1AC
Plan: the United States should legalize the sale of human organs.
Advantage 1 – Organ Trafficking and Exploitation
A massive shortage of organs in the United States is driving the existence of a thriving
underground organ market.
Archer 13 Body Snatchers: Organ Harvesting For Profit Kidneys and other organs are selling to the highest bidder on the black market.
Published on November 13, 2013 by Dale Archer, M.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201311/bodysnatchers-organ-harvesting-profitRecently in China, a missing 6-year-old boy was found alone in a field, crying. Upon closer inspection, both eyes had been removed, presumably for
the corneas. In 2012, a young African girl was kidnapped and brought to the UK for the sole purpose of harvesting her organs. She was one of the lucky ones—rescued before she went under
the knife. Authorities feel this is just the tip of the iceberg. This isn't just an international occurrence. Kendrick Johnson, a Georgia teen, died at school January 2013. The local sheriff quickly
determined the death was a freak accident, that he suffocated after getting stuck in a rolled up mat in the school gym. Johnson's parents however, could not—would not—accept that. Six
months after his death, they obtained a court order to have the body exhumed for an independent autopsy. The pathologist was stunned when he found the corpse stuffed with newspaper.
The brain, heart, lungs and liver were missing. He also discovered Johnson's death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck. The FBI is now involved in this disturbing case
with potentially shattering reverberations. Nancy Scheper-Hughes has spent over ten years studying the dark side of organ harvesting and trafficking which is driven by greedy middle men and
desperate, wealthy recipients.
Black market organs are being transplanted in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles at $150,000 a pop. She reports
there are "broker-friendly" US hospitals, complete with surgeons who either don't know or don't care where the organs come from. Organ
donation is only possible if the organ in question has blood and oxygen flowing through it until the time of harvesting. A living donor can give a whole kidney, a portion of their liver, lung,
intestine or pancreas. Otherwise, the donor must be declared brain dead while circulation and oxygenation remain intact. Today,
120,771 people are waiting for an organ, and
18 will die every day while waiting. Just one donor has the ability to save up to 8 lives. Where there's a demand, there's a way. And for the wealthy money is no
object when it comes to a vitally needed body part. Organ donation is strictly regulated in the US, yet a black market is alive and well. Typically a broker will
team up with a funeral home director, forging consent forms and a death certificate to harvest human tissue before the body is cremated or
buried. Sometimes organs are harvested from a living victim for compensation. In the worst case it involves kidnapping for the purpose of organ
harvesting. Always at the end of the chain is a wealthy recipient, willing to pay big bucks with no questions asked. In some countries, impoverished villagers
may sell an organ for several hundred dollars. In others, organ harvesting is tied to human trafficking. Children sold into slavery or a life of sexual abuse
are also used for their organs. There's a black market for hearts, lungs, and livers, but the kidney is the most sought after. According to the World
Health Organization, approximately 7,000 kidneys are illegally harvested annually by traffickers worldwide and the prices vary widely by country. The average
buyer spends $150,000 (though prices in excess of $200,000 are common) while the average donor gets $5,000. The big profits go the the middle men and
“organ brokers”. In the US 98,463 individuals are waiting for a kidney as of October 25, 2013. Of those, about half will die before they receive one.
The profits are huge, and money is a temptation many brokers and doctors just cannot resist. In 2010 WHO estimated about 11,000 organs were obtained on the
black market. WHO also claims that an organ is sold every hour of every day, 365/7. What is your kidney worth to you? A broker located in China openly advertised
"Donate a kidney, buy a new iPad!" In addition, the donor would be compensated $4,000 and it could be harvested quickly and easily in as little as 10 days. There's an enormous
demand for organs, and whenever there's gap between supply and demand desperate buyers and desperate sellers will dictate a black market.
Now organized crime is involved, sometimes leaving the poor victim without their organ and quite possibly without being paid. Even here in the
U.S., there have been accusations (no proof) of allowing patients on life support to die in order to remove the organs while the heart is still
beating. This is a multi-million dollar industry, and as the wealth gap continues to widen, it’s only expected to get worse.
Organ trafficking is a modern day form of slavery – the market is widespread and
growing
The Kubrick Theme. 2012 Human Trafficking is Modern Day Slavery, http://fightslaverynow.org/why-fight-there-are-27-millionreasons/otherformsoftrafficking/organ-removal/
Organ removal, while not as prevalent as sex and labor trafficking, is quite real and widespread. Those targeted are
sometimes killed or left for dead. More frequently poor and desperate people are lured by false promises. The World Health
Organization estimates that as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers every year as demand outstrips the supply of organs
legally available for transplant. A black market thrives as well in the trade of bones, blood and other body tissues. This activity is listed in the
United Nations’ Trafficking in Persons Protocol: Article 3(a)… Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of
others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
The inclusion of this form of exploitation into the Protocol is intended to cover those situations where a person is exploited for the purposes of
a trafficker obtaining profit in the ‘organ market’, and situations where a person is trafficked for the purpose of the removal of their organs
and/or body parts for purposes of witchcraft or traditional medicine. In the former situation, market
forces drive supply and
demand; those in desperate need of an organ transplant will purchase an organ from those who are
desperately poor, or from ‘brokers’ who may have forcibly or deceptively obtained the organ. Kidneys
are generally supplied by live ‘donors’ in underdeveloped countries to developed ones. An article in the
medical journal Lancet reported: “…the circulation of kidneys followed established routes of capital from South
to North, from East to West, from poorer to more affluent bodies, from black and brown bodies to
white ones and from female to male or from poor, low status men to more affluent men. Women are
rarely the recipients of purchased organs anywhere in the world.” (Scheper-Hughes,Vol. 361, 10 May 2003)
These practices dehumanize and oppress of millions of persons worldwide—a
collective responsibility exists to combat the systemic harms of organ trafficking
Shahinian, 2013 – Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, United Nations (Gulnara, April 26, 2013, “Slavery must be
recognised in all its guises,” The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/apr/26/slavery-recognisedall-guises, Hensel)
¶ Five years ago,
I became the UN's first special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery. Since then, I have been asked time and again by
government officials, businesspeople and NGOs not to use the word "slavery" at all. I have been asked to change the name of my mandate
and not speak out about what I have seen. They have asked me to use other words instead – ones that don't carry the
same meanings or
implications .¶ ¶ Yet what other word describes people who have been beaten mercilessly, shut indoors, made
to work without pay, sexually abused, poorly fed and threatened with more abuse against themselves and their family if they attempt
to leave? This is not just violence or exploitation. What describes the situation in which a mother has no right over her child, or a father is
forced to put down his own life – and those of his family – as collateral, working for nothing to try to repay a debt that will never go away?
These are the forms of slavery that exist today.¶ ¶ Millions of people live in some form of enslavement . The
exact numbers are impossible to calculate. Modern slavery is one of the most powerful criminal industries (pdf), and it is because of our
collective silence and refusal to acknowledge its existence that it thrives and transforms itself into new forms year after
year. By not speaking out, we are helping to perpetuate an industry that strips millions of their humanity and rights.¶ ¶ Slavery did not end
when it was legally abolished. Instead, it is flourishing, extending its tentacles into every corner of the planet.¶ ¶ This is something that touches
all our lives. It is almost impossible not to be complicit. How many of us ask ourselves who makes biofuels, jewellery, vegetables, fruit, clothes,
shoes and even carpets? We all enjoy the cheap fruits of enslavement, while telling ourselves that exploitation happens "over there" and is
nothing to do with our own country or community.¶ ¶ Sex trafficking is finally starting to receive visibility as the horrendous human rights
abuse it is. Yet more widespread forms of slavery and trafficking continue to go unreported and ignored.¶ ¶ I have spent the past five years
talking to people in forced labour, domestic servitude, bonded labour, servile marriages and child slavery. These forms of slavery remain
invisible , since people are silenced by discrimination, fear of retaliation and lack of awareness. These modern forms of human slavery and
criminal acts are often excused as tradition, culture, religion or poverty, or dismissed as nothing more than bad labour practices.¶ ¶ The
slavery industry relies on the invisibility of those it preys on . Those trapped are not visibly shackled, but they do live their
lives under the control of others.¶ ¶ For the world to tackle slavery effectively,
we need to recognise this industry in people in
all of its manifestations . Human rights are equal and inalienable. I have met organisations working on ending forced marriage, or on
the abuse and exploitation of domestic workers and children, who feel they are unable to call these abuses slavery as the word is too loaded
and they would put their work at risk. This must stop. Slavery is slavery, no matter what form it takes.¶ ¶ We must face up to all forms of slavery
or
inadvertently ignore the plight of millions . One type of slavery, such as sex trafficking, cannot be considered more worth
fighting for than another. We have a collective responsibility to end this pernicious and persistent problem.¶ ¶ All countries must ensure that
national legislation prohibiting and criminalising all forms of slavery, and this legislation must be properly enforced. The
failure of justice systems to put anti-slavery laws into action is one of the props the slavery industry relies upon. This needs to change.¶ ¶ To
they have
combat slavery, we need to speak for people who have been silenced by this most brutal of trades . We
must stop being complacent, and find the courage to hold individuals, companies and governments accountable. Complacency is no longer an
option.
Legalization of organ sales solves black market harms.
Calandrillo Professor Univ of Washington Law 04
CASH FOR KIDNEYS? UTILIZING INCENTIVES TO END AMERICA’S ORGAN SHORTAGE Steve P.
Calandrillo Bio: Associate Professor, Univ. of Washington School of Law. J.D., Harvard Law School. B.A. in Economics, Univ. of California at Berkeley. Valuable insights on prior drafts and presentations of this paper were provided by
Lloyd Cohen, Dave Undis, Chryssa Deliganis, Lou Wolcher, Joe Knight, Tom Andrews, Clark Lombardi and Sean O’Connor. Thank you also to Eric Peterson, Radhika Moolgavkar, Wendy Condiotty and the Marian Gould Gallagher
reference librarians for their excellent research assistance, as well as to the Washington Legal Foundation for its financial support of this paper https://www.lifesharers.org/articles/calandrillo.pdf Citations used: Transplantation System, 21 AM. J.L. &
MED. 45, 74 (1995). 181 See Spurr, supra note 134, at 191-92 (noting that black markets provide no warranties on their products, and that the competitive forces enabled by open markets and legalized organ sales will help to ensure quality). 182 See Banks, supra note 180. Maria Morelli further fears the potential for children to be pulled into the illegal organ trade. See Morelli,
supra note 162, at 920. 183 See Denise, supra note 72, at 1035-36 (arguing that regulated markets are superior to the exist- ing ban on organ sales in the U.S.). Of course, even a well-regulated legalized market in the U.S. may not completely eliminate black markets worldwide if patients can still find organs more cheaply abroad. However, it is reasonable to suspect that an American
market would significantly reduce the demand for black market organs, especially given the ability of a regulated market to better ensure the quality of its product. Furthermore, a legalized market in the U.S. (with appropriate safeguards to prevent abuse of sellers) may lead to similar structures abroad. On the other hand, one might argue that competing mar- kets might lead to a
“race to the bottom” in terms of regulatory standards, as each country tries to gain more market share. 184 An analogy can be drawn to various assisted suicide regulatory schemes, which almost invaria- bly call for the patient to be making an informed, competent, voluntary and enduring decision. See Steve P. Calandrillo, Corralling Kevorkian: Regulating Physician-Assisted Suicide in
America, 7 VA. J. SOC. POL’Y & L. 41, 91-98 (1998). 185 For instance, sellers could be required to attend an organ sale risk education class, during which the various health risks involved could be explained in detail to remedy concerns regarding lack of information. However, even if society could be certain that sellers were given all appropriate information, it could not ensure against
the risk of optimism bias in processing it.
