Abortion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Abortion - Essay Example This enzyme deficiency prevents the metabolization of phenylalanine. According to medical and health ethical considerations, every child born with PKU should be placed on a special low phenylalanine diet for a period not less than five years of their life. This is thought to have happened to Martha. It was ethical to consider this when Martha was young and developing. The ideal situation Martha was placed in was to ensure that life is protected at all costs. As such, it is important for Martha to consider abortion for the sake of her life since failure to abort is likely to put the lives of both the child and her in jeopardy. The diet is a necessity in order to reduce or prevent occurrence of sever retardation. Nonetheless, the diet is actually burdensome. This is when considered that Martha is in some state of difficulty with her relationship and marriage with the father of the child. Martha has done no problem of being engaged with this situation. However, she should take caution o f Dr. R‘s emphasis and advice since she is about to care for more than one life. Martha is not exposed to limited foods. She is supposed to consider and stick to the use of the medical food, which is of bad taste and yet protects her from ill health. Considering pregnancy in such a case is another tedious thing since it has been proved that she is in a more difficult situation now that she is pregnant. Dr. R’s advice of considering abortion is deeply directed at reducing any possible thwart of life if she continuous carrying the pregnancy to birth. Yes, she is considerate of the fact that her ethics from religion does not allow her to abort. Nonetheless, avoiding aborting in such a scenario is poised at risking the lives of two people, more importantly her life with that of the fetus (DeGrazia and Jeffrey 45-56). Martha is at a point of making a crucial decision considering the fact that it is like she is fighting a fight of life and death. According to her doctor, abor tion will solve the issue of the present life, as stated by the medical ethics at hand. The fetus is yet to be given an opportunity to grow and live, though this will be negatively affecting on the possibilities of living in Martha’s point of contention. Thus, if Martha is poised to consider abortion, she will have managed to successfully limit any occurrence of life-neglect since it is well foreseeable that she is likely to risk and kill her life together with that of the child. Her continued carriage of the fetus is like an approach of difficulty pertaining life and death, something that should not be given a chance in any medical ground poised with medical and health ethics. Furthermore, Martha is up to the fact that she has been inconstant in her diet. She has failed in remunerating the proceeds of her health discipline. As such, she should consider abortion owing to the fact that if she continues to carry the fetus; she will be up for a tedious end. If Martha J is resolv ed to carry her fetus to term, Dr R will be in a huge responsibility of trying to balance between the lives of two people, who survive the ordeal of living a short and exposed life. It is the responsibility of Dr R to oversee and ensure that Martha has fully adhered to the precepts of t the diet at hand. If he fails to do so then he will be acting contrary to the ordeals of medical ethics, which requires him to do so. First, Dr R is endowed with the responsibility of ensuring that Martha has stepped up to the challenge of her ruthless medication as she had experienced during childhood. At the moment, it is not a big deal for her to metabolize phenylalanine. Nonetheless, now that she is expected to carry her pregnancy to term, she should maintain the same low-level phenylalanine diet through out the course of

Meditations Essay Example for Free

Meditations Essay Rene Descartes’ Meditations paved way to the enquiry of the epistemological nature of knowledge – a paradigm shift from an ontological priority to an epistemological priority of philosophizing. In this regard, Descartes believed that the fundamental source of knowledge is reason. As such, knowing material objects can only come upon an entity which is not external to us – that is the mind. The certainty of our understanding then rests on the clarity and distinctness of ideas constituting formal reality and not upon the immediate perception of an object. With this, he attempted to prove the existence of the Cogito, of God and dualism of the mind and the body, the methodic doubt as his primary grounding to prove the truthfulness of his claims. Let us now then analyze the seemingly problematic suppositions Descartes posits. One is dualism of the mind and body. It is because it is hard to conceive how two different things interact with each other. One indicator of such is when the mind chooses to do a specific action and the body seems to willingly do the action the mind chose. Another is when we perceive objects in the external world, our mind grasp and process the forming of these images based on our sense perception. Nevertheless, the primary question one can posit on the whole philosophy of Descartes is the appropriateness of granting existence to the conceptual entities in the mind. Existence, for Descartes, is proven through the recognition of the mind based on intuitions which manifest clarity and distinctness (or inner awareness where the mind and body are inseparable yet different from each other). By clarity, he claimed that it is the presence of an idea/object, and by distinctness, it is the relationship of clear ideas/objects and how its relationship distinguishes what belongs to an idea/object. Furthermore, he also claimed that substances are the building blocks of reality, categorized into two: the mind and the body. As such, he further maintained that these substances have primary attributes: the mind which is thought and the body, the extension. Ideas, for Descartes, are the modes of thought that link the mind and the world because they have formal and objective reality. By the former, he meant the kind of reality things have in this world and by the latter, the reality of objects represented by ideas. Hence, an idea can have formal reality because it is the mode of thought itself and it can also have an objective reality because it represents something outside of itself. In his work, one can deduce that he is certain only in his existence. As such, making him a thinking substance. He asserted that he comes to know this fact through clear and distinct perception, and logically it would follow that all his other clear and distinct perceptions are true in reference to formal and objective reality. In order to confirm the truthfulness of these clear and distinct perceptions, he proved the existence of a benign God which relies on the Mediator’s cognition of clear and distinct ideas. Even if we exempt the possibility of granting existence to fictitious entities for we may have clear and distinct perception of them, the possibility of granting existence to other conceptual entities in our mind is still questionable. First, I believe that we can only have clear and distinct perception of the conceptual entities through our senses – that is they exist in the physical realm. By that, I mean that we can have conception and understanding (on the context on how can we know them) primarily because they have manifestations in the physical world as also with regards to certain logical principles. For example, my understanding or even my idea of a tree originates from my perception of that tree in reality. Second, even if I can have clear and distinct perception of a God, it does not mean that a god/God indeed exist which cause my idea of God as what Descartes claimed. Arguably, there may be some other entity or there may be the possibility this world is just made up of matter and energy. Hence, there is no higher being which exists. It can be deduced then the appropriateness of granting existence to conceptual entities in the mind only comes if we could know their truth in the physical realm. As such, Descartes claimed of the mind being non-erroneous in granting existence to things/objects in this world is held in question.

