But then I have an
obligation, for their sake, to go on with my life. It is highly likely that, by committing suicide, I create more suffering (in their lives)
than I avoid (in my life).
adv 1
Util
Preventing nuclear war is a prerequisite to positive peace
Jerry Folk 78, Professor of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, “Peace Educations – Peace
Studies: Towards an Integrated Approach,” Peace & Change, volume V, number 1, Spring, p. 58
Those proponents
of the positive peace approach who reject out of hand the work of researchers and
the perspective of negative peace too easily forget that the prevention
of a nuclear confrontation of global dimensions is the prerequisite for all other
peace research, education, and action. Unless such a confrontation can be avoided
there will be no world left in which to build positive peace. Moreover, the blanket
condemnation of all such negative peace oriented research, education or action as a reactionary
attempt to support and reinforce the status quo is doctrinaire.¶ Conflict theory and resolution,
educators coming to the field from
disarmament studies, studies of the international system and of international organizations, and integration studies are in
themselves neutral. They do not intrinsically support either the status quo or revolutionary efforts
to
change or overthrow it. Rather they offer a body of knowledge which can be used for either purpose or for some purpose in
between. It is much more logical for those who understand peace as positive peace to integrate this knowledge into their own
framework and to utilize it in achieving their own purposes. A balanced peace studies program should therefore offer the student
exposure to the questions and concerns which occupy those who view the field essentially from the point of view of negative peace.
Maximizing all lives is the only way to affirm equality
Cummiskey 90 – Professor of Philosophy, Bates (David, Kantian Consequentialism, Ethics 100.3, p 601-2, p 606, jstor)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract "social entity." It
is not a
question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive "overall social good ." Instead, the question is
whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Nozick, for example, argues that "to use a person in this way does
not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has."30 Why, however, is this not equally true
of all those that we do not save through our failure to act? By
emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act,
one fails to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one
life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent
motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions
necessary for the existence of rational beings, but both choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of a rational being. Since
the basis of Kant's principle is "rational nature exists as an end-in-itself' (GMM, p. 429), the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting,
insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for rational beings. If
I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not
use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have
"dignity, an unconditional and incomparable value" that transcends any market value (GMM, p. 436), but, as rational beings, persons also
have a fundamental equality which dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of
others. The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit
others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save
many. [continues] According to Kant, the objective end of moral action is the existence of rational beings. Respect for rational beings requires
that, in deciding what to do, one give appropriate practical consideration to the unconditional value of
rational beings and to the conditional value of happiness. Since agent-centered constraints require a non-value-based rationale, the most natural
interpretation of the demand that one give equal respect to all rational beings lead to a consequentialist normative
theory. We have seen that there is no sound Kantian reason for abandoning this natural consequentialist interpretation. In particular, a
consequentialist interpretation does not require sacrifices which a Kantian ought to consider unreasonable, and it does not involve doing
evil so that good may come of it. It simply requires an uncompromising commitment to the equal value and equal
claims of all rational beings and a recognition that, in the moral consideration of conduct, one's own subjective concerns do
not have overriding importance.
impact framing
Magnitude first---normal statistical estimates of probability break
down for catastrophic risks because we can’t afford to be wrong even
once---arguments about uncertain probability just prove that a
precautionary approach is key
Mark Jablonowski 10, Lecturer in Economics at the University of Hartford, “Implications of
Fuzziness for the Practical Management of High-Stakes Risks,” International Journal of Computational
Intelligence Systems, Vol.3, No. 1 (April, 2010), 1-7,
“Danger”
is an inherently fuzzy concept. Considerable knowledge imperfections surround
probability of high-stakes exposures, and the assessment of their acceptability. This is due to the
complex and dynamic nature of risk in the modern world. ¶ Fuzzy thresholds for danger are most
effectively established based on natural risk standards. This means that risk levels are acceptable
only to the degree they blend with natural background levels. This concept reflects an evolutionary process
both the
that has supported life on this planet for thousands of years. By adhering to these levels, we can help assure ourselves of thousands
more. While the level of such risks is yet to be determined, observation suggest that the degree of
human-made risk we routinely subject ourselves to is several orders of magnitude
higher. ¶
Due to the fuzzy nature of risk, we can not rely on statistical techniques. The fundamental
problem with catastrophe remains, in the long run, there may be no long run. That is, we
can not rely on results “averaging out” over time. With such risks, only precautionary
avoidance (based on the minimax’ing of the largest possible loss) makes sense. Combined
with reasonable natural thresholds, this view allows a very workable approach to achieving safe progress.
block
T
2NC Interp Cards
A sale is an exchange of a good for money---exchange and barter are
distinct
Alabama Supreme Court 1890, Coker v. the State, 91 Ala. 93, published in the Reports of
Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama, Volume 91, google books
The charge given by the court was, we think, erroneous. The testimony of Smith certainly tended to show, that the liquor was neither sold nor given to him, but that he received it
under an agreement, and intending to replace with an equal quantity of other liquor of the same class. Upon this evidence, the jury may have found that there was no
understanding between the parties, and no intention on the part of either, that Smith should at any time pay money for the whiskey, on the one hand, or, on the other, that the
transaction was a voluntary transfer and delivery of it to him, without consideration. So finding, the further conclusion, that the transaction was neither a “selling” nor “giving”
of the liquor, would have been matter of course, and inevitable; as, also, that the liquor was loaned, or perhaps, more accurately speaking, since it was not to be returned in
terms have
each a well defined legal significance, each differing radically from both the others. A sale is
defined to be a transfer of the absolute or general property in a thing, for a price in money.
Benjamin on Sales, § 1. “Sale is a word of precise legal import, both at law and in equity. It means, at all times, a
contract between parties to give and pass rights of property for money, which the buyer pays, or
promises to pay to the seller, for the thing bought and sold.” – Williamson v. Berry, 8 How. 544. “Sales include all agreements by which
specie, bartered by defendant, not without consideration, but in consideration of Smith’s agreement to return a like quantity of other whiskey. These
property is parted with for a valuable consideration, whether there be money payment or not; provided that the bargain be made and the value measured in money terms, . . .
contracts of sale . . . do not extend to bargains of barter. Where one article, or set of goods, is intended to be exchanged for
another, no price (pretium) being attached, it is not a sale; for the transaction is, in the first instance, made by an exchange of goods, without reference to money payment.” –
Where goods have been
delivered by one party, and the other party agrees to deliver other goods of similar
quality, on demand, the transaction is not a sale of the goods, but an agreement for an
exchange.” Mitchell v. Lile, 12 N.H. 390. “A sale is an exchange of goods, or property, for money paid, or to be paid.
Barter, the exchange of one commodity, or article of property, for another. Exchange of goods, a
commutation, transmutation, or transfer of goods for other goods, as distinguished from a sale, which is
a transfer of goods for money.” – Cooper v. State, 37 Ark. 418; Meyer v. Rousseau, 47 Ark. 460.