if we cannot prevent the black markets in human organs that continue to thrive worldwide today, a thoughtful and responsible
regulatory solution in America might be the best response. Many scholars have chronicled the reality that today’s black markets lead to a host
of abuses, provide for no follow-up health care, and generally exploit the poor to the wealthy’s advantage.180 Stephen Spurr details the
potential for misrepresentation and fraud against both buyers and sellers today, as prices spiral out of control for organs that are of dubious quality.181 Gloria Banks decries the
Moreover,
exploitation of society’s most vulnerable individuals in the organ sale trade, and urges legal and ethical safeguards for their protection.182 Susan Hankin Denise adds that a properly regulated
organ market may therefore be a better solution to the problem of scarcity than the outright ban we witness to- day.183 Unlike black markets,
responsible regulation of an
American human organ market could ensure that each individual’s decision was competent, voluntary, fully informed, and enduring.184 Where
imperfect information about health risks leads organ sellers to underestimate the consequences of their decision , we could remedy that concern by requiring and providing
risk disclosure and education prior to allowing sales.185 Furthermore, responsible regulation could prevent sellers from making hasty decisions
by requiring reasonable “cooling-off periods” prior to sale (perhaps two to four weeks) to ensure that their decision is an enduring one.186 Further, strict
liability could be imposed on individuals or procurement agencies who sell defective or diseased organs to prevent them from concealing adverse health information that might
negatively impact recipients.187 Today’s third party organ brokering that exploits the poor would be prohibited, and organ allocation could be made
far more equitable by providing full state subsidies to the poor.188 To prevent the risk that negative externalities would fall on the state when organ sellers’ health later deteriorated,
we could mandate that a portion of sale proceeds be set aside in an insurance fund with the single goal of providing compensation for the future health risks and medical costs created by the
Thus, given the reality of black markets, as well as the legitimate fears regarding legalized organ sales, any viable market in human organs
contain substantial safeguards to minimize exploitation and abuse. By regulating appropriately, we could
alleviate many of the problems faced by sellers on the black market today, and we could compensate for the enhanced future risks that sellers would be taking without
placing the burden on the state. At the same time, thousands of lives that are being lost today would be saved tomorrow.
decision to sell one’s organs.189
must address the arguments raised by critics and
The plan solves the worst effects of the black market - which is disproportionately
exploiting the poor. Compensating donors is no different than payment for other
bodily material which occurs now, or than payment for risky employment.
ALEXANDER BERGER OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal
Published: December 5,
2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/why-selling-kidneys-should-be-legal.html?_r=0
It has been illegal to compensate kidney donors in any way since 1984. The fear behind the law — that a rich tycoon could take advantage of
someone desperately poor and persuade that person to sell an organ for a pittance — is understandable. But the
truth is that the
victims of the current ban are disproportionately African-American and poor. When wealthy white
people find their way onto the kidney waiting list, they are much more likely to get off it early by
finding a donor among their friends and family (or, as Steve Jobs did for a liver transplant in 2009, by traveling to a region
with a shorter list). Worst of all, the ban encourages an international black market, where desperate people
do end up selling their organs, without protection, fair compensation or proper medical care. A wellregulated legal market for kidneys would not have any of these problems. It could ensure that donors
were compensated fairly — most experts say somewhere in the ballpark of $50,000 would make sense. Only the government
or a chosen nonprofit would be allowed to purchase the kidneys, and they would allocate them on the
basis of need rather than wealth, the same way that posthumously donated organs are currently distributed. The kidneys would be
paid for by whoever covers the patient, whether that is their insurance company or Medicare. Ideally, so many donors would come forward
that no patient would be left on the waiting list. In the end, paying for kidneys could actually save the government money; taxpayers already
foot the bill for dialysis for many patients through Medicare, and research has shown that transplants save more than $100,000 per patient,
relative to dialysis. There’s
no reason that paying for a kidney should be seen as predatory. Last week, the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling legalizing compensation for bone marrow donors; we already allow paid plasma, sperm
and egg donation, as well as payment for surrogate mothers. Contrary to early fears that paid
surrogacy would exploit young, poor minority women, most surrogate mothers are married, middle
class and white; the evidence suggests that, far from trying to “cash in,” they take pride in performing a service that brings others great
happiness. And we regularly pay people to take socially beneficial but physically dangerous jobs —
soldiers, police officers and firefighters all earn a living serving society while risking their lives —
without worrying that they are taken advantage of. Compensated kidney donors should be no
different.
It is actually far more exploitative to not compensate donors – circumvents undue
inducement and value to risk. Legal and regulated activity recalibrates the market.
James Stacey Taylor and Mary Simmerling, 2008 “Donor Compensation without exploitation”, Sally Satal, MD editor When
Altruism isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors, pg. 57
Yet the fact that potential donors are motivated by financial gain rather than by altruism is not sufficient to show they are acting less than fully
voluntarily, that they autonomy is impaired through pressure applied to their will or that they are being exploited. Indeed, perhaps it
is
exploitative not to compensate donors. As altruistic kidney donor Virginia Postrel has written, “expecting people to
take risks and give up something of value without compensation strikes me as a far worse form of
exploitation than paying them. I don’t expect soldiers or police officers to work for free, and I don’t
think we should base our entire organ donation system on the idea that everyone but the donor
should get paid. Like all price controls, that creates a shortage – in this case, a deadly one. And while
giving up a kidney has risks, it is no more risky and far less emotionally fraught than being a surrogate mother. Furthermore, a
compensation program can circumvent the risk of undue inducement by not catering to the desperate.
Such individuals desire cash and want it immediately. The proposed system would establish a months long period of medical screening and
education. It would also provide in kind rewards, or cash paid out in modest amounts over a long period of time (a strategy which, incidentally
would also ensure that donors return for follow up care). Such a system of compensation would probably not be attractive to people who
might otherwise rush to flawed judgment –and surgery on the promise of a large sum of instant cash. Thus, a
legal system of
compensation with strict donor protections creates conditions in which the decision to relinquish a
kidney can be informed and influenced by an offer rather than distorted by it.
The prohibition of organ sales either magnifies the effects of the poverty and greed
that exist in society or has no point all other than conflicting with concern for human
life.
Janet Radcliffe-Richards Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom J of Med Philos
(1996) 21 (4): 375-416. doi: 10.1093/jmp/21.4.375
http://jmp.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/4/375.full.pdf+html
Perhaps the most striking curiosity comes right at the beginning, in the way the situation is typically described. To hear the organ trade
characterized in terms of the greedy rich and the exploited poor, you might think that the rich, tired of gold plating their bathrooms and
surfeited with larks’ tongues, had now idly turned to collecting kidneys to display with their Faberge eggs and Leonardo drawings. But the
rich in question here are dying, and desperately trying to save their lives; or, at the very least to
escape the crushing miseries of chronic illness and perpetual dialysis. Most critics of the trade in organs would do
all they could to find similar amounts of money if private medicine offered their only chance of escaping death or disability, and would not, in
There is, if anything, less greed involved in spending money
to save your life or achieve your freedom than in keeping it to spend on luxuries before you become
ill. And the attitude shown to the poor who are selling the organs is even odder. Consider, for instance, the case of the young Turkish father
doing so expect to be regarded as paradigm cases of greed.
swept to everyone’s television screen by the surge of outrage that followed the first revelations. He was trying to meet the expense of urgent
hospital treatment for his daughter. Presumably the prospect of selling his kidney was, to say the least, no more attractive to him than it seems
to us, but he nevertheless judged this to be his best available option. As we rush to intervene, therefore, saying how dreadful it is that he
should be exploited in this way, we are taking away what he regards as is best option and leaving him in a situation he thinks even worse than
the loss of a kidney. The same applies to other “desperate individuals” who advertise kidneys and even eyes in newspapers or write to
The worse we think it is to sell a kidney or an eye, the
worse we should think the situation in which we leave these people when we remove that option.
Our indignation on behalf of the exploited poor seems to take the curious form of wanting to make
them worse off still. So, as we contemplate with satisfaction our rapid moves to thwart greed and
protect the poor, we leave behind one trail of people dying who might have been saved, and another
surgeons offering to sell them “often for care of an ill relative”.
of people desperate enough to offer their organs thrust back into the wretchedness they were hoping
to alleviate. And, furthermore, in a surprising contravention of our usual ideas about individual liberty, we prevent adults from entering
freely into contracts from which both sides expect to benefit, and with no obvious harm to anyone else. Our intervention, in other
words, seems in direct conflict with all our usual concerns for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is irrelevant
to respond indignantly, as many people do, that no one should be in these desperate situations. Of course they should not; but even if there
were any moral point in making rules for the world as we should like it to be rather than as it is, that would still provide no justification for
If we could eliminate poverty to the extent of removing all temptation for anyone to sell
organs, prohibition would have nothing to do; and, conversely, as long as it has anything to do, some
people must be at whatever level of desperation makes them see organ selling as their best option.
Whatever the state of the world, prohibition either causes these harms or has no point at all.
prohibition.
Lifting prohibition on organ sales solves the current crisis and saves thousands.
Becker and Elias Nobel Prize Winner 14 “Cash for Kidneys: The Case for a Market for Organs, There is a clear remedy for the growing shortage of organ
donors”,By GARY S. BECKER and JULIO J. ELIAS Updated Jan. 18, 2014 4:58 p.m. ET http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304149404579322560004817176 Bio Mr. Becker is
a Nobel Prize-winning professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Mr. Elias is an economics professor at the Universidad del CEMA in
Argentina. In
2012, 95,000 American men, women and children were on the waiting list for new kidneys, the most commonly transplanted organ.
Yet only about 16,500 kidney transplant operations were performed that year. Taking into account the number of people who die while waiting
for a transplant, this implies an average wait of 4.5 years for a kidney transplant in the U.S. The situation is far worse than it was just a decade ago,
when nearly 54,000 people were on the waiting list, with an average wait of 2.9 years. For all the recent attention devoted to the health-care
overhaul, the long and growing waiting times for tens of thousands of individuals who badly need organ transplants hasn't been addressed. Finding a
way to increase the supply of organs would reduce wait times and deaths, and it would greatly ease the suffering that many sick individuals now endure while they
hope for a transplant. The most effective change, we believe, would be to provide compensation to people who give their organs—that is, we recommend
establishing a market for organs. Organ transplants are one of the extraordinary developments of modern science. They began in 1954 with a kidney transplant performed at
Brigham & Women's hospital in Boston. But the practice only took off in the 1970s with the development of immunosuppressive drugs that could prevent the rejection of transplanted organs.
Since then, the number of kidney and other organ transplants has grown rapidly, but not nearly as rapidly as the growth in the number of people with defective organs who need transplants.