On the Backs of Blacks and Sorrowful Black Death Is Not a Hot Ticket :: Sorrowful Black Death Is Not a Hot Ticket Essays

On the Backs of Blacks and Sorrowful Black Death Is Not a Hot Ticket      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In both Toni Morrison's "On the backs of blacks" and bell hooks' "Sorrowful Black Death Is Not a Hot Ticket" the authors attempt to analyze the role and treatment of blacks in motion pictures. Morrison's essay deals with what she calls "race talk", and defines as "the explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than pressing African Americans to the lowest level racial hierarchy" (Morrison, 1993). Hooks' essay similarly analyses the issue of death for blacks in movies to which she concludes "that there can be no serious representation of death and dying when the characters are African-Americans." (hooks) In both these essays there are huge errors made in their thinking, and their analyzation.      Hooks, in her opening paragraphs attempts to compare the portrayal of black vs. white death in films. In her comparison she blows all future credibility with critical readers by using examples that obviously don't have any baring on the point she is trying to make. The example she gives for a white death is that of Tom Hank's character in Philadelphia, a homosexual lawyer with AIDS who had taken his firm to court because of their bad treatment towards him because of his disease. For this case she points out that "even before tickets are brought and seats are taken, everyone knows that tears are in order." (hooks) Hooks then goes on to explain that "There is no grief, no remembrance" for the deaths of blacks.   She uses the film The bodyguard for her example of black death, citing the scene where "the sister of Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) is accidentally assassinated by the killer she has hired" to kill her own sister (Hooks). These two examples have nothing in c ommon. The character in Philadelphia deserved sympathy when he died because he was treated unfairly for a condition he had no control of. The character in The Bodyguard neither deserved nor received recognition for one reason. It had nothing to do with her blackness, that was a non-issue, it was because she was a murderer who in an ironic twist was murdered by the assassin she had hired.