Gunter v. Lecky, 30 Ala. 591; Lumpkin v. Wilson, 5 Heisk. (Tenn.) 555; Woodford v. Patterson, 32 Barb. (N.Y.) 630.
CP
s
For example combining opt-out with priority produces loss aversion
where people are reluctant to give up the benefit of organ access
Mark S. Nadel 5, J.D., Attorney at the Federal Communications Commission, and Caroline A. Nadel,
M.D., consultant on medical informatics, “Using Reciprocity To Motivate Organ Donations,” Yale J Health
Policy Law Ethics. 2005 Winter; 5(1):293-325, https://www.lifesharers.org/articles/nadel.pdf
There are good reasons to believe that, by
making it in a person’s self interest to commit to organ donation,
a priority policy would produce significantly more donations. In fact, the policy would respond to both
current problems deterring donations: It should convince more people to sign up to donate and make it more likely that those wishes will be honored,
even if the donors’ families would prefer to override them.¶ First, the policy would appear to significantly increase the likelihood that individuals would
sign up to donate when they were seeking a driver’s license renewal or during a visit to their doctor. With respect to the former, it is reasonable to
assume that a
significant number of individuals who presently decline to check the box for organ donor
neutral or only slightly predisposed against signing up. Some may
have slight concerns that registering as donors would lead doctors to work less hard to save their lives,
but even a small doubt might be enough to outweigh an even smaller expected benefit from acting altruistically. For many of such current
borderline non-donors, a small, but significant health benefit should lead them to choose to
donate.¶ This effort might also be aided by a new marketing approach. While the most effective publicity in the past has involved celebrity
on their driver’s license renewal are
athletes119 or poignant stories about children,120 a different tactic might well better motivate visitors to the DMV. Instead of relying solely on the
positive feelings people should get from donating, which might be too weak to trigger registration, instructions
about registering to
driver’s license forms could highlight how non-donors could lose out. For example,
instructions might note that “failure to agree to donate could permit those who have committed to donate
to move ahead of you on the organ wait list if you later need an organ.” Studies have shown that individuals
are much more likely to act to avoid a bad outcome (“loss aversion”) than to obtain a
comparable good result.121
donate on
2NC Priority Solvency
Eliminates the shortage
Lisa Nyberg 10, gastroenterologist and transplant specialist/researcher at Kaiser Permanente, and
Steve Hellig, coeditor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, “Too Many Preventable Deaths,”
San Francisco Medicine July/August 2010, http://issuu.com/sfmedsociety/docs/julyaugust2010
We believe that a
“donor-first/con firmed consent” incentivized system can be implemented with minimized logisti
cal and ethical problems. This system would offer priority to those individuals who have previously
committed to organ and tissue donation at the time of their own death. After development and adoption of a suitable
policy and program, a widespread public education effort would be needed to inform people about their newly heightened interests in donating their
organs. Ideally, the program could effectively nullify itself if many new donors respond to the new incentive. Only
a fraction of those
who have not yet offered organs but who say they would intend to would need to so respond in order
to fulfill current demands for organs. Thus, the waiting lists could diminish so much as to
make the ‘triaging’ inherent in current practice, and this proposed policy, moot. Although this is a lofty
goal, it could be attained with a full commitment to implementation of and education about this policy. Indeed, a
similar model was implemented in Israel in January 2010 (Israel Parliament clause 9[B]4). The effect of the new policy on organ donation rates will be
monitored and a public report will be submitted two years after its implementation.
A2 L2 Property DA
1. Our link author explicitly distinguishes the counterplan from
compensation systems like the plan---only compensation would
alter property rights
Laurel R. Siegel 2K, JD candidate @ Emory University School of Law, Sumer 2000 “REENGINEERING THE LAWS OF ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION,” 49 Emory L.J. 917, lexis
1. Non-Compensation Systems¶ The first category of proposed systems involves attempts to
increase the organ supply through various methods of altruistic encouragement, without
compensation.¶ [*948] ¶ a. Presumed Consent¶ Presumed consent, a system common in Europe, provides that organs will be
automatically donated at death, unless stated otherwise. n262 If an individual does not want to donate his organs at death, he must "opt out"
during life. n263 Some American jurisdictions have adopted presumed consent in certain limited circumstances. n264¶ Advocates of this system cite statistics to show that Americans desire to donate organs, and
that this system saves hospital workers the difficult task of discussing organ donation with grieving family members. n265 Opponents of presumed consent do not like the notion of silence leading to donation.
n266 Also, it may not lead to increased donation and the forced nature of presumed consent is antithetical to American culture. n267 Because this system disregards the high level of autonomy embraced by
American culture and society, it should not be adopted.¶ b. Mandated Choice¶ Mandated choice resembles presumed consent, but provides more flexibility. n268 Individuals have the option of opting into or out
of the system. n269 Proponents of this system claim this decision would be made at the time of filing tax returns or renewing a driver's license. n270¶ Mandated choice allows for more autonomy than presumed
consent. Proponents claim it inevitably increases the organ supply because individuals would be forced to think about planning for death and at least some additional donors would come forth. n271 Opponents
argue that this system requires that physicians alter the current approach of inquiring about organ donation from a decedent's family regardless of what the decedent desired. n272 This is not necessarily a
disadvantage, however, because revamping the physician's [*949] approach could encourage donation. The costs of coordinating mandated choice would be great and the mass system may not be efficient. n273
A mutual
insurance pool has been proposed as another non-compensation system. This proposal
accepts that an individual would receive priority for a needed transplant in the future if she
agrees to make her organs available to other members of the insurance pool in the event of death. n274 Standard matching procedures will
determine intra-pool prioritization. n275¶ Proponents argue that such a system would increase the organ supply and provide a
nonmonetary incentive to donate. n276 People are attracted to the pool not because of monetary incentives but rather because they are risk averse. n277 The
Autonomy is also sacrificed in this system. Weighing the benefits and risks of mandated choice, this system does not seem to be an effective proposal to adopt.¶ c. Mutual Insurance Pool¶
disadvantages mirror those inherent in insurance pools: moral hazard and adverse selection. n278 Moral hazard results when insuring against an event makes it more likely to happen, but proponents feel this is
unlikely because people will not purposely increase their likelihood of needing organs. n279 Adverse selection occurs when high-risk people are the ones most likely to participate in the pool. Proponents suggest
that the best way to avoid this problem is to have parents enroll children before birth, before they are aware of risks, and to have separate classes of risks for adults. n280¶ The biggest problem with this proposed
system is determining whether it conforms to the provisions of NOTA. n281 It would be necessary to consider whether the nonmonetary incentives provided by the mutual insurance pool would be "valuable
consideration" and therefore invalid under federal law. n282 This proposal has merit because it provides the logical incentive of an organ to encourage donation, but it seems unnatural and unethical to create
2. Compensation
Systems¶ Compensation systems would change the nature of altruistic organ donation. The theory states
organ pools [*950] that divide individuals based on classes of risk. While a creative approach, mutual insurance pools do not provide the answer to the organ shortage.¶
that people may be more willing to provide organs if they receive compensation. n283 Several types of compensation systems have been proposed, each attacking the organ shortage in a slightly different way, but
Compensation systems require development of common law to
increase the property rights of individuals after death. Additionally, a compensation system could only go into effect if NOTA and the 1987 UAGA amendments are repealed or
with the same ultimate goal - to provide remuneration.