Many of those waiting for kidneys are on dialysis, and life expectancy while on dialysis isn't
long. For example, people age 45 to 49 live, on average, eight additional years if they remain on dialysis, but they live an additional 23 years if they
get a kidney transplant. That is why in 2012, almost 4,500 persons died while waiting for kidney transplants. Although some of those waiting would have
died anyway, the great majority died because they were unable to replace their defective kidneys quickly enough. The toll on those waiting for kidneys
and on their families is enormous, from both greatly reduced life expectancy and the many hardships of being on dialysis. Most of those on dialysis cannot work, and the annual cost of
dialysis averages about $80,000. The total cost over the average 4.5-year waiting period before receiving a kidney transplant is $350,000, which is much
larger than the $150,000 cost of the transplant itself. Individuals can live a normal life with only one kidney, so about 34% of all kidneys used in transplants come from live
The result has been longer and longer delays to receive organs.
donors. The majority of transplant kidneys come from parents, children, siblings and other relatives of those who need transplants. The rest come from individuals who want to help those in
In recent years, kidney exchanges—in which pairs of living would-be donors and recipients who prove incompatible look for another pair or
Although these exchanges have
grown rapidly in the U.S. since 2005, they still account for only 9% of live donations and just 3% of all kidney donations, including after-death
donations. The relatively minor role of exchanges in total donations isn't an accident, because exchanges are really a form of barter, and barter is always an
inefficient way to arrange transactions. Exhortations and other efforts to encourage more organ donations have failed to significantly close the large gap
between supply and demand. For example, some countries use an implied consent approach, in which organs from cadavers are assumed to be
available for transplant unless, before death, individuals indicate that they don't want their organs to be used. (The U.S. continues to use
informed consent, requiring people to make an active declaration of their wish to donate.) In our own highly preliminary study of a few
countries—Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile and Denmark—that have made the shift to implied consent from informed consent or vice versa, we
found that the switch didn't lead to consistent changes in the number of transplant surgeries. Other studies have found more positive effects
from switching to implied consent, but none of the effects would be large enough to eliminate the sizable shortfall in the supply of organs in
the U.S. That shortfall isn't just an American problem. It exists in most other countries as well, even when they use different methods to procure organs and have different cultures and
need of transplants.
pairs of donors and recipients who would be compatible for transplants, cutting their wait time—have become more widespread.
traditions.
Paying donors for their organs would finally eliminate the supply-demand gap . In particular, sufficient payment
to kidney donors would increase the supply of kidneys by a large percentage, without greatly increasing the total cost of a kidney transplant. We have estimated how much individuals would
need to be paid for kidneys to be willing to sell them for transplants. These estimates take account of the slight risk to donors from transplant surgery, the number of weeks of work lost during
a very large number of both live and cadaveric kidney
donations would be available by paying about $15,000 for each kidney. That estimate isn't exact, and the true cost could be as high as $25,000 or as low as $5,000—but even
the high estimate wouldn't increase the total cost of kidney transplants by a large percentage. Few countries have ever allowed the open purchase and sale of
the surgery and recovery periods, and the small risk of reduction in the quality of life. Our conclusion is that
organs, but Iran permits the sale of kidneys by living donors. Scattered and incomplete evidence from Iran indicates that the price of kidneys there is about $4,000 and that waiting times to get
kidneys have been largely eliminated. Since Iran's per capita income is one-quarter of that of the U.S., this evidence supports our $15,000 estimate. Other countries are also starting to think
Since the number of kidneys
available at a reasonable price would be far more than needed to close the gap between the demand and supply of kidneys, there would no
longer be any significant waiting time to get a kidney transplant. The number of people on dialysis would decline dramatically, and deaths due
to long waits for a transplant would essentially disappear. Today, finding a compatible kidney isn't easy. There are four basic blood types, and tissue
along these lines: Singapore and Australia have recently introduced limited payments to live donors that compensate mainly for time lost from work.
But the sale of organs
would result in a large supply of most kidney types, and with large numbers of kidneys available, transplant surgeries could be arranged to suit
the health of recipients (and donors) because surgeons would be confident that compatible kidneys would be available. The system that we're proposing would include
payment to individuals who agree that their organs can be used after they die. This is important because transplants for heart and lungs and most liver transplants
matching is complex and involves the combination of six proteins. Blood and tissue type determine the chance that a kidney will help a recipient in the long run.
only use organs from the deceased. Under a new system, individuals would sell their organs "forward" (that is, for future use), with payment going to their heirs after their organs are
Relatives sometimes refuse to have organs used even when a deceased family member has explicitly requested it, and they would be
more inclined to honor such wishes if they received substantial compensation for their assent.
harvested.
Advantage 2 – Transplant Tourism
Transplant tourism is growing and the plan solves
Torrrey 14
“Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism, Buying and Selling Human Organs” By Trisha Torrey Updated June 13, 2014 http://patients.about.com/od/healthcarefraud/a/Organ-Trafficking-And-
Transplant-Tourism.htm http://patients.about.com/bio/Trisha-Torrey-35320.htm Bio:Trisha is recognized by patients and professionals alike for her ability to translate the challenges patients face into tools and solutions they can use to improve their health care. Her
work is broad-based. In addition to her writing and speaking, she has built a website called the AdvoConnection Health Advocate Directory to help connect patients and patient advocates, where she also provides business advice to the advocates who participate through The Alliance of
Professional Health Advocates (APHAdvocates.org) Trisha's first book, You Bet Your Life! The 10 Mistakes Every Patient Makes (How to Fix Them to Get the Healthcare You Deserve) was published for patients and caregivers in early 2010, later revised and updated in 2013 to address the
changes and new issues brought about by the Affordable Care Act. Her second and third books, The Health Advocate's Marketing Handbook and The Health Advocate's Start and Grow Your Own Practice Handbook,were written to help private health and patient advocates help patients.
It's not unusual to find Trisha quoted in the mainstream media, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, O Magazine, Time and More magazines.
Such commercialization of human organs, called organ trafficking should be no surprise . There is clearly a
market comprised of people who need money, and people of means who are willing to spend money for organs. It's a black market, meaning
the practice is wholly illegal and secretive. But it's a market all the same, comprised of "haves" on the demand side, and "have nots" on the
supply side. Experts from the
World Health Organization estimate 11,000 illegal organ transactions took place in
2010. This "transplant tourism" is surging in popularity, even in the United States, for at least three
reasons. First, because the numbers of people who need organs is growing. Second, because the
transplant lists, such as those determined by UNOS in the United States are getting longer and longer. And third,
because the world economic crisis is forcing people to look at ways they can make money. Selling their
organs can put food on the table.
Transplant tourism raises the risk of multiple disease pandemics; including AIDS and
other tropical diseases.
Paredes 2010, Carlos Franco, International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 14, Issue 3, March Pages e189–e196
Many transplanted patients may live or travel to regions where some of the most frequent viral tropical infections are prevalent. Transplant
recipients traveling to resource-constrained settings endemic for tropical infections including yellow fever, dengue, rabies, and other viral
pathogens should seek expert pretravel medical advice to maximally decrease their risk of infection. This is important as immunosuppression
associated with transplantation may affect the outcome of acute viral infections or the course of virus latency, with potential life-threatening
consequences. There are reports of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, measles, human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) infection dengue, and
other viral pathogens being responsible for significant sequelae and mortality in transplant recipients. In this regard, yellow fever presents a risk
areas in part because the vaccine is live and therefore should be avoided. Transplant tourism
has been responsible for a significant number of patients acquiring hepatitis B, hepatitis C,
or HIV-infection in those transplanted overseas. There may also be an increased risk of
West Nile virus infection, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, or some hemorrhagic fever virus in
many tropical areas of the world, including some parts of the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, but there are only recent
to transplant recipients who are traveling to endemic
descriptions, mostly in non-tropical settings. It remains to be determined if other similar flaviviruses such as Japanese encephalitis virus may pose an increased risk of complications in transplant
with increasing
travel of transplant recipients to areas where rabies may be more prevalent and also due to
transplant tourism, rabies becomes a potential pathogen for transplant recipients. In addition, live
recipients. Rabies is rarely observed after transplantation with only a few cases acquired from infected donors in industrialized countries. However,
rabies vaccine for use in wildlife has caused human disease and presents a potential risk to transplant recipients who come into direct contact with wildlife.3 We discuss below, in more detail,
some HTLV-1, measles, and dengue virus infections in transplant recipients. Although these infections may be acquired in non-tropical settings, the risk of their acquisition is higher in
developing tropical areas of the world.
AIDS spread causes extinction.
Mathiu 2000 (Mutuma, Africa News, July 15, lexis)
Aids is without precedent. It is comparable only to the Black Death of the Middle Ages in the terror it evokes and the graves it fills. But
unlike the plague, Aids does not come at a time of scientific innocence: It flies in the face of space exploration, the manipulation of genes and the mapping of the human genome. The
Black Death - the plague, today easily cured by antibiotics and prevented by vaccines - killed a full 40 million Europeans, a quarter of the population of Europe,
between 1347 and 1352. But it was a death that could be avoided by the simple expedient of changing addresses and whose vector could be seen
very age has its killer. But
and exterminated. With Aids, the vector is humanity itself, the nice person in the next seat in the bus. There is nowhere to run and
nowhere to hide. Every human being who expresses the innate desire to preserve the human genetic pool through the natural mechanism of reproduction is potentially at risk. And whereas
The plague toll of
tens of millions in two decades was a veritable holocaust, but it will be nothing compared to
the viral holocaust: So far, 18.8 million people are already dead; 43.3 million infected worldwide (24.5 million
of them Africans) carry the seeds of their inevitable demise - unwilling participants in a March of the Damned. Last year alone, 2.8 million lives went
down the drain, 85 per cent of them African; as a matter of fact, 6,000 Africans will die today. The daily toll in Kenya is 500. There has
never been fought a war on these shores that was so wanton in its thirst for human blood. During the First World War, more than a million lives
death by plague was a merciful five days of agony, HIV is not satisfied until years of stigma and excruciating torture have been wrought on its victim.
were lost at the Battle of the Somme alone, setting a trend that was to become fairly common, in which generals would use soldiers as cannon fodder; the lives of 10 million young men were
sacrificed for a cause that was judged to be more worthwhile than the dreams - even the mere living out of a lifetime - of a generation. But there was proffered an explanation: It was the
honour of bathing a battlefield with young blood, patriotism or simply racial pride. Aids, on the other hand, is a holocaust without even a lame or bigoted justification. It is simply a waste. It is
It is difficult to remember any time in history
when the survival of the human race was so hopelessly in jeopardy.
death contracted not in the battlefield but in bedrooms and other venues of furtive intimacy.
Tropical diseases overcome generic defenses --- extinction
Franca et al. 13 (R. Franca, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, C. C. de
Silva, Department of General Biology, Federal University of Vicosa, Brazil, S.O. De Paula, Laboratory of Molecular Immunovirology, Federal
University of Vicosa, Brazil, “Recent Advances in Molecular Medicine Techniques for the Diagnosis, Prevention, and Control of Infectious
Diseases,” Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, submitted November 26, 2012, published January 22, 2013, pg. 1)
In recent years we have observed great advances in our ability to combat infectious diseases. Through the development of novel genetic
methodologies, including a better understanding of pathogen biology, pathogenic mechanisms, advances in vaccine development, designing
new therapeutic drugs, and optimization of diagnostic tools, significant infectious diseases are now better controlled. Here, we briefly describe
recent reports in the literature concentrating on infectious disease control. The focus of this review is to describe the molecular methods widely
used in the diagnosis, prevention, and control of infectious diseases with regard to the innovation of molecular techniques. Since the list of
pathogenic microorganisms is extensive, we emphasize some of the major human infectious diseases (AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, rotavirus,
herpes virus, viral hepatitis, and dengue fever). As a consequence of these developments, infectious diseases will be more accurately and
effectively treated; safe and effective vaccines are being developed and rapid detection of infectious agents now permits countermeasures to
avoid potential outbreaks and epidemics. But, despite considerable progress, infectious diseases
remain a strong challenge
to human survival. Introduction Despite the great advances in medicine, particularly in new therapeutic drugs, diagnostic tools, and
even ways to pre- vent diseases, the human species still faces serious health problems. Among these problems, those that draw the
most attention are infectious diseases, especially in poor regions . An important feature of infectious
disease is its potential to arise globally, as exemplified by known devastating past and present
pandemics such as the bubonic–pneumonic plague, Spanish flu (1918 influenza pandemic), and the present
pandemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), in which an estimated 33.3 million persons were living with the HIV
infection worldwide at the end of 2009 [1–3]. In addition, other non-viral diseases are significant public health problems, as exemplified by
tuberculosis (TB). This infectious disease accounts for one third of the world’s bacterial infections (TB infected), and in 2010 a total of 8.8 million
people worldwide became sick with TB [1, 4]. In recent years, new forms of infectious diseases have become significantly important to medical
and scientific communities; these forms are now widely known as emergent and re-emergent infectious diseases. With the appearance of new
transmissible diseases, such as SARS, West Nile and H5N1/H1N1 Influenza viruses, in
addition to reemerging diseases like
dengue fever, the concerns about a global epidemic are not unfounded [5]. Moreover, in the tropical and
subtropical regions of the world, parasitic infections are a common cause of death. Since one of the major characteristics of infectious diseases
is its inter-individual transmission, advances in personal protection, effective public policy, and immunological procedures are efficient means
of controlling the spread of these diseases. Thus, improvement
of pre-existing technologies commonly used to
monitor, prevent, and treat infectious diseases is of crucial importance not only to the medical
community, but also to humankind.