amended. n284 NOTA, however, allows all other participants in the organ procurement and transplantation process, except the donor, to receive compensation. Arguably, the donor should receive compensation
as well.
turns
Sales wreck organ donation---the CP alone does not
Christopher Tarver Robertson 7, JD from Harvard Law, PhD from Washington University, Fall
2007, “FROM FREE RIDERS TO FAIRNESS: A COOPERATIVE SYSTEM FOR ORGAN
TRANSPLANTATION,” Jurimetrics Vol 48 No 1,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1416950
the proposed organ system, individuals will have an incentive to join, or remain in, the system, because doing so increases their prospect of
avoids or ameliorates the problems that infect other
proposals for incentivizing organ donations especially those involving a market mechanism for buying and
selling organs.¶ Some argue that such a market for organs would transform human bodies into commodities, debasing us as persons, and fail to respect persons
Under
receiving an organ if needed someday. However, this unique form of incentive
as ends in themselves. As Margaret Radin explains:¶ We feel discomfort or even insult, and we fear degradation or even loss of the value involved, when bodily integrity is
conceived of as a fungible object. Systematically conceiving of personal attributes as fungible objects is threatening to personhood, because it detaches from the person that
offering money for organs may “crowd out” those
who would be willing to give altruistically.121 As Dan Kahan explains the crowding out problem:¶ Incentives do more than affect individuals’
which is integral to the person.120¶ A related problem with market incentives is that
calculations of the costs and benefits of particular forms of conduct; they also shape their impressions of the attitudes and intentions of those around them. Laboratory and real-
incentives convey the message that non-cooperation is the norm,
and thus stifle the reciprocal motivations of even neutral reciprocators, whose defection predictably spills over
onto even the most forgiving ones.122¶ The crowding out idea is that many of the people who would give altruistically will
decline to give if the system is changed to a market-based system, because such a system would
debase the value of giving. When confronted by a crude market for body parts, citizens may find
themselves unwilling to sell their organs, and those that would otherwise give may well be
dissuaded.¶ The conceptual basis and framework for this proposed cooperative system is critically
important. Rather than asking people to think of their bodies as mere means, it encourages
people to think of their society as a cooperative enterprise to which they can contribute in
death and benefit from in life. Unlike a commodity market for organs, which reframes the
transaction as one of naked self-interest, the proposed system merely supplements an
altruistic framework with a “strong norm” of cooperative sharing that itself has motivating force.123
Altruism is not facially inconsistent with cooperation, but is rather consonant. Reciprocal cooperation enjoys wide
social consensus and may even have sociobiological roots.124 Thus, because this proposed system of “social sharing” has its own
ethical and motivational content and is not particularly hostile to altruism, we should not expect
crowding out to be a rampant problem. (Besides, even if there were a crowding-out effect, it would not be fatal to the organ supply, because persons would exclude themselves as both givers
world schemes that use generally applicable
and takers.)
Case
Doesn’t Solve
Doesn’t get rid of the black market
Michael Hentrich 12, 19 Mar 2012, “Health Matters: Human Organ Donations, Sales, and the Black
Market,” http://arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1203.4289v1
Contemporary sociologists including Michele Goodwin in Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts (2006)
have criticized the present system, pointing out that where there is a gift-relationship procurement system, a
thriving black market also exists. Goodwin also argues that poor African American communities are especially ill-served
by black markets. There are simply no guarantees that either regulation or marketization would
alleviate black market use rates and supply-side shortages. Consider that a black market prospers
even in Iran where the government regulates kidney pricing; black market use there (even for
kidneys) has not been eliminated or even substantially limited.
A2 Regs
Regs would be ineffective and unenforceable
Gabriel Danovitch 8, M.D., Prof of Clinical Medicine and Nephrology at UCLA, and Francis
Delmonico, MD, Clinical Prof of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, “The prohibition of kidney
sales and organ markets should remain,” Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation Volume 13(4),
August 2008, p 386–394
It is true that much of the available data on exploitive commercialized donation come from countries where the process is unregulated [24••].
Surely, in the United States, regulation of the process would prevent such abuse. But what kind of
regulation would be required? Even if the destitute, who donate in developing countries, were somehow
excluded from the process (and it is not clear how this could be legally achieved), the
donors would still be those who are in dire need of money and perhaps desperate to receive it. Consider, for
example, a potential paid donor requested to repeat a urinalysis because of the finding of proteinuria or
microscopic hematuria or borderline low renal function: a common request. Would the passage of the urine sample need to
be monitored to ensure that the donor is indeed the source of the sample? Whose responsibility will it
be to ensure that the factors listed above are not applicable to the donor and that the information
that is provided is accurate? After all, large amounts of money are at play and the major incentive for the donor
is financial? It has been suggested that abuse could be minimized by ensuring that paid donation will be regulated within geopolitical borders [24••].
Whose responsibility will it be to check on citizenship or naturalization documents
and establish identity theft?¶ These examples (it would not be difficult to come up with more) are quite plausible, they belong to
our ‘real’ world. The blithe contention [24••] that a regulated system could be tacked on to our current United
Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) directed system is unrealistic. Physicians are not trained to be
policemen or private detectives or agents of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service and they
should not take this role upon themselves. If kidney vending were to be permitted, it would seem that specially trained
investigators would need to be included in the transplant team to ensure the accuracy of the paid donor's history and to ensure public safety. A medical
process would perforce become a legal one. The assertion with respect to a ‘regulated’ market in organ sales in the United States that ‘the procedural
framework would be virtually identical to the system currently used to evaluate altruistic living donors’ is both misleading and unrealistic [24••].
DA
Turns Case Cards
Property rights cause endless litigation that undermines the organ
supply
Michael H. Scarmon 92, JD from the University of South Dakota, “Brotherton v. Cleveland:
Property Rights in the Human Body - Are the Goods Oft Interred with Their Bones,” 37 S.D. L. Rev. 429
(1991-1992), HeinOnline
Although a market in organs might provide an adequate supply, markets are notoriously subject
to the vagaries of supply and demand.188 Moreover, a recognition of property rights in
corpses may actually impede the supply of organs by encouraging litigation. Not only will
the number of Brotherton-like cases be increased, but an organ market will introduce the
complex web of issues and conflicts inherent in economic transactions. Unquestionably, a
recognition of property rights will constantly create a tension with current federal policies,
which are unequivocal in promoting the donation and outlawing the sale of human organs.189
Biomedical innovation solves the shortage
UT 11, University of Texas at Austin Cockrell School of Engineering, Nov 8 2011, “Building Organs,”
http://www.engr.utexas.edu/features/7144-alikbuildingorgans
What if, instead, we could grow tailored-made tissues
and organs in the lab to replace those damaged in the body? In place of a heart transplant, heart attack patients could receive lab-grown muscle tissue to
replace their weakening one. Eventually, livers, kidneys and hearts damaged by disease could be replaced with
artificial organs. Such a scenario would reduce time and costs for patients, decrease the chances of rejection in some transplants and allow patients to sidestep many of the other hazards
associated with organ donation. Fewer transplants would be necessary. More people would live. “There’s a huge shortage currently of transplant
tissues and organs. For so many different diseases, there’s no current treatment and, for someone to get a transferable organ, someone potentially has to die,” said Ali Khademhosseini, a 36year bioengineer who joined The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Biomedical Engineering as a Donald D. Harrington Fellow and visiting scholar for the fall 2011 semester. “So it would
be a great biomedical use if we could treat those patients with artificial tissues and organs.” In
the not so distant past, this notion was unimaginable. But recent breakthroughs in the emerging field of tissue engineering are
redrawing the boundaries of what’s possible in biology and engineering. Among its feats, the field has enabled the development of edible and
artificially engineered meat, and – on the more serious side – tissue-engineered skin is aiding patients with severe burns and ulcers. This still up-and-coming field has also made great
leaps toward making artificial organs a more conceivable and, potentially, viable option for treating patients in the future. For that, Khademhosseini is among
But what if there was another way? What if preserving a life didn’t have to hinge on another life ending?
an esteemed group of scientists at the forefront of innovation.
link
Wrecks biotech---imposes prohibitive transaction costs that interfere
with research and commercialization
Charlotte H. Harrison 2, Fellow in Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School; J.D. 1984, Harvard Law
School; M.P.H. 2000, Harvard School of Public Health, “ARTICLE: Neither Moore nor the Market:
Alternative Models for Compensating Contributors of Human Tissue,” 28 Am. J. L. and Med. 77, lexis
To the American mind, one obvious solution to the ethical inadequacies of the current system is market-based: people should be
deemed the legal owners of their body parts, and compensation should be determined through
a "direct market between buyer and seller with prices based on what people are willing to pay and accept." n51 This alternative, already implemented in occasional
individual negotiations, n52 directly addresses some of the ethical problems just surveyed. It also entails serious ethical complications of its own, including risks to the doctor-patient or researcher-subject
relationship and other negative consequences for larger society. Examination of four major objections to the property-rights approach begins to suggest the parameters of a more satisfactory alternative.¶ [*86] ¶
A. Economic Inefficiency¶ If one accepts the Moore court's assumption that the progress of biotechnology research is highly beneficial to society, it follows that the economic efficiency of such research should be
the recognition of property rights in every potentially useful tissue
would present the biotechnology industry with an unacceptable choice: either become
mired in costly and time-consuming transactions with numerous individual tissue sources, n53 or
risk failing to secure clear title to the tissue samples on which patents and products may be
based. n54¶ In an analogous context--involving intangible or intellectual property rather than tangible, personal property--Heller and Eisenberg have detailed the inefficiencies that can result from what
carefully protected. Not only the Moore court, but other jurists and commentators have argued that
sample
they regard as excessive protection of individual property rights in biomedical research. n55 In particular, they have argued that progress in biotechnology is unduly burdened by the existence of too many
intellectual property rights in basic research tools. Heller and Eisenberg's analysis of this intellectual property market serves to highlight, by analogy, problems that are likely to be exacerbated if individual tissue
contributors are deemed to hold personal property rights in their blood and body parts.¶ Heller and Eisenberg's argument takes its cue from Garrett Hardin's classic analysis of the problems that arise when people
hold property in common. n56 Hardin concluded that people tend to overuse such "commons property" (e.g., air or water) in a way that is ultimately tragic. Without the incentives of private property or the limits
of other social arrangements, each person's rational pursuit of self-interest leads to greater and greater exploitation of a common resource until the whole is exhausted or ruined. This, in Hardin's terms, is "the
tragedy of the commons." n57¶ According to Heller and Eisenberg, an opposite but similar tragedy of the "anti-commons" occurs when people hold too little in common--that is, when too many people have a
private right to prevent others from using property of mutual interest. n58 In the biotechnology industry, companies must strike a separate bargain with every party whose intellectual or tangible property might be
needed to produce a commercial product. It would be better, Heller and Eisenberg suggest, if fewer such property rights were recognized. Often the rights-bearing parties are academic researchers, whom Heller
and Eisenberg characterize as inefficient bargainers with limited competence in the field, cognitive biases that lead them to overvalue their assets and different strategic objectives from their industrial negotiating
partners. Heller and Eisenberg contend that negotiating with such parties absorbs undue time and resources from industry. n59 ¶ In understanding the implications of this view for human tissue transactions, it is
important to separate concerns about efficiency from differences in strategic or policy goals. The time-consuming nature of academic/industrial negotiations is often due, in part, to the substantive social values
expressed in public technology policy. [*87] For example, existing federal policy seeks to ensure that academic inventions made under federal grants and licensed exclusively to industry are actually used in the
development of products. The rights are not merely to be held defensively (i.e., to prevent competitors from marketing a similar product) or allowed to languish for too long in a company's portfolio if other
projects take on greater commercial priority. n60 To implement this policy, universities commonly require their exclusive licensees to agree to "due diligence" commitments for the development and marketing of
products. These commitments can take time to negotiate and can conflict with companies' natural preference to control proprietary rights. n61 The conflict is rooted in a difference between public and private
objectives rather than in mere inefficiency. In addition, each party has a strategic interest in obtaining what it deems to be an acceptable financial return. Of course, both public and private parties may share a
larger aim to promote the development of new and better healthcare products, and it is reasonable to consider how the allocation of property rights affects that long-term goal.¶ Individual tissue contributors may
have interests analogous to those of government-funded researchers and licensors. In addition to financial considerations, these interests may include the promotion of research on a disease or condition of
concern to the contributor. In a market that serves the dual purposes of medical care and entrepreneurship, the extent of protection afforded to a tissue contributor's non-economic interests is a public policy
On grounds of
economic efficiency alone, however, criticism like Heller and Eisenberg's would likely be warranted if
property rights were extended to individual tissue contributors. If individuals sought to
negotiate the terms under which their body parts were made available for research,
inefficiencies could result from several factors. Many tissue samples would be acquired
either in clinical situations, in which research uses might not yet have been considered, or
in research projects at an early stage of development, in which the eventual commercial utility
of such materials could be hard to predict . n62 It is likely that the majority of such materials would never be used
commercially in such a way as to warrant a significant royalty. n63 In these circumstances, transaction costs for securing the rights to
all samples from their individual contributors could be prohibitive. This would likely be true whether contributors negotiated directly with companies or with
question that goes beyond the scope of this article. It should be considered in conjunction with, but not subsumed by, concerns about financial returns and efficiency.¶
intermediaries such as academic medical centers or private physician practices.