NDM-1 has potential for huge international spread because of transplant tourism.
Tamara L. Hill Chicago Journal of International Law Summer, 2011 12 Chi. J. Int'l L. 273
COMMENT: The Spread of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria through Medical Tourism and Transmission Prevention Under the International Health
Regulations
Medical tourism--travel by healthcare patients to a foreign location for medical treatment--is a growing industry. n1 Broadly, medical tourism
may refer to all travel for healthcare, but the most typical definition focuses particularly on international medical tourism, which is travel
between countries for medical treatment. This definition does not include healthcare provided to foreign tourists that is incidental to travel for
other purposes, such as business or recreation. Many patients travel abroad for medical treatment due to significant cost savings, to utilize
procedures not approved for treatment in their resident countries, or to exercise control over healthcare where public or private [*276]
insurance plans provide limited treatment options. n2 Healthcare is nationally regulated in every country, and difficulties arise where legal
remedies and standards vary between a medical tourist's resident and destination country. In particular, medical malpractice, safety
certification and licensing, and privacy are recurring topics in medical tourism literature. n3 Other ethical issues have been addressed by
political organizations and the media, including lack of available care for residents of medical tourism destination countries or black market
organ transplants. n4 However, not all of the repercussions of medical tourism are limited to those affecting only the patient, such as safety,
cost, and liability. Antibiotic-resistant
bacteria are typically limited to healthcare settings, and strains of
antibiotic-resistant bacteria that spread outside of a healthcare setting, like community-associated methicillinresistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), provoke more concern, since healthcare-associated strains have predictable risk factors. n5 These
predictable risk factors generally reduce concern regarding healthcare-associated strains in the medical community because hospitals can set
admission and contact policies to reduce the spread of healthcare associated strains.
As medical tourism increases, however,
the spread of healthcare-associated antibiotic-resistant bacteria infections is also likely to increase,
because patients are more likely to be exposed to hospitals and healthcare settings in different
countries and thus spread their infections to facilities around the world. Exposure without patient knowledge,
language barriers, and [*277] inconsistent healthcare regulation and hospital policies reduce the predictability of transmission. One
recently discovered antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, named New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase
(NDM-1), has shown evidence of fast international spread due to connections with medical tourism. n6
NDM-1 will quickly spread globally and makes every other disease invincible –
magnifies interal link to extinction.
Goan Observer 2010, 8-21-10, “Delhi Bugged?”, http://goanobserver.com/delhi-bugged.html
In a summary of the study on the website of The Lancet, the team claims to have ‘ identified 44 isolates with
NDM-1 in Chennai, 26 in Haryana, 37 in the UK, and 73 in other sites in India and Pakistan…. Many of the UK
NDM-1 positive patients had travelled to India or Pakistan within the past year, or had links with these countries’
and further add that ‘The potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem is great and coordinated international surveillance is needed’. Those affected by this ‘superbug’ were reported to be critically ill
and were, at times, observed to be suffering from blood poisoning. NDM-1 enzyme, if it is really indomitable, can
be expected to make all the bacterial diseases invincible in near future. With more people travelling to find
less costly medical treatments, particularly for procedures such as cosmetic surgery, Timothy Walsh, who led the
study, said he feared the new superbug could soon spread across the globe.
Disease pandemics cause extinction
Yu 9, Victoria Yu, Dartmouth Journal of Undergraduate Science, “Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate”, 5-22-09
http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate
A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the
best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th
century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new
viral strains are constantly emerging — a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-
facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus.
It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIV’s rapid
and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s
use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction
mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a
poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without
manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system.
However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more
consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and
antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of
influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time
could potentially lead to a “global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill
over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic.
Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the
original viral strain — which could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).
Underview: 1AC framing
War is obsolete and will not occur – ideology, democracy and total lack of benefits.
Michael Mandelbaum, 2-25-1999, Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Director, Project on East-West Relations, Council on Foreign Relations,
http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/
My argument says, tacitly, that while this point of view, which was widely believed 100 years ago, was not true then, there are reasons to think
that it is true now. What is that argument? It is that major war is obsolete. By major war, I mean war waged by the most powerful members of
the international system, using all of their resources over a protracted period of time with revolutionary geopolitical consequences. There have
been four such wars in the modern period: the wars of the French Revolution, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Few though they
have been, their consequences have been monumental. They are, by far, the most influential events in modern history. Modern history which
can, in fact, be seen as a series of aftershocks to these four earthquakes. So if I am right, then what has been the motor of political history for
the last two centuries that has been turned off? This war, I argue, this kind of war, is obsolete; less than impossible, but more than unlikely.
What do I mean by obsolete? If I may quote from the article on which this presentation is based, a copy of which you received when coming in,
“ Major
war is obsolete in a way that styles of dress are obsolete. It is something that is out of fashion
and, while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is obsolete in the way that slavery, dueling, or
foot-binding are obsolete. It is a social practice that was once considered normal, useful, even desirable, but that now
seems odious. It is obsolete in the way that the central planning of economic activity is obsolete. It is a practice once regarded as a
plausible, indeed a superior, way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that changing conditions have made ineffective
at best, counterproductive at worst.” Why is this so? Most simply, the costs have risen and the benefits of major
war have shriveled. The costs of fighting such a war are extremely high because of the advent in the middle of this century of nuclear
weapons, but they would have been high even had mankind never split the atom. As for the benefits, these now seem, at least from the
point of view of the major powers, modest to non-existent. The traditional motives for warfare are in retreat, if not extinct. War is no
longer regarded by anyone, probably not even Saddam Hussein after his unhappy experience, as a paying proposition. And as for the ideas
on behalf of which major wars have been waged in the past, these are in steep decline. Here the collapse of
communism was an important milestone, for that ideology was inherently bellicose. This is not to say that the world has reached the end of
ideology; quite the contrary. But the
ideology that is now in the ascendant, our own, liberalism, tends to be
pacific. Moreover, I would argue that three post-Cold War developments have made major war even less likely than it was after 1945. One of
these is the rise of democracy, for democracies, I believe, tend to be peaceful. Now carried to its most extreme conclusion, this
eventuates in an argument made by some prominent political scientists that democracies never go to war with one another. I wouldn’t go that
far. I don’t believe that this is a law of history, like a law of nature, because I believe there are no such laws of history. But I do believe there is
something in it. I believe there
is a peaceful tendency inherent in democracy.
More evidence – economic interdependence, socio-economic conditions, and nuclear
deterrence - checks on conflict are irreversible.
Chirstopher J. Fettweis, 2006, is assistant professor of political science at Tulane University, where he teaches classes on international
relations, US foreign policy and security, Treasurer of the World Affairs Council, National Security Decision Making Department, US Naval War
College International Studies Review, Ebsco Host
However, one need not be convinced about the potential for ideas to transform international politics to believe that major
war is
extremely unlikely to recur. Mueller, Mandelbaum, Ray, and others may give primary credit for the end of major war to ideational
evolution akin to that which made slavery and dueling obsolete, but others have interpreted the causal chain quite differently. Neoliberal
institutionalists have long argued that complex
economic interdependence can have a pacifying effect upon state
behavior (Keohane and Nye 1977, 1987). Richard Rosecrance (1986, 1999) has contended that evolution in socio-economic
organization has altered the shortest, most rational route to state prosperity in ways that make war
unlikely. Finally, many others have argued that credit for great power peace can be given to the existence of nuclear
weapons, which make aggression irrational ( Jervis 1989; Kagan et al. 1999). With so many overlapping and mutually
reinforcing explanations, at times the end of major war may seem to be overdetermined ( Jervis 2002:8–9). For purposes of the present
discussion, successful identification of the exact cause of this fundamental change in state behavior is probably not as important as belief in its
existence. In other words, the outcome is far more important than the mechanism. The importance of Mueller’s argument for the field of IR is
ultimately not dependent upon why major war has become obsolete, only that it has. Almost as significant, all
these proposed
explanations have one important point in common: they all imply that change will be permanent. Normative/ideational evolution
is typically unidirectionalFfew would argue that it is likely, for instance, for slavery or dueling to return in this century. The complexity of
economic interdependence
is deepening as time goes on and going at a quicker pace. And, obviously, nuclear weapons
cannot be uninvented and (at least at this point) no foolproof defense against their use seems to be on the horizon. The combination
of forces that may have brought major war to an end seems to be unlikely to allow its return. The twentieth century witnessed
an unprecedented pace of evolution in all areas of human endeavor, from science and medicine to philosophy and
religion. In such an atmosphere, it is not difficult to imagine that attitudes toward the venerable institution of
war may also have experienced rapid evolution and that its obsolescence could become plausible, perhaps
even probable, in spite of thousands of years of violent precedent. The burden of proof would seem to be on those
who maintain that the ‘‘rules of the game’’ of international politics, including the rules of war, are the lone area of human interaction immune
to fundamental evolution and that, due to these immutable and eternal rules, war will always be with us. Rather
than ask how major
war could have grown obsolete, perhaps scholars should ask why anyone should believe that it could
not.
Diseases are a bigger threat than war.
WHO, 00, “Overcoming Antimicrobial Resistance”, WHO Report on Infectious Diseases, A Message From the Director-General of WHO
http://www.who.int/infectious-disease-report/2000/other_versions/index-rpt2000_text.html
Today - despite advances in science and technology - infectious disease poses a more deadly threat to
human life than war. This year – at the onset of a new millennium – the international community is beginning to
show its intent to turn back these microbial invaders through massive efforts against diseases of poverty –
diseases which must be defeated now, before they become resistant. When diseases are fought wisely
and widely, drug resistance can be controlled and lives saved.