Legalizing organ sales necessitates recognizing individual property
rights to their bodies
David E Jefferies 98, JD from Indiana University School of Law, MS in Biotechnology from
Northwestern University, “The Body as Commodity: The Use of Markets to Cure the Organ Deficit,”
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies: Vol. 5: Iss. 2, Article 13,
http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol5/iss2/13
In order to sell their organs, people would need some recognized ownership or
property right in their own bodies and their component parts. This raises the question: what
is the nature of property rights in the human body? The prevailing view is that a modicum of property rights exist in
human cadavers.3 The English common law recognized a right to bury one's dead, termed a "quasi-right in property," which remains the rule in the
United States. 4 Cogent arguments have also been made that rights existing in relation to the body strongly resemble property rights, such as the
prohibition of slavery and false imprisonment, the ability to contract for employment, and the existence of assault and battery laws. Historically,
people have not been allowed to alienate the parts or sum of their bodies to others.
The property rights that inhere in an object are often characterized as a bundle of sticks. A person need not possess all the sticks in the bundle to enjoy
the ownership of property. With
human materials, people certainly own them, but lack the stick which encompasses the right
to sell.3 As we shall see, under existing law in the United States and most other countries, the right to
sell is absent.
Undue burdens---forces researchers to follow up with families
Jasper Bovenberg 5, lawyer and research fellow of the Netherlands NWO Genomics Initiative at the
University of Leiden Faculty of Law and the Centre for Medical Systems Biology, JD and PhD in law from
the University of Leiden, “Whose tissue is it anyway?” Nature Biotechnology 23, 929 – 933,
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v23/n8/full/nbt0805-929.html
Property model. The logic of this model rests on the assertion that people have a personal property right
in their tissue. Among other legally protected interests, a personal property right confers on its owner the power
to sell the object owned, in exchange for consideration. A property right in human tissue
would enable a tissue or cell donor to transfer tissue or cells by sale and, by way of consideration, claim a share in any
profits that might accrue from their use. If such a personal property right were recognized, a tissue donor
would be able to sue anyone using their tissue without their permission on the basis of
conversion10. The tort of 'conversion' can be defined as an intentional exercise of dominion and control over personal property, without the owner's consent and
without lawful justification, that so seriously interferes with the right of another to control that property that the tortfeasor (a person guilty of an act that gives rise to a right of
action for damages) may justly be required to pay the other the full value of the property10. Plaintiffs alleging conversion of their personal property must not only show a
property interest in their tissue, but also that they suffered some injury through interference with the property. In addition to restoration of ownership, plaintiffsalleging
Apart from being a radical
departure from current legal precedent, the property model has several drawbacks. Perhaps most seriously, it
would commoditize human body parts. It would also place undue burdens on researchers by forcing them to
check the pedigree of every tissue sample used in research, it would deter commercial
applications by creating uncertainty over who has legal title to inventions and it would result in
a tragic anticommons, by empowering millions of tissue contributors to negotiate a
benefit share for each use of their tissue11. In addition, it would be hard to assess the relative contribution made by the donation of a
conversion may seek, by way of monetary damages, the fair market value of the property at the time of conversion.¶
single sample to the resultant diagnostic or drug.
Xenografts A/C
Biologic materials from animals are already implanted in humans
routinely---the same diseases get transferred but no harm has
resulted
Frederick A. Murphy 96, Dean and Prof of Virology, School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis, 9 Aug
1996, “The Public Health Risk of Animal Organ and Tissue Transplantation into Humans,” Science Vol
273, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/273/5276/746.full.pdf
There are many examples of biologic materials derived from animals for use in humans; a number of
these are subjected to viral-inactivation procedures, and many are regulated by the FDA, including porcine insulin (treated with HCI and ethyl alcohol),
bovine thyroxin (treated with acid), porcine heart valves (treated with glutaraldehyde), bovine lung lipids (for treating hyaline
membrane disease; treated with solvents), bovine adrenal cells (experimental, as a source of endorphins for long-term intractable pain relief; no treatment),
and porcine skin (for burn repair; no treatment). In addition, fetal calf serum, calf serum, and horse serum are used
in cell culture substrates for vaccine production and for many in vitro autologous cell manipulations. Such sera are heat-treated or y-irradiated, but viruses
occasionally survive such treatment. So, there may not be much difference between xenografts and
unsterilized biologic products derived from animals. In fact, we have for many years been
parenterally transferring some of the same kinds of viruses into humans that might now
be considered a risk in the xenotransplantation setting. Such parenteral transfers, which to a large extent have
proceeded without apparent harm, should nevertheless be reviewed in regard to lessons for policy development and should also be compared
with experiences involving transfers of whole organs (allografts and xenografts, where cell-cell interfaces and microvasculature remain intact and eventually unite host and
transplant).
No Disease
No disease---screening makes it at least as safe as human donation
Jay A. Fishman 12, M.D., Co-Director of the Mass General Transplant Center and Professor of
Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Linda Scobie, Reader in Clinical Virology at Glasgow Caledonian
University, and Dr Yasu Takeuchi, Reader in Molecular Virology in the Division of Infection and
Immunity, Wohl Virion Centre, University College London, “Xenotransplantation-associated infectious
risk: a WHO consultation,” Xenotransplantation Volume 19, Issue 2, pages 72–81, March/April 2012,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1399-3089.2012.00693.x/full
Xenotransplantation carries the potential risk of
infection
Abstract:
the transmission of
with the cells or tissues of the graft. The
degree of risk is unknown in the absence of clinical trials. The clinical application of xenotransplantation has important implications for infectious disease surveillance, both at
Preclinical data indicate that infectious disease events associated with
clinical xenotransplantation from swine, should they occur, will be rare; data in human trials are
limited but have demonstrated no transmission of porcine microorganisms including porcine endogenous retrovirus. Xenotransplantation
the national and international levels.
will necessitate the development of surveillance programs to detect known infectious agents and, potentially, previously unknown or unexpected pathogens. The development of
surveillance and safety programs for clinical trials in xenotransplantation is guided by a “Precautionary Principle,” with the deployment of appropriate screening procedures and
assays for source animals and xenograft recipients even in the absence of data suggesting infectious risk. All assays require training, standardization and validation, and sharing
of laboratory methods and expertise to optimize the quality of the surveillance and diagnostic testing. Investigation of suspected xenogeneic infection events (xenosis,
xenozoonosis) should be performed in collaboration with an expert data safety review panel and the appropriate public health and competent authorities. It should be
considered an obligation of performance of xenotransplantation trials to report outcomes, including any infectious disease transmissions, in the scientific literature. Repositories
of samples from source animals and from recipients prior to, and following xenograft transplantation are essential to the investigation of possible infectious disease events.
Careful microbiological screening of
source animals used as xenotransplant donors may enhance the safety of transplantation
beyond that of allotransplant procedures. Xenogeneic tissues may be relatively resistant
to infection by some human pathogens. Moreover, xenotransplantation may be made available at the time when patients require organ
replacement on a clinical basis. Insights gained in studies of the microbiology and immunology of
xenotransplantation will benefit transplant recipients in the future. This document summarizes approaches to disease
Concerns over any potential hazards associated with xenotransplantation may overshadow potential benefits.
surveillance in individual recipients of nonhuman tissues.
Midterms
AT: Unethical Policymaking
Consequentialism key --- need to evaluate political effects of the plan
Isaac 2—Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from
Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, “Ends, Means, and Politics,” p. Proquest)
As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It
is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of
"aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response . The
status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence
abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a
question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam
Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for
diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized
ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any
account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The
campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic
choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of
power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world.
Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in
the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is
to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is
not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally
laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does
not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause
with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then
it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their
supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a
form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of
politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically
repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it
fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it
is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good"
may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough
that one's goals be sincere or idealistic;
it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals
and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits
this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines
political effectiveness.
AT: Broad Support For Plan
Organ sales face strong opposition from social conservatives – swings
the election
Alvin Roth 14, Craig and Susan McCaw professor of economics at Stanford University and the Gund
professor of economics and business administration emeritus at Harvard University, Jan 19 2014, “ Cash
for Kidneys: The Case for a Market for Organs. Becker and Elias in the WSJ,”
http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2014/01/cash-for-kidneys-case-for-market-for.html
Note that the
prohibition on organ sales is not some law that remains on the books merely through
inattention. This is illustrated by the recent events surrounding the tug of war over whether it might be legal to compensate (even) bone marrow
donors. Briefly, the ninth circuit court of appeals issued a ruling that said that in some circumstances bone marrow donors could be compensated, but
opposition to organ
sales--even to compensating bone marrow donors--is alive and well.¶ But things don't go all in one direction. Bob Slonim reminds me
then the Department of Health and Human Services proposed regulations that would keep the ban in place. So the
that while we rely on unpaid donation of whole blood in the United States, most of our supply of blood plasma comes from paid donors.¶ I've
participated in some efforts to understand better the repugnance to compensating organ donors, e.g. here's a survey with Steve Leider about who
disapproves of kidney sales, and some correlates of such disapproval:¶ Leider, Stephen and Alvin E. Roth, ''Kidneys for sale: Who disapproves, and
why? American Journal of Transplantation 10 (May), 2010, 1221-1227.¶ More recently, Muriel Niederle and I conducted a different sort of survey,
which assessed the relative willingness of Americans to contemplate monetary rewards for the heroism associated with kidney donation: ¶ "Niederle,
Muriel and Alvin E. Roth, “Philanthropically Funded Heroism Awards for Kidney Donors?” forthcoming in Law & Contemporary Problems, 77:3,
2014.¶ Judd Kessler and I have a paper forthcoming in the American Economic Review papers and proceedings (May 2014) called "Getting More
Organs for Transplantation," in which we summarize the issue this way:¶ "Kidney
sales are often the leading example of
a repugnant transaction cited by those who would put stricter limits on markets in general (e.g. Sandel
2012, 2013), because of their sense that such sales arouse widespread opposition. A representative sample survey of
Americans conducted by Leider and Roth (2010) suggests that disapproval of kidney sales correlates with other
socially conservative attitudes, but that it does not rise to the level of disapproval of other repugnant transactions such as
prostitution. In addition, there is evidence that the manner of the payment to an organ donor may mitigate some of the repugnance concerns. Niederle
and Roth (forthcoming 2014) find that payments to non-directed kidney donors are deemed more acceptable when they arise as a reward for heroism
and public service than when they are viewed as a payment for kidneys."
Asia Pivot Card Bad
Loss of Asian regional hegemony is the only existential risk---their
impacts pale in comparison
Layne 7 – Christopher Layne, associate professor of International Affairs at the Bush School of
Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, Fall 2007, “Who Lost Iraq and Why It Matters:
The Case for Offshore Balancing,” online: http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/who-lost-iraq-and-why-itmatters-case-offshore-balancing
The war’s ideological supporters are wrong. The United States is not failing in Iraq because “mistakes were made.” Rather,
the decision to go to war was itself mistaken. From its inception, the invasion of Iraq was fated to be mission impossible, not
mission accomplished, because the strategy was based on faulty assumptions and its objectives exceeded America’s grasp.
The U.S. failure in Iraq should be a strong warning against provoking a military conflict with Iran, and the catalyst for a new
regional strategy: offshore balancing.1 The key assumption underlying offshore balancing is that the
most vital U.S. interests are preventing the emergence of an dominant power in Europe
and East Asia—a “Eurasian hegemon”—and forestalling the emergence of a regional (“oil”) hegemon in the
Middle East. Only a Eurasian hegemon could pose an existential threat to the United
States. A regional hegemon in the Middle East could imperil the flow of oil upon which the U.S. economy and the
economies of the advanced industrial states depend. As an offshore balancer, the U.S. would rely on the
dynamics of the balance of power to thwart any states with hegemonic ambitions . An offshore
balancing strategy would permit the United States to withdraw its ground forces from Eurasia
(including the Middle East) and assume an over-the-horizon military posture. If—and only if—
regional power balances crumbled would the United States re-insert its troops into Eurasia.
Outweighs by definition---biggest militaries, nuclear arsenals, and
risk of war
Auslin 11 – Michael Auslin, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, August 15, 2011,
“Build, Hold, and Clear: An American Strategy for Asia ,” online:
http://www.aei.org/print?pub=article&pubId=103997&authors=%3Ca%20href=scholar/127%3EMichael
%20Auslin%3C/a%3E
The Indo-Pacific region also boasts the world's largest militaries. China, Japan, South
Korea, and Australia have sophisticated, modern air and naval forces, while developing countries such
as India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are buying new submarines (and, in the case of India, new ships and
fighter jets as well). North Korea maintains a million-man army and an active nuclear and
ballistic-missile program. Over 40,000 U.S. troops remain permanently based in the Indo-Pacific, and the
majority of our aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines are either in the Indo-Pacific region or based on the West Coast
of the U.S. In coming years, the U.S. will likely base a larger percentage of its bomber and fighter fleet in the Pacific region.