Nuclear war does not cause extinction
Nyquist 1999 [J.R., WorldNetDaily contributing editor and author of ‘Origins of the Fourth World War,’ May 20, Antipas, “Is Nuclear
War Survivable?” http://www.antipas.org/news/world/nuclear_war.html]
The truth is, many prominent
physicists have condemned the nuclear winter hypothesis . Nobel
laureate Freeman Dyson once said of nuclear winter research, “It’s an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite
despair of setting the public record straight.” Professor Michael McElroy, a Harvard physics professor, also criticized the nuclear
winter hypothesis. McElroy said that nuclear winter researchers
“stacked the deck” in their study, which was titled
“Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions” (Science, December 1983). Nuclear winter is the theory
that the mass use of nuclear weapons would create enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun, causing a catastrophic drop in
global temperatures. According to Carl Sagan, in this situation the earth would freeze. No crops could be grown. Humanity would
die of cold and starvation. In truth, natural disasters have frequently produced smoke and dust far greater than those expected
from a nuclear war. In 1883 Krakatoa
exploded with a blast equivalent to 10,000 one-megaton
bombs, a detonation greater than the combined nuclear arsenals of planet earth. The Krakatoa explosion had
negligible weather effects. Even more disastrous, going back many thousands of years, a meteor struck Quebec with the
force of 17.5 million one-megaton bombs, creating a crater 63 kilometers in diameter. But the world did not freeze. Life on earth
was not extinguished. Consider the views of Professor George Rathjens of MIT, a known antinuclear activist, who said, “Nuclear
winter is the worst example of misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory.” Also consider Professor Russell Seitz, at
Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs, who says that the nuclear winter hypothesis has been discredited. Two
researchers, Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider, debunked the nuclear winter hypothesis in the summer 1986 issue of
Foreign Affairs. Thompson and Schneider stated: “the
global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear
winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability.” OK, so nuclear
winter isn’t going to happen. What about nuclear fallout? Wouldn’t the radiation from a nuclear war contaminate the
whole earth, killing everyone? The short answer is: absolutely not. Nuclear fallout is a problem, but we should not exaggerate its
effects. As it happens, there are two types of fallout produced by nuclear detonations. These are: 1) delayed fallout; and 2) shortterm fallout. According to researcher Peter V. Pry, “Delayed fallout will not, contrary to popular belief, gradually kill billions of
people everywhere in the world.” Of course, delayed fallout would increase the number of people dying of lymphatic cancer,
leukemia, and cancer of the thyroid. “However,” says Pry, “these deaths would probably be far fewer than deaths now resulting
from ... smoking, or from automobile accidents.” The real hazard in a nuclear war is the short-term fallout. This is a type of
fallout created when a nuclear weapon is detonated at ground level. This type of fallout could kill millions of people,
depending on the targeting strategy of the attacking country. But short-term fallout rapidly subsides to safe levels in
13 to 18 days. It is not permanent. People who live outside of the affected areas will be fine. Those in affected areas can survive
if they have access to underground shelters. In some areas, staying indoors may even suffice. Contrary to popular misconception,
there were no documented deaths from short-term or delayed fallout at either Hiroshima or
Nagasaki. These blasts were low airbursts, which produced minimal fallout effects. Today’s thermonuclear weapons
are even “cleaner.” If used in airburst mode, these weapons would produce few (if any) fallout casualties.
Failure to incorporate methods of dealing with structural violence into our politics is
the failure of politics all together
Winter and Leighton 1999 (Deborah DuNann Winter and Dana C. Leighton. Winter: Psychologist that specializes in Social
Psych, Counseling Psych, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Peace Psychology. Leighton: PhD graduate student in the Psychology Department
at the University of Arkansas. Knowledgable in the fields of social psychology, peace psychology, and ustice and intergroup responses to
transgressions of justice) (Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century. Pg 4-5)
Finally, to recognize the operation of structural violence forces us to ask questions about how and why we tolerate it, questions which often
have painful answers for the privileged elite who unconsciously support it. A final question of this section is how and why we allow ourselves to
be so oblivious to structural violence. Susan Opotow offers an intriguing set of answers, in her article Social Injustice. She argues that our
normal perceptual/cognitive processes divide people into in-groups and out-groups. Those outside our group lie outside our scope of justice.
Injustice that would be instantaneously confronted if it occurred to someone we love or know is barely noticed if it occurs to strangers or those
who are invisible or irrelevant. We do not seem to be able to open our minds and our hearts to everyone, so we draw conceptual lines between
those who are in and out of our moral circle. Those who fall outside are morally excluded, and become either invisible, or demeaned in some
way so that we do not have to acknowledge the injustice they suffer. Moral exclusion is a human failing, but Opotow argues convincingly that it
is an outcome of everyday social cognition. To reduce its nefarious effects, we must be vigilant in noticing and listening to oppressed, invisible,
outsiders. Inclusionary thinking can be fostered by relationships, communication, and appreciation of diversity. Like Opotow, all the authors in
this section point out that structural violence is not inevitable if we become aware of its operation, and build systematic ways to mitigate its
effects. Learning about structural violence may be discouraging, overwhelming, or maddening, but these papers encourage us to step beyond
guilt and anger, and begin to think about how to reduce structural violence. All the authors in this section note that the same structures (such
as global communication and normal social cognition) which feed structural violence, can also be used to empower citizens to reduce it.
Probability outweighs magnitude--- extended link chains and minimax risk calculus
should be rejected as bad scholarship
Berube 2000 (David Berube, professor of speech comm at University of South Carolina, Debunking Minimax Reasoning: The Limits of
Extended Causal Chains in Contest Debating,” CAD, 53-73, http://www.cedadebate.org/cad/index.php/CAD/article/view/248/232)
The lifeblood of contemporary contest debating may be the extended argument. An¶ extended argument is any
argument requiring two or more distinct causal or¶ correlational steps between initial data and ending
claim. We find k associated with¶ advantages to comparative advantage cases, with counterplan advantages, with¶ disadvantages,
permutation and impact turnarounds, some kritik implications, and even¶ probabilistic topicality arguments In practice, these often are
not only extended arguments¶ they are causal arguments using mini-max reasoning. Mini-max
reasoning is defined as an¶ extended argument in which an infinitesimally probable event of high
consequence is¶ assumed to present a highly consequential risk. Such arguments, also known as low-¶
probability high-consequence arguments, are commonly associated with “risk analysis.”¶ The opening
statement from Schell represents a quintessential mini-max argument. Schell¶ asked his readers to ignore probability
assessment and focus exclusively on the impact of his¶ claim. While Schell gave very specific reasons why probability is less important than¶
impact in resolving this claim, his arguments are not impervious to rebuttal.¶ What
was a knotty piece of evidence in the
1980s kick-started a practice in contest¶ debating which currently is evident in the ubiquitous political capital
disadvantage code-¶ named “Clinton.” Here is an example of the Clinton disadvantage. In theory, plan action¶ causes some tradeoff (real
or imaginary) that either increases or decreases the President’s¶ ability to execute a particular agenda. Debaters have argued the following:
Clinton (soon¶ to be Gore or Bush) needs to focus on foreign affairs. A recent agreement between Barak¶ and Assad needs presidential
stewardship. The affirmative plan shifts presidential focus to¶ Nigeria that trades off with focus on the Middle East. As a result, the deal for the
return of¶ the Golan Heights to Syria fails. Violence and conflict ensues as Hezbollah terrorists launch¶ guerilla attacks into northern Israel from
Lebanon. Israel strikes hack. Hezbollah incursions¶ increase, Chemical terrorism ensues and Israel attacks Hezbollah strongholds in southern¶
Lebanon with tactical nuclear weapons. Iran launches chemical weapons against Tel Aviv.¶ Iraq allies with Iran. The United States is drawn inSuperpower miscalculation results in¶ all-out nuclear war culminating in a nuclear winter and the end of all life on the planet. This¶ low-
probability high-consequence event argument is an extended argument using mini-max¶ reasoning.¶
The appeal of mini-max risk arguments has heightened with the onset of on-tine text¶ retrieval
services and the World Wide Web, both of which allow debaters to search for¶ particular words or
word strings with relative ease. Extended arguments are fabricated by¶ linking evidence in which a
word or word string serves as the common denominator, much¶ in the fashion of the soritics (stacked
syllogism): AcaB, BaC, CaD, therefore ActD. Prior to¶ computerized search engines, a contest debater’s search for segments that could be
woven¶ together into an extended argument was incredibly Lime consuming.¶ The dead ends checked the authenticity of the extended claims
by debunking especially¶ fanciful hypotheses. Text retrieval services may have changed that. While text ettieval¶ services include some refereed
published materials, they also incorporate transcripts and¶ wire releases that are less vigilantly checked for accuracy. The World Wide Web
allows¶ virtually anyone to set up a site and post anything at that site regardless of its veracity.¶
Sophisticated super search engines, such as Savvy SearchC help contest debaters track down¶
particular words and phrases. Searches on text retrieval services such as Lexis-Nexis¶ Universes and Congressional Universes locate
words and word strings within n words of¶ each other. Search results are collated and loomed into an extended argument. Often,¶ evidence
collected in this manner is linked together to reach a conclusion of nearly infinite¶ impact, such as the
ever-present specter of global thermonuclear war.¶ Furthermore, too much evidence from online text retrieval
services is unqualified or¶ under-qualified. Since anyone can post a web page and since transcripts and releases are¶ seldom
checked as factual, pseudo-experts abound and are at the core of the most egregious¶ claims in extended arguments using mini-max
reasoning.¶ In nearly every episode of fear mongering . . . people with fancy titles appeared. .¶ . . [F]or some species of scares. . . secondary
scholars arc standard fixtures. . . .¶ Statements of alarm by newscasters and glorification of wannabe experts are two¶ telltales tricks of the
fear mongers trade. . . : the use of poignant anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, the christening of isolated incidents as trends,¶ dep,ctions
of entire categories of people as innately dangerous. . . (Glassner 206,¶ 208)¶ hence, any warrant by authority of this ilk further complicates
probability estimates in¶ extended arguments using mini•max reasoning. Often
the link and internal link story is the¶
machination of the debater making the claim rather than the sources cited in the linkage.¶ The links in
the chain may be claims with different, if not inconsistent, warrants. As a¶ result, contextual
considerations can be mostLy moot.¶ Not Only the information but also the way it is collated is suspect. All these engines
use¶ Boolean connectors (and, or, and not) and Boolean connectors are dubious by nature,¶ Boolean logic
uses terms only to show relationships — of inclusion or exclusion¶ among the terms. It shows whether or not
one drawer fits into another and ignores¶ the question whether there is anything in the drawers. . . . The Boolean search¶ shows the
characteristic way thai we put questions to the world of information.¶ When we pose a question to the Boolean world, we use keywords,
buzzwords, and¶ thought bits to scan the vast store of knowledge. Keeping
an abstract, cybernetic¶ distance from the
source of knowledge, we set up tiny funnels. . . . But even if we¶ build our tunnels carefully, we still
remain essentially tunnel dwellers. . . .¶ Thinking itself happens only when we suspend the inner musings of the mind long¶
enough to favor a momentary precision, and even then thinking belongs to musing¶ as a subset of our creative mind. . . . The Boolean reader,
on the contrary, knows¶ in advance where the exits are, the on-ramps, and the well-marked rest stops. . . .¶ The
pathways of thought,
not to mention the logic of thoughts, disappear under a¶ Boolean arrangement of freeways.” (Heim 18,
22-25)¶ Helm worries that the Boolean search may encourage readers to link together nearly empty¶ drawers of information, stifling
imaginative, creative thinking and substituting empty ideas¶ for good reasons. The problems worsen when researchers select word strings
without¶ reading its full context, a nearly universal practice among contest debaters. Using these¶ computerized research services, debaters are
easily able to build extended mini-max¶ arguments ending in Armageddon,¶ Outsiders
to contest debating have remarked
simply that too many policy debate¶ arguments end in all-out nuclear war: consequently, they
categorize the activity as foolish.¶ How many times have educators had contest debaters in a
classroom discussion who strung out an extended mini-max argument to the jeers and guffaws of
their classmates? They¶ cannot all be wrong. Frighteningly enough, most of us agree. We should not ignore Charles¶
Richct’s adage: “The stupid man ¡s not the one who does not understand something — but¶ the man who understands it well enough yet acts
as if he didn’t” (Tabori 6).¶ Regrettably. mini-max
arguments are not the exclusive domain of contest debating.¶
“Policies driven by the consideration of low risk probabilities will, on the whole, lead to low¶
investment strategies to prevent a hazard from being realized or to mitigate the hazard’s¶
consequences. By comparison, policies driven by the consideration of high consequences,¶ despite
low probabilities, will lead to high levels of public investment” (Nehnevajsa 521).¶ Regardless of their persuasiveness,
Bashor and others have discovered that mini-max claims¶ are not useful in resolving complex issues. For example, in his assessment of low-¶
probability, potentially high-consequence events such as terrorist use of weapons of mass¶ destruction, Bashor found simple estimates of
potential losses added little to contingency¶ planning. While
adding little to policy analysis, extended arguments using
mini-max¶ reasoning remain powerful determinants of resource allocation. As such, they need to he¶
debunked.¶ Experts agree. For example, Slovic advocates a better understanding of all risk analysis¶ since it drives much of our
public policy. “Whoever controls the definition of risk controls¶ the rational solution to the problem at
hand. ¡f risk is defined one way, then one option will¶ rise to the top as the most cost-effective or the
safest or the best. If it is defined another¶ way, perhaps incorporating qualitative characteristics or
other contextual factors, one will¶ likely get a different ordering of action solutions. Defining risk is
thus an exercise in¶ power” (699). When probability assessments are eliminated from risk calculi, as is the
case¶ in mini-max risk arguments, it is a political act, and all political acts need to be scrutinized¶ with a critical
lens.