Of particular concern is China's military buildup. Beijing is actively developing military
capabilities to reduce America's qualitative superiority and effectively target our
bases and forces, in the hope of creating an environment in which U.S. forces will be challenged from accessing the
region and operating freely within it. Among the programs especially worrisome to U.S. military planners are the DF-21
anti-ship ballistic missile, which is designed to track U.S. large ships at sea; the J-20 stealth fighter, which could reduce the
edge of our stealthy F-22s and future F-35s; the growing submarine fleet, which now numbers over 70; and ongoing
anti-cyber programs, designed to attack the networked structure of America's
defense machine.
Impact Framing
Risk Analysis
Finishing
Mark Jablonowski 10, Lecturer in Economics at the University of Hartford, “Implications of
Fuzziness for the Practical Management of High-Stakes Risks,” International Journal of Computational
Intelligence Systems, Vol.3, No. 1 (April, 2010), 1-7,
Due to the fuzzy nature of risk, we can not rely on statistical techniques. The fundamental
problem with catastrophe remains, in the long run, there may be no long run. That is, we
can not rely on results “averaging out” over time. With such risks, only precautionary
avoidance (based on the minimax’ing of the largest possible loss) makes sense. Combined
with reasonable natural thresholds, this view allows a very workable approach to achieving safe progress.
Uncertainty goes neg---for low-probability events, the probability that
our assessment has underestimated the risk is higher than the
probability we assign the event itself
Nick Bostrom 12, “EXISTENTIAL RISK PREVENTION AS GLOBAL PRIORITY,”
http://media.hotnews.ro/media_server1/document-2013-04-24-14684251-0-preventia-riscurilorexistentiale-prioritate-globala.pdf
The uncertainty and error-proneness of our first-order assessments of risk is itself something we
must factor into our all-things-considered probability assignments. This factor often dominates in lowprobability, high-consequence risks—especially those involving poorly understood natural phenomena, complex social
dynamics, or new technology, or that are difficult to assess for other reasons. Suppose that some scientific analysis A
indicates that some catastrophe X has an extremely small probability P(X) of occurring. Then
the probability that A has some hidden crucial flaw may easily be much greater than P(X).5
Furthermore, the conditional probability of X given that A is crucially flawed, P(X |¬A), may be
fairly high. We may then find that most of the risk of X resides in the uncertainty of our
scientific assessment that P(X) was small (figure 1) (Ord, Hillerbrand and Sandberg 2010).
High magnitude, low probability scenario planning (like nuclear war)
is productive in IR --- fear mobilizes productive action
Timothy Junio 13, cybersecurity postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, PhD in political science from the
University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Mahnken, Naval War College, “Conceiving of Future War: The
Promise of Scenario Analysis for International Relations”, September, International Studies Review
Volume 15, Issue 3, pages 374–395
This introduces political scientists to scenarios future counterfactuals and demonstrates their
value
across a wide range of research questions
scenarios contribute to theory building and development, identifying new hypotheses,
analyzing data-poor research topics, articulating “world views,” setting new
research agendas, avoiding cognitive biases, and teaching
the low rate at
which scenarios are used in the international relations subfield and situates scenarios in the
broader context of political science methods
¶
social scientists often have a hard time [building scenarios]; they have been
trained to stay away from ‘what if?’ questions and concentrate on ‘what was?
Scenarios—counterfactual narratives about the
future—are woefully underutilized among political scientists
The low rate at which political scientists use scenarios
is surprising; the method is popular
Scenarios also are a
common tool employed by the policymakers whom political scientists study.¶ This seeks to
elevate the status of scenarios in political science by demonstrating their usefulness for
article
—
in tandem with other methodologies and
—
. The authors describe best practices regarding the scenario method and argue that
. The article also establishes
. The conclusion offers two detailed examples of the effective use of scenarios.
In his classic work on scenario analysis, The Art of the Long
View, Peter Schwartz commented that “
’” (Schwartz 1996:31). While Schwartz's comments
were impressionistic based on his years of conducting and teaching scenario analysis, his claim withstands empirical scrutiny.
. The method is almost never taught on graduate student syllabi, and a survey of leading
international relations (IR) journals indicates that scenarios were used in only 302 of 18,764 sampled articles.
than 2% of the time—
—less
in fields as disparate as business, demographics, ecology, pharmacology, public health, economics, and epidemiology (Venable, Li, Ginter, and
Duncan 1993; Leufkens, Haaijer-Ruskamp, Bakker, and Dukes 1994; Baker, Hulse, Gregory, White, Van Sickle, Berger, Dole, and Schumaker 2004; Sanderson, Scherbov, O'Neill, and Lutz 2004).
article
theory building and pedagogy. Rather than constitute mere speculation regarding an
unpredictable future
scenarios assist scholars with developing testable hypotheses
scenarios are an effective way to teach students to apply theory
to policy
political
scientists have invoked the scenario method to improve the specifications of their theories,
propose falsifiable hypotheses, and design new empirical research programs.¶
¶ What
do counterfactual narratives about the future look like?
One of the most
common uses
is to study the conditions under which highconsequence, low-probability events may occur. Perhaps the best example of this is
nuclear warfare, a circumstance that has never resulted, but has captivated generations of
political scientists.
consider a
scenario regarding how a first use of a nuclear
weapon might occur ¶
, as critics might suggest,
,
gathering data, and identifying a theory's upper and lower bounds. Additionally,
. In the pages below, a “best practices” guide is offered to advise scholars, practitioners, and students, and an argument is developed in favor of the use of scenarios. The article concludes with two examples of how
Scenarios in the Discipline
Scenarios may range in length from a few sentences to many pages.
of the scenario method, which will be referenced throughout this article,
For an introductory illustration, let us
very simple
: During the year 2023, the US military is ordered to launch air and sea patrols of the Taiwan Strait to aid in a crisis. These highly visible patrols disrupt trade off China's coast, and result in skyrocketing
insurance rates for shipping companies. Several days into the contingency, which involves over ten thousand US military personnel, an intelligence estimate concludes that a Chinese conventional strike against US air patrols and naval assets is imminent. The United
States conducts a preemptive strike against anti-air and anti-sea systems on the Chinese mainland. The US strike is far more successful than Chinese military leaders thought possible; a new source of intelligence to the United States—unknown to Chinese
leadership—allowed the US military to severely degrade Chinese targeting and situational awareness capabilities. Many of the weapons that China relied on to dissuade escalatory US military action are now reduced to single-digit-percentage readiness. Estimates for
repairs and replenishments are stated in terms of weeks, and China's confidence in readily available, but “dumber,” weapons is low due to the dispersion and mobility of US forces. Word of the successful US strike spreads among the Chinese and Taiwanese publics.
The Chinese Government concludes that for the sake of preserving its domestic strength, and to signal resolve to the US and Taiwanese Governments while minimizing further economic disruption, it should escalate dramatically with the use of an extremely small-
This
reflects a future event that, while unlikely to occur
contains many dimensions of political science theory. These include
what leaders perceive as “limited,” “proportional,” or “escalatory” uses of force; the importance
of information about capabilities
the relationship between military
expediency and political objectives during war; and the role of compressed timelines for decision
making
The purpose
is to explain to scholars how such stories, and more rigorously
developed narratives that specify variables of interest and draw on extant data, may improve
the study of IR.
yield nuclear device against a stationary US military asset in the Pacific region. ¶
short story
be used for military planning,
private
and commitment; audience costs in international politics;
, among others.
and far too vague to
the following:
of this article
An important starting point is to explain how future counterfactuals fit into the methodological canon of the discipline.