Conjunctive fallacy--- Specificity makes their disads less likely
Yudkowsky 2006 (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence “Cognitive biases
potentially affecting judgment of global risks” Forthcoming in Global Catastrophic Risks, eds. Nick Bostrom and Milan CirkovicDraft of August
31, 2006. Eliezer Yudkowsky(yudkowsky@singinst.org)
The conjunction fallacy similarly applies to futurological forecasts. Two independent sets of professional analysts at the Second International
Congress on Forecasting were asked to rate, respectively, the probability of "A complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA
and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983" or "A Russian invasion of Poland, and a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA
and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983". The second set of analysts responded with significantly higher probabilities. (Tversky and Kahneman
1983.) In Johnson et. al. (1993), MBA students at Wharton were scheduled to travel to Bangkok as part of their degree program. Several groups
of students were asked how much they were willing to pay for terrorism insurance. One group of subjects was asked how much they were
willing to pay for terrorism insurance covering the flight from Thailand to the US. A second group of subjects was asked how much they were
willing to pay for terrorism insurance covering the round-trip flight. A third group was asked how much they were willing to pay for terrorism
insurance that covered the complete trip to Thailand. These three groups responded with average willingness to pay of $17.19, $13.90, and
$7.44 respectively. According
to probability theory, adding additional detail onto a story must render the
story less probable. It is less probable that Linda is a feminist bank teller than that she is a bank teller, since all feminist bank tellers are
necessarily bank tellers. Yet human psychology seems to follow the rule that adding an additional detail can
make the story more plausible. People might pay more for international diplomacy intended to prevent nanotechnological warfare
by China, than for an engineering project to defend against nanotechnological attack from any source. The second threat scenario is less vivid
and alarming, but the defense is more useful because it is more vague. More valuable still would be strategies which make humanity harder to
extinguish without being specific to nanotechnologic threats - such as colonizing space, or see Yudkowsky (this volume) on AI. Security expert
Bruce Schneier
observed (both before and after the 2005 hurricane in New Orleans) that the U.S. government was
guarding specific domestic targets against "movie-plot scenarios" of terrorism, at the cost of taking
away resources from emergency-response capabilities that could respond to any disaster. (Schneier 2005.)
2AC
Trafficking
A2 Tech solves
Biomanufactured organs are in the development phase and encourages unhealthy
behavior
Neu, 2014 (Rebecca Neu, Technology Innovation Management Review, March 2014, “3D Printing: A Revolutionary Advance for the Field
of Urology?” http://timreview.ca/article/772)
3D printing brings about images of technology with the same complexity as printing with an inkjet printer (Sangani, 2013); however, the
process of biofabrication is complex and requires many sequential steps. As described by Kasyanov and colleagues (2011), the process begins
with the generation of a prototyping blueprint specific to the patient. Although kidneys are similar from person to person, each kidney bears
unique features. This uniqueness requires the generation of a kidney design that is specific to each patient. Next, robotic printers follow the
biological process of tissue growth using sophisticated bioreactors that accelerate the process of tissue maturation. To further complicate the
matter, intricate vascular trees must be incorporated into the system in order to ensure viability of the organ once it has been printed.
Altogether, the process is extremely complicated – far more complicated that the common examples of consumer 3D printing, such as
printing a rubber dmanuuck or a replacement bolt. Complexity of design software Unfortunately, physicians cannot simply convert X-ray and
MRI images into design templates from which biological scaffolds can be replicated. For example, due to shrinkage of the model after printing,
a kidney's vascular tree – through which blood will be circulated –cannot readily be predicted (Díaz Lantada and Lafont Morgado, 2012).
Because such size changes cannot be accurately predicted and incorporated into a printing file, the design process needs to be iterative. The
required interventions complicate the design and execution process while increasing the cost (Díaz Lantada and Lafont Morgado, 2012).
Mimicking kidney functions It is not enough to produce a structural replica of an organ; the new organ must be able to perform all its
required functions before being transplanted into a patient. As an example, if a bioprinted kidney is incapable of secreting erythropoietin
(which serves to stimulate red blood cell production), then the organ is worthless. In order for the printed organ to fully replace the real
organ, complex structures containing cells of different types must be printed (Ozbolat and Yu, 2013). Potential trivialization Some researchers
have expressed the concern that the readily accessible nature of products via 3D printing will cause people to be careless with their health
(Ratto, 2012). The ease of obtaining a replacement item might encourage people to engage in risky behaviours, thinking that 3D organ
replacements offer a quick and simple remedy. However, the availability of replacement organs must not be taken for granted and must not be
perceived as an excuse for increased risky behaviour such as heavy drinking, which increases the risk of sclerosis of the liver, or smoking,
which increases the risk of lung cancer. Even once the technology is further refined, the biofabrication of replacement organs, and the surgery
and care associated with them, will by no means constitute a trivial solution and should not be regarded as such. Technological limitations
Although the field of biofabrication has developed considerably over the past years and remains promising for the future, the technology
surrounding 3D bioprinters is still in the developmental stages (Díaz Lantada and Lafont Morgado, 2012). Even though there are many
biological applications for the technology, most are not currently feasible given the existing technology limitations. The research field of tissue
engineering has seen explosive growth over the past five years where testing is still primarily limited to animal specimens (Díaz Lantada and
Lafont Morgado, 2012). However, it is anticipated that such prototyping technologies will continue to be developed at an accelerated rate in
the coming years.
Transplant Tourism
Transmission of diseases between native and novel populations ensures no die-off.
Dennehy et al, 06, John J Dennehy, Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University & Assistant Professor of Queens College and the CUNY
Graduate School, Nicholas A. Friedenberg, PhD from Dartmouth, Senior Scientist of Applied Biomathmatics, Robert D. Holt, Eminent Scholar and
Arthur R. Marshall Jr, Chair in Ecology, PhD Harvard University, Paul E. Turner, PhD, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
“Viral Ecology and the Maintenance of Novel Host Use”, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/499381, The American Naturalist
Vol. 167, No. 3, March 2006
Viruses can occasionally emerge by infecting new host species. However, the early phases of emergence can
hinge upon ecological sustainability of the virus population, which is a product of both within-host
population growth and between-host transmission. Insufficient growth or transmission can force virus
extinction before the latter phases of emergence, where genetic adaptations that improve host use may occur. We
examined the early phase of emergence by studying the population dynamics of RNA phages in replicated
laboratory environments containing native and novel host bacteria. To predict the breadth of transmission rates
allowing viral persistence on each species, we developed a simple model based on in vitro data for phage growth
rate over a range of initial population densities on both hosts. Validation of these predictions using serial
passage experiments revealed a range of transmission rates for which the native host was a source
and the novel host was a sink . In this critical range of transmission rates, periodic exposure to the native
host was sufficient for the maintenance of the viral population on the novel host. We argue that this
effect should facilitate adaptation by the virus to utilize the novel host—often crucial in subsequent phases
of emergence.
Framing
No War
No Extinction
And, even if nuclear war could cause extinction, the aff’s won’t. The most likely
scenario is a counterforce strike.
Mueller 2009 (John Mueller, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science @ Ohio State University,
2009, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda, p. 8)
To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify applying such extreme characterizations as societal annihilation, a fullout attack with hundreds, probably thousands, of thermonuclear bombs would be required. Even
in such extreme cases,
the area actually devastated by the bombs' blast and thermal pulse effects would be limited: 2,000 I-MT explosions
with a destructive radius of 5 miles each would directly demolish less than 5 percent of the territory of the United States, for
example. Obviously, if
major population centers were targeted, this sort of attack could inflict
massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events sometimes seemed uncomfortably likely, a
number of studies were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive thermonuclear attacks. One of the most prominent of
these considered several possibilities. The
most likely scenario--one that could be perhaps be considered at least to begin
to approach the rational-was a "counterforce" strike in which well over 1,000 thermonuclear weapons would
be targeted at America's ballistic missile silos, strategic airfields, and nuclear submarine bases in an effort to destroy the
country's strategic ability to retaliate. Since the attack would not directly target population centers, most of the
ensuing deaths would be from radioactive fallout, and the study estimates that from 2 to 20 million, depending mostly on
wind, weather, and sheltering, would perish during the first month.
Counterforce strikes mean no nuclear winter—can’t access STARR
Zutell 1988 (Eugene Zutell, Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, Division of Emergency Services, 6-19-1988,
http://www.fortfreedom.org/s05.htm)
To enumerate some other problems with the nuclear winter mechanism: 1. The cooling mechanism as Sagan and associates
describe it, could only operate over land masses. Ocean surface water is continually supplied with heat from below. Even if
sunlight were blocked for many months, the temperature at the ocean surface would remain virtually unchanged. Consequently,
weather patterns would continue, with warm moisture laden air from the oceans sweeping over the land masses and as it cools,
rain clouds would form and even more of the sun blocking smoke and dust particles would be washed out of the atmosphere. 2.
Sagan et al indicated that at the very least, 100 million tons of smoke particles would have to be injected into the atmosphere if the
They
therefore proposed a nuclear war scenario in which cities are the primary targets. Since the mid
1960s, the primary targets for both U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles and nuclear bombs have not been
population centers or cities. They have been the other guy's nuclear missile launch sites, nuclear
nuclear winter mechanism were to be triggered. They also indicated that cities are the primary source of that smoke.
bomber bases and other military targets. If those can be eliminated, the cities will be held hostage. The current list of ten target
classes ascribed to Soviet planners by DOD and FEMA, does not specifically contain any population centers. The list does of
course include target classes that in many instances will be located in or adjacent to metropolitan areas. But, even in those
instances,
the nuclear weapons employed will not be the huge multi- megaton area destruction
bombs of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
ICBM systems and MIRVs are now so accurate that a target may be pin- pointed even
This is not in any way to say that the effects will not be catastro- phic.