Boulding
Nuke war threat is real and o/w structural and invisible violence--their expansion of structural violence to an all-pervasive
omnipresence makes preventing war impossible
Ken Boulding 78 is professor of economics and director, Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, University of Michigan, “Future Directions in Conflict and
Peace Studies,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 342-354
Galtung is very legitimately interested in problems of world poverty and the failure of development of
the really poor. He tried to amalga- mate this interest with the peace research interest in the more
narrow sense. Unfortunately, he did this by downgrading the study of inter- national peace,
labeling it "negative peace" (it should really have been labeled "negative war") and then developing the concept of
"structural violence," which initially meant all those social structures and histories which produced an expectation of life less than that of the richest and longestlived societies. He argued by analogy that if people died before the age, say, of 70 from avoidable causes, that this was a death in "war"' which could only be remedied by
Unfortunately, the concept of structural violence was broadened, in the word of one
to include anything that Galtung did not like. Another factor in this situation was the feeling,
certainly in the 1960s and early 1970s, that nuclear deterrence was actually succeeding as deterrence and that the
problem of nuclear war had receded
something called "positive peace."
slightly unfriendly critic,
This it seems to me is a most dangerous illusion and diverted conflict and peace
research for ten years or more away from problems of disarmament and stable peace toward a grand,
vague study of world developments, for which most of the peace researchers are not particularly
well qualified. To my mind, at least, the quality of the research has suffered severely as a result.' The complex nature of the split within the peace research community
into the background.
is reflected in two international peace research organizations. The official one, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), tends to be dominated by Europeans
somewhat to the political left, is rather, hostile to the United States and to the multinational cor- porations, sympathetic to the New International Economic Order and thinks of
itself as being interested in justice rather than in peace. The Peace Science Society (International), which used to be called the Peace Research Society (International), is mainly
the creation of Walter Isard of the University of Pennsylvania. It conducts meetings all around the world and represents a more peace-oriented, quantitative, science- based
enterprise, without much interest in ideology. COPRED, while officially the North American representative of IPRA, has very little active connection with it and contains within
itself the same ideological split which, divides the peace research community in general. It has, however, been able to hold together and at least promote a certain amount of
interaction between the two points of view. Again representing the "scientific" rather than the "ideological" point of view, we have SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute, very generously (by the usual peace research stand- ards) financed by the Swedish government, which has performed an enormously useful service in the
collection and publishing of data on such things as the war industry, technological developments, arma- ments, and the arms trade. The Institute is very largely the creation of
Alva Myrdal. In spite of the remarkable work which it has done, how- ever, her last book on disarmament (1976) is almost a cry of despair over the folly and hypocrisy of
international policies, the overwhelming power of the military, and the inability of mere information, however good, go change the course of events as we head toward ultimate
ca- tastrophe. I do not wholly share her pessimism, but it is hard not to be a little disappointed with the results of this first generation of the peace research movement. Myrdal
called attention very dramatically to the appalling danger in which Europe stands, as the major battleground between Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union if war ever
should break out. It may perhaps be a subconscious recognition-and psychological denial-of the sword of Damocles hanging over Europe that has made the European peace
research movement retreat from the realities of the international system into what I must unkindly describe as fantasies of justice. But the American peace research community,
likewise, has retreated into a somewhat niggling scientism, with sophisticated meth- odologies and not very many new ideas. I must confess that when I first became involved
with the peace research enterprise 25 years ago I had hopes that it might produce some- thing like the Keynesian revolution in economics, which was the result of some rather
simple ideas that had never really been thought out clearly before (though they had been anticipated by Malthus and others), coupled with a substantial improvement in the
information system with the development of national income statistics which rein- forced this new theoretical framework. As a result, we have had in a single generation a very
massive change in what might be called the "conventional wisdom" of economic policy, and even though this conventional wisdom is not wholly wise, there is a world of
difference between Herbert Hoover and his total failure to deal with the Great Depression, simply because of everybody's ignorance, and the moder- ately skillful handling of the
depression which followed the change in oil prices in 1-974, which, compared with the period 1929 to 1932, was little more than a bad cold compared with a galloping
In the international system, however, there has been only glacial change in the
conventional wisdom. There has been some improvement. Kissinger was an improvement on John Foster Dulles. We have had
pneumonia.
the beginnings of detente, and at least the possibility on the horizon of stable peace between the United States and the Soviet Union, indeed in the whole temperate zone-even
the tropics still remain uneasy and beset with arms races, wars, and revolutions which we cannot really
Nor can we pretend that peace around the temper- ate zone is stable enough so that we do
not have to worry about it. The qualitative arms race goes on and could easily take us over the
cliff. The record of peace research in the last generation, therefore, is one of very partial success. It has created a discipline and that is something of long-run
consequence, most certainly for the good. It has made very little dent on the conventional wisdom of the policy
makers anywhere in the world. It has not been able to prevent an arms race, any more, I suppose we might say,
than the Keynesian economics has been able to prevent inflation. But whereas inflation is an inconvenience, the arms race may well be another
catastrophe. Where, then, do we go from here? Can we see new horizons for peace and conflict research to get it
out of the doldrums in which it has been now for almost ten years? The challenge is surely great enough. It still
remains true that war, the breakdown of Galtung's "negative peace," remains the greatest clear and
present danger to the human race, a danger to human survival far greater than poverty, or
injustice, or oppression, desirable and necessary as it is to eliminate these things. Up to the present
though
afford.
generation, war has been a cost and an inconven- ience to the human race, but it has rarely been fatal to the process of evolutionary development as a whole. It has probably not
absorbed more than 5% of human time, effort, and resources.
Even in the twenti- eth century, with its two world wars and
innumerable smaller ones, it has probably not acounted for more than 5% of deaths, though of
course a larger proportion of premature deaths. Now, however, ad- vancing technology is
creating a situation where in the first place we are developing a single world system that does
not have the redundancy of the many isolated systems of the past and in which therefore if anything goes wrong everything goes wrong. The Mayan civilization could collapse in 900 A.D., and collapse almost irretrievably without Europe
or China even being aware of the fact. When we had a number of iso- lated systems, the catastrophe in one was
ultimately recoverable by migration from the surviving systems. The one-world system, therefore, which
science, transportation, and communication are rapidly giving us, is inherently more precarious than the many-world system
of the past. It is all the more important, therefore, to make it internally robust and capable only
of recoverable catastrophes. The necessity for stable peace, therefore, increases with every
improvement in technology, either of war or of peacex