It is to say though that the city wide firestorms necessary for the onset of nuclear winter as described by Sagan
and associates, are less than predictable. In fact, they are improbable.
within a metropolitan area, by a relatively small weapon.
Wouldn’t escalate
Michael Quinlan (former top official in the British Ministry of Defence) 2005 “Thinking About Nuclear
Weapons” http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/WHP41_QUINLAN.pdf
There are good reasons for fearing escalation: the confusion of war; its stresses, anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge; reluctance to
accept the humiliation of backing down; perhaps the temptation to get further blows in first. Given all this, the
risks of
escalation—which Western leaders were rightly wont to emphasise in the interests of deterrence—are grave.
But this is not to say that they are virtually certain, or even necessarily odds-on; still less that they are so for all
the assorted circumstances in which the situation might arise, in a nuclear world to which past experience is only a
limited guide. It is entirely possible, for example, that the initial use of nuclear weapons, breaching a
barrier that has held since 1945, might so appall both sides in a conflict that they recognised an
overwhelming common interest in composing their differences. The human pressures in that
direction would be very great. Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the
supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing exchange, with each side rushing to overreaction amid
confusion and uncertainty, is implausible; it fails to consider what the decision-makers' situation would really be. Neither
side could want escalation; both would be appalled at what was going on; both would be desperately
looking for signs that the other was ready to call a halt; both , given the capacity for evasion or
concealment which modern delivery systems can possess, could have in reserve ample forces invulnerable
enough not to impose `use or lose' pressures. As a result, neither could have any predisposition to
suppose, in an ambiguous situation of enormous risk, that the right course when in doubt was to go on copiously
launching weapons. And none of this analysis rests on any presumption of highly subtle, pre-concerted or culturespecific rationality; the rationality required is plain and basic.
Midterms
Even if they win GOP win, it’ll only be incremental now – only large changes in the
political landscape against Dems are sufficient to trigger our internal links
Isenstadt 9/2, Alex Isenstadt, reporter for Politico, “Halfway House: GOP falling short in midterms”, Politico, September 2 , 2014,
nd
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/house-gop-2014-elections-goals-110499.html
POLITICO interviewed more than a dozen top strategists from both parties about their outlook for the House in the midterms, and their
assessment was nearly unanimous: Republicans are on track to expand their majority by only five or six seats, or roughly half their goal. The
conversations covered everything from advertising strategies to fundraising to polling.¶ A small gain would again leave Speaker John Boehner
(R-Ohio) largely beholden to the tea party wing of the party, with little room to maneuver on a governing agenda.¶ With the post-Labor Day
homestretch kicking off, the interviews revealed:¶ * Republicans are convinced they’ll be significantly outspent by Democrats — in contrast to
the 2010 midterm elections, when the GOP overwhelmed its opponents with an avalanche of cash.¶ * GOP strategists are particularly worried
about the performance of a handful of candidates who are well-positioned to win but seen as running poor campaigns. Three are mentioned
repeatedly: Florida Rep. Steve Southerland, Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry and Virginia House candidate Barbara Comstock.¶ * Nearly a year after the
government shutdown, Republicans privately say the party’s tattered public image is dragging down candidates in key races.¶ * Despite the
GOP’s troubles, Democrats remain anxious that the political environment could deteriorate still further before Election Day. They say two of
their vulnerable incumbents, New Hampshire Rep. Carol Shea-Porter and Illinois Rep. Bill Enyart, may soon be lost causes and are scrambling to
prevent that list from growing.¶ The GOP’s House prospects have fluctuated throughout the election cycle. For much of last year, it was widely
assumed Republicans would pick up roughly the half-dozen seats they now look poised to gain, but President Barack Obama’s troubles this year
raised hopes among party leaders they could do significantly better than that. As recently as July, National Republican Congressional Committee
Chairman Greg Walden was quoted as saying Democrats faced a “wave” and were about to get “blown away.”¶ From a historic perspective, a
five- or six-seat gain would be a disappointment for the GOP. Since 1950, the party out of the White House during the sixth year of a
presidency has gained an average of 25 seats. In the most recent midterm election, Republicans swamped Democrats across the country en
route to a 63-seat gain.¶ And it would fall well short of the 11-seat pickup some top Republicans have set as their goal .¶ The GOP
could still achieve its target if the environment for Democrats gets bleaker , strategists from both sides agree.
Democrats say two incumbents, Shea-Porter and Enyart, face particularly tough paths to reelection. Additionally, Democrats have all but ceded
seats in North Carolina and Utah where incumbents are retiring. They also say it will be difficult to retain an upstate New York seat that
Democratic Rep. Bill Owens is vacating.¶ But Republicans concede it would take a
dramatic shift in the political landscape
against Democrats for the GOP to reach 245 seats, up from 234. Leisl Hickey, the NRCC’s executive director, said “the environment is
favorable to us right now” but stopped short of predicting a wave. Republicans, she said, have “a great opportunity to expand our majority.”
Majority of public supports providing compensation for organ donation .
Corley (MBA, J.D. Candidate at University of Houston Law Center), Money as a Motivator: The cure to our nation’s organ shortage,
Houston Journal of Health Law and Policy, 11 Hous J Health L & Pol’y 93 Fall 2011
Cody
Although the legal restrictions against providing valuable consideration for organs have been in place since NOTA’s passage in 1984, people are
ready to entertain a change that will benefit the greater good of society. As evidenced by a UNOS survey, fifty-two percent of United States
citizens were in favor of providing compensation to those that donate organs. As one points out, “if public opinion is in favor of some form
of financial incentives then it seems odd that we are so timid in examining this idea realistically. Offering financial incentives in addition to
our existing altruistic system will help persuade individuals that might otherwise be unwilling to part with their organs.
No impact to WTO collapse
Martin et. al. ‘8 (Phillipe, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, and Centre for Economic Policy
Research; Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy
Research, Mathias THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris School of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies 75, 2008)
Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows and the spread of
free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back
to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: The main objective of the European trade integration process was to
prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however, that during the 1870–2001
period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the
19th century, was a period of rising trade openness and multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period
was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly, while the
number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during
which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts, even taking into account the increase in the
number of sovereign states.
Politics
No nuclear terrorism –statistically insignificant cumulative probability
John Mueller (Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and is professor of Political Science, at Ohio State
University) 2010 “Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda” p, 187-190
Assigning a probability that terrorists will be able to overcome each barrier is, of course, a tricky business, and any such exercise should be
regarded as rather tentative and exploratory, or perhaps simply as illustrative-though it is done all the time in cost-benefit analysis. One might
begin a quantitative approach by adopting probability estimates that purposely, and heavily, bias the case in the terrorists' favor. In my view,
this would take place if it is assumed that the terrorists have a fighting chance of 50 percent of overcoming each of the 20 obstacles displayed
in Table 13-1, though for many barriers, probably almost all, the odds against them are surely much worse than that. Even with that generous
bias, the chances that a concerted effort would be successful comes out to be less than one in a million, specifically 1,048,576. Indeed, the
odds of surmounting even seven of the 20 hurdles at that unrealistically, even absurdly, high presumptive success rate is considerably less than
one in a hundred. If one assumes, somewhat more realistically, that their chances at each barrier are one in three, the cumulative odds they
will be able to pull off the deed drop to one in well over three billion specifically 3.486,784,401. What they would be at the (still entirely
realistic) level of one in ten boggles the mind. One could also make specific estimates for each of the hurdles, but the cumulative probability
statistics are likely to come out pretty much the same-or even smaller. There may be a few barriers, such as numbers 13 or absolute loyalty
trump the one oftechnical competence. This would increase the chances that the bomb-making enterprise would go undetected, while at the
same time decreasing the likelihood that it would be successful. However, given the monumentality of the odds confronting the would-be
atomic terrorist, adjustments for such issues are scarcely likely to alter the basic conclusion. That is, if one drastically slashed the one in 3.5
billion estimate a thousandfold, the odds of success would still be one in 3.5 million. Moreover, all this focuses on the effort to deliver a single
bomb. If the requirement were to deliver several, the odds become, of course, even more prohibitive. Getting away from astronomical
numbers for a minute, Levi points out that even if there are only ten barriers and even if there were a wildly favorable 80 percent chance of
overcoming each hurdle, the chance of final success, following the approach used here, would only be 10 percent. Faced even with such highly
favorable odds at each step, notes Levi, the wouldbe atomic terrorist might well decide "that a nuclear plot is too much of a stretch to seriously
try." Similarly, Jenkins calculates that even if there are only three barriers and each carried a 50/50 chance of success, the likelihood of
accomplishing the full mission would only be 12.5 percent.14 Odds like that are not necessarily prohibitive, of course, but they are likely to be
mind-arrestingly small if one is betting just about everything on a successful outcome. Multiple Attempts The odds considered so far are for a
single attempt by a single group, and there could be multiple attempts by multiple groups, of course. Although Allison considers al-Qaeda to be
"the most probable perpetrator" on the nuclear front, he is also concerned about the potential atomic exploits of other organizations such as
Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, Chechen gangsters, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and various doomsday cults. IS However, few, if any, groups appear to
have any interest whatever in striking the United States except for al-Qaeda, an issue to be discussed more fully in the next chapter. But even
setting that consideration aside, the odds would remain long even with multiple concerted attempts.16 If there were a hundred such efforts
over a period of time, the chance at least one of these would be successful comes in at less than one in over 10,000 at the one chance in two
level. At the far more realistic level of one chance in three, it would be about one in nearly 35 million. If there were 1,000 dedicated attempts,
presumably over several decades, the chance of success would be worse than one in a thousand at the SO/50 level and one in nearly 3.5 million
at the one in three level.I7 Of course, attempts in the hundreds are scarcely realistic, though one might be able to envision a dozen or so.
Additionally, if there were a large number of concerted efforts, policing and protecting would presumably become easier because the
aspirants would be exposing themselves repeatedly and would likely be stepping all over each other in their quest to access the right stuff.
Furthermore, each foiled attempt would likely expose flaws in the defense system, holes the ...,. defenders would then plug, making
subsequent efforts that much more dif• ficult. For example, when the would-be peddler of a tiny amount of pur loined highly enriched uranium
was apprehended in 2006, efforts were made to trace its place of origin using nuclear forensics. IS ." Also, the difficulties for the atomic
terrorists are likely to increase over time because of much enhanced protective and policing efforts by ... self-interested governments.
Already, for example, by all accounts Russian nuclear materials are much more adequately secured than they were 10 or ~, .-s 15 years ago.19
Bioterrorism is exaggerated – wont cause extinction
Arms Control Center, 2010 (Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, report in response to the GrahamTalent Commission report on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, “Biological
threats: a matter of balance” January 26, google)
• The bioterrorist threat has been greatly exaggerated. • New bioweapons assessments are needed that take into account the complex set of
social and technical issues that shape bioweapons development and use by state and non-state actors, and that focus on more plausible threats
than the worst-case scenarios that have largely driven discussion to date. • Continuing to emphasize and spend billions of dollars on measures
to specifically counter bioterrorist threat scenarios distorts our national understanding of the important issues in public health, and diverts
scarce scientific talent and resources away from more pressing public health and natural disease threats. • While it has been argued that spinoffs from biodefense programs contribute to countering natural diseases, the converse is more likely: direct targeting of effort and expenditure
on natural disease threats would provide much greater public health benefit, and spin-offs from these programs would significantly strengthen
resistance to bioterrorism. • Bioterrorist threats need to be seen and addressed within a wider public health context--as just one of the many
possible ways in which infectious agents may harm human, animal, and plant health How Serious is the Bioterrorist Threat? • Beginning in the
early 1990s, an increasing amount was written about the threat of bioterrorism. Prior to 2001 most examples of “bioterrorism” were in fact
hoaxes or were only tenuously related to actual threats, with the single exception of the use of Salmonella to contaminate salad bars in Oregon
in 1984. Much was made of the Japanese group Aum Shinrykio’s unsuccessful attempts to use anthrax and botulinum toxin without drawing the
simple and obvious lesson that achieving success in such attempts is difficult. The 2001 anthrax letters were seen as validating large scale and
catastrophic threat scenarios, despite the very real difficulties that isolated individuals or small groups would have had in making such material.
By the time the source of those letters was identified in August 2008 as a government laboratory with capabilities vastly in excess of those of
any terrorist organization, biodefense programs costing tens of billions of dollars were already established, producing a potent and vocal
constituency for continued and increased funding. • Offensive, including terrorist, use of biological agents presents major technical problems.
This is why the Soviet Union, United States, United Kingdom and others needed to spend vast sums for decades in order to research and
develop biological weapons. Even then the results were considered an unreliable form of warfare, and there was little opposition to their
elimination by international agreement (indeed the US unilaterally eliminated its biological weapons stockpiles). • Fictional bioterrorism
exercises such as Atlantic Storm and Dark Winter routinely used unrealistic values for critical parameters and were unrealizable by putative
perpetrators. They tended to gloss over the very real problems involved in acquiring, growing and disseminating smallpox virus on a
sufficient scale to represent a major threat. They also posited unreasonable assumptions about issues such as the rate of disease spread,
which skewed the outcomes towards inflated and unlikely results.
Not an existential threat – no overreaction
John Mueller (Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and is professor of Political Science, at Ohio State
University) 2010 “Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda” p. 232
From this perspective, then, rhetorical declamations insisting that terrorism poses an existential threat are profoundly misguided. And so
self-destructive overreactions (like the war in Iraq) which are also encouraging to the terrorists. As Osama bin Laden crowed in 2004: It is easy
for us to provoke and bait .... All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin ... to raise a piece of cloth on which is wtitten al-Qaeda in order to
make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses. Our policy is one -...... of bleeding America to
the point of bankruptcy. The terrorist attacks cost al-Qaeda $500,000 while the attack and its aftermath .. inflicted a cost of more than $500
billion on the United States. .... Or perhaps, it is even worse. To the extent that we "portray the terrorist nuclear threat as the thing we fear
most," notes Susan Martin, "we ow--. ture the idea that this is what terrorists must do if they want to be taka. ; seriously:'48 Existential
bombast can be useful for scoring political points, selling. newspapers, or securing funding for pet projects or bureaucratic expansion.
However, it does so by essentially suggesting that, if the terrorists really want to destroy us, all they have to do is hit us with a terrific punch,
particularly a nuclear one. Although the attack may not in itself be remotely" enough to cause the nation to cease to exist, purveyors of
bombast assure the terrorists that the target country will respond by obligingly destroying itself in anguished overreaction. The suggestion,
then, is that it is not ' only the most feared terrorists who are suicidal. As Sageman points out, the United States hardly faces a threat to its
existence, because even a nuclear strike by terrorists "will not destroy the nation:' As things stand now, he.. adds, "only the United States
could obliterate the United States:'49 Atomic terrorism may indeed be the single most serious threat to the national security of the United
States. Assessed in an appropriate context, however, the likelihood that such a calamity will come about seems breathtakingly small.
Sensible, cost-effective policies designed to make that probability even lower may be justified, given the damage that can be inflicted by an
atomic explosion. But unjustified, obsessive alarmism about the likelihood and imminence of atomic terrorism has had policy consequences
that have been costly and unnecessary. Among them are the war in Iraq and the focus on WMD that seduced federal agencies away from due
preparation 5o for disasters that have actually happened, such as Hurricane Katrina. Arch-demon Zawahiri once noted that the group only
became aware of biological weapons "when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concerns that they can be
produced simply with easily available materials;'5! By constantly suggesting that the United States will destroy itself in response to an atomic
explosion, the existential bombast about a terrorist bomb that follows so naturally from decades of atomic obsession encourages the most
diabolical and murderous terrorists to investigate the possibility of obtaining one. Fortunately, however, would-be atomic terrorists are
exceedingly unlikely to be successful in such a quest, however intense the inspiration and encouragement they receive from the
unintentional cheerleaders among their distant enemies.
Cap
2AC Framework
Role of the ballot is to evaluate effects of the plan- topicality & specificity justify - neg
RTB's self-serving & decontextualize then exclude 9 mins, sandbag excludes 18 - voter
& new answers
Perm do both
Perm do the alt in every other instance
Perm do the plan then the alt—either it’s legit or the alt’s not durable enough to solve
Judges choose reps to best test plan - debate dialectic sufficient filter for knowledge
production and epistemology- prefer specific warrants over vague buzzwords- Value
requires existence
Vote aff despite prior questions—impact timeframe means you gotta act on the best
info available
Kratochwil, professor of international relations – European University Institute, 2008 (Friedrich, “The Puzzles of Politics,” pg. 200-213)
The lesson seems clear. Even at the danger of “fuzzy boundaries”, when we deal with “practice” ( just as with the “pragmatic turn”), we
would be well advised to rely on the use of the term rather than on its reference (pointing to some property of the object under study), in
order to draw the bounds of sense and understand the meaning of the concept. My argument for the fruitful character of a pragmatic
approach in IR, therefore, does not depend on a comprehensive mapping of the varieties of research in this area, nor on an arbitrary
appropriation or exegesis of any specific and self-absorbed theoretical orientation. For this reason, in what follows, I will not provide a rigidly
specified definition, nor will I refer exclusively to some prepackaged theoretical approach. Instead, I will sketch out the reasons for which a
pragmatic orientation in social analysis seems to hold particular promise. These reasons pertain both to the more general area of knowledge
appropriate for praxis and to the more specific types of investigation in the field. The follow- ing ten points are – without a claim to
completeness – intended to engender some critical reflection on both areas. Firstly, a pragmatic approach does not begin with objects or
“things”
(ontology), or with reason and method ( epistemology), but with “ acting ” (prattein), thereby preventing some
false starts. Since, as historical beings placed in a
we have
specific situations , we do not have the luxury of deferring decisions until
found the “truth”, we have to act and must do so always under time pressures and in the face of incomplete information.
Pre- cisely because the social world is characterised by strategic interactions, what a situation “is”, is hardly ever clear ex ante, because it is
being “produced” by the actors and their interactions, and the multiple possibilities are rife with incentives for (dis)information. This puts a
premium on quick
diagnostic and cognitive shortcuts informing actors about the relevant features of the situ- ation, and on leaving an
alternative open (“plan B”) in case of unexpected difficulties. Instead of relying on certainty and universal validity gained through abstraction
and controlled experiments, we know that completeness and attentiveness to detail, rather than to generality, matter. To that extent, likening
practical choices to simple “discoveries” of an already independently existing “reality” which discloses itself to an “observer” – or relying on
optimal strategies – is somewhat heroic. These points have been made vividly by “realists” such as Clausewitz in his controversy with von
Bülow, in which he criticised the latter’s obsession with a strategic “science” (Paret et al. 1986). While Clausewitz has become an icon for
realists, only a few of them (usually dubbed “old” realists) have taken seriously his warnings against the misplaced belief in the reliability and
use- fulness of a “scientific” study of strategy. Instead, most of them, especially “neorealists” of various stripes, have embraced the “theory”building based on the epistemological project as the via regia to the creation of knowledge. A pragmatist orientation would most certainly not
endorse such a position. Secondly, since acting in the social world often involves acting “for” someone, special responsibilities arise that
aggravate both the incompleteness of knowledge as well as its generality problem. Since we owe special care to those entrusted to us, for
example, as teachers, doctors or lawyers, we cannot just rely on what is generally true,
but have to pay special attention to the
particular case . Aside from avoiding the foreclosure of options, we cannot refuse to act on the basis of incomplete information or
insufficient know- ledge, and the necessary diagnostic will involve typification and comparison, reasoning by analogy rather than generalization
or deduction. Leaving out the particularities of a case, be it a legal or medical one, in a mistaken effort to become “scientific” would be a fatal
flaw. Moreover, there still remains the crucial element of “timing” – of knowing when to act. Students of crises have always pointed out the
importance of this factor but, in attempts at building a general “theory” of international politics analogously to the natural sci- ences, such
elements are neglected on the basis of the “continuity of nature” and the “large number” assumptions. Besides, “timing” seems to be quite
recalcitrant to analytical treatment.
Alt fails- Human nature
Barnhizer 2006 (David Barnhizer, Professor of Law at Ohio State University, Articles Editor of the Ohio State Law Journal and then
served as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow in Colorado Springs Legal Services Office, a Ford Urban Law Fellow, and a Clinical
Teaching Fellow at the Harvard Law School, Senior Advisor to the International Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Senior
Fellow for Earth Summit Watch, and General Counsel for the Shrimp Tribunal. He has served as Executive Director of The Year 2000 Committee,
2006 “waking from sustainability’s “impossible dream”” Georgetown environmental law review)
Devotees of sustainability pin their hopes on an awakening by an enlightened populace that will rise
up and insist that business and government behave in ways that reflect the idea that "[a]
sustainable society is one that can persist over generations, one that is far-seeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough
not to undermine either its physical or its social systems of support."81 This awakening is not going to happen. There
will never be a populist revolution in the way humans value the environment, social justice, and other
matters of moral consequence. We frequently "talk the talk," but rarely "walk the walk."82 This discrepancy is
partly an individual failure, but it is even more a result of the powerful forces that operate within our culture. Residents of
Western cultures are shaped by the system in which they live. They will never possess either the clarity of
agenda or the political will essential to a coherent and coordinated shift in behavior due to a
combination of ignorance, greed, sloth, and inundation by political and consumerist propaganda.
This combination means there will be no values shift welling up from the people and demanding the
transformation of our systems of production and resource use.
Tech solves
Huggins 2012 (Laura E. Huggins, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of development at PERC—the Property and
Environment Research Center—a think tank in Bozeman, Montana, that focuses on market solutions to environmental problems, 2012 “A
Doom Deferred” http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/105756)
that “the effects of overpopulation play a part in practically
every daily report of mass human calamity.” Floods, for example, “inundate more homes as populations expand
The authors of the Times op-ed also wrote
into floodplains. Such extreme events are stoked by climate change, fueled by increasing carbon emissions from an expanding
global population.” These
modern-day predictions are in stark contrast to claims in the same vein
from the 1970s. In a popular 1970 speech at Swarthmore College, for example, well-known ecologist Kenneth Watt said, “If
present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder
in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” Time
has not been gentle with such
prophecies. Four decades later, the world hasn’t come to an end. Most measures of human welfare show
the Earth’s population is better off today than at any other time in human history. Life
expectancy is increasing, per-capita income is rising, and the air we breathe and the water we
drink are cleaner. And concerns about climate change have shifted from cooling to warming since the 1970s. Given past
trends, we are right to deny doom-and-gloom claims such as this one in Harte and Ehrlich’s article: “Perpetual
growth is the creed of a cancer cell, not a sustainable human society.” New ideas and technologies proliferate at a much faster rate
than population. New
ideas and technologies proliferate at a much faster rate than population. They
depend on individuals who are free to pursue their own interests and innovate with few constraints. As Stanford economist Paul
Romer put it, “Every
generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and
undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every
generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently
fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. Possibilities do not add up; they
multiply.”