A Case Study of the Glass Bangle Industry

The glass manufacturing industry in Ferozabad, Uttar Pradesh, produces bangles, utensils, bulbs, decorative articles etc. The glass industry has been classified as hazardous and the employment of child labour (children below age 14 years) in it is prohibited. However, available research and literature indicated that child labour was concentrated mainly in the production of glass bangles. At the time of the present study over 50,000 children were generally believed to be engaged in the hazardous glass bangle industry of Ferozabad.The process of manufacture of glass bangles is broken down into six separate stages and each stage is done by a separate specialized enterprise. At the first stage, the spring bangles are produced at a glass factory and it involves work at the furnace and handling, coloring, and shaping the molten glass into a spring form or rings. The subsequent processes like straightening, linking up the edges of the glass spirals, joining the edges, hardening them, cuttin g designs into them and coloring the bangles are done in separate stages by small informal sector enterprises using different tools like kerosene lamps, abrasive wheel, mud oven, and chemical colors for each of the processes.Unlike glass factories, these small informal sector enterprises are not registered and difficult to observe as they are often located inside households and in small alleys. Moreover, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986 does not cover the informal sector.OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGYThe study aimed to document the extent of child labour, types of activities in which children are engaged, employment conditions , and the cost implications of eliminating child labour. Data collection involved an enterprise survey. As the production process for glass bangles involves a number of different and distinct stages, enterprises were chosen from individual stages of production to ensure a representative selection. In all 268 enterprises with 4100 workers a nd approximately 1000 child labourers were covered.Anticipating that the information furnished by the employers on child labour and the number of children employed may be misleading or grossly understated, field investigators were trained to distinguish children from adults through observation. As this was still difficult to do for children in the 12-16 age group, investigators were allowed to record their observation in either of the three categories ‘definitely adult’, ‘definitely child’, or ‘probably child’. The category of ‘probably child’ was used when an investigator could not decide if a worker was a child.KEY FINDINGSThe total number of child labourers employed in the glass bangle industry was estimated on the basis of the number of children employed in different stages of production. Of the approximately 60,000 workers in the glass bangle industry, 9,40011,000 are children constituting about 16 to 19 percent of the workfor ce in this industry. Employment of children was confined  mostly to unskilled jobs like carrying and sorting in the glass factories. Within the stages of production where several different activities are performed, children do the least skilled of these activities (see table). In other words, children do not have unique or irreplaceable skills and are therefore not necessary for the glass bangles industry.The daily productivity per worker is between 12 to 32 tora (312 or 13 double dozen) bangles per day for different production stages. Children are commonly said by employers to work slower and take longer hours to achieve the same output as their adult counterparts. Each enterprise is paid on a piece rate basis. The wage payment system has a very strict control of the output.Teams of workers must achieve a prescribed minimum level of output in order to be given the agreed daily payment, and it often takes more than eight hours to achieve this minimum acceptable output. Since child ren are said to work slower than adults, they generally need to work longer hours than Working conditions & Health hazards adults in order to achieve the same output and therefore As ‘carriers’: the same daily income. carrying molten glass from the furnace to the Working spaces are small and cramped. Burns and respiratory problems are common occupational health hazards (see box). Several young males and adults were observed without the thumb or forefinger. Tuberculosis is a very common health problem in Ferozabad.Payments to child labourers are estimated to account for only about 15 percent of the total labour cost and so about 4 to 7 percent of the cost of producing a glass bangle. shaper or loom maker, constant exposure to the heat, sound and pollution. Straightening: work in closed rooms, no cross ventilation and are continuously exposed to smoke emitted from dozens of kerosene lamps. Joining and cutting: long hours of sitting in one posture, risk of cramps; continuo us exposure to smoke from the  kerosene lamps.Colouring: high toxic effect of chemical-based colours, handled with bare hands; colours stick to the fingers and palms and are difficult to remove. The increase in the cost of production of one dozen bangles (as most consumers buy bangles by the Hardening: dozen) as a result of elimination of child labour was working around a small furnace and hot trays; calculated in three different ways based on three burns are common. different assumptions.If a sufficient  number of adult workers from the large labour reserve in India are available and willing to work at the present, market determined wage rate , there would be no cost effect, as adults would replace children at the same piece rate payment. Assumptions 2 and 3 presuppose that adult workers would need to be paid a higher wage (10 and 20 percent, respectively) in order to attract the additional adult workers required to replace the child workers. In that case, production costs go u p by only about 2-3 paise a dozen for plain bangles and 6-12 paise for coloured and detailed cut bangles.In percentage terms, this would mean only a 0, 2 and 4 percent increase in the cost of glass bangles in all three scenarios. Even at the retail level (which we assume has a 200 percent mark-up compared to wholesale), the cost of a dozen glass bangles would go up by only 10-20 paise for plain bangles and 12-27 paise for coloured and detailed cut bangles. There is no economic  justification to employ child labour in the glass bangle industry, as children do not occupy a necessary role in the glass bangle production, nor do they have the skills that could not replaced by adults, and elimination of child labour would increase the cost of production only marginally.RECOMMENDATIONSImprove production technology and work environment of the glass bangle industry. In the shortrun, the health of those children who continue to work would improve. In the long run, the demand for child labou r should decrease as the increased capital investments made would create a need for more skilled and responsible adult workers. The number of adult labourers interested in doing this work should increase along with improvement in working conditions and increased wages resulting from the need for greater skills and responsibility. Thus it will have a favourable impact on the goal of eliminating child labour.

Gap Model in Services Marketing

The GAP MODEL in SERVICES MARKETING GAP 1 The gap between the customer expected service and company perception of customer expectation. |Inadequate market research. |Design, conduct and implement appropriate market research. | |Poor communication between customers and management and between|Design and implement an upward communications programme. | |front line employees and managers. | | |Lack of, or poor marker segmentation. Build customer relationships through market segmentation | | |techniques and customer retention strategies | |Focus on transactions rather than relationships. | | | | | |Focus on new customers rather than existing customers. | | GAP 2 The gap between company perception of customer expectations and development of customer driven service designs and standards. |Lack of standardization of Service behavior &|Reengineering | |actions. | | | | | |Lack of formal process for setting service |Establish the Service Encounter sequence | |quality goals. | | | | |Lack of customer defined standards. |Identify existing or desired service encounter sequence. | | | | | |Translate customer expectations into behaviors and actions. | | | | |Select behavior and actions for standards | | | | | |Select appropriate ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ standards | | | | | |Enable feedback mechanisms for measurement to standards | | | | | |Establish measures and target levels | | | | | |Track measures vs. tandards | | | | | |Give performance to employees | | | | |Inadequate service Leadership |Synthesizing, articulating, promoting commitment and implementing the service | | |vision. (The leadership model). | | | |Lack o f understanding that that quality |PIMS research. | |service is indeed a profit strategy | | | | | |Incomplete performance appraisal system |In addition to financial measures include, the customer perspective, the | | |operational perspective and the innovative perspective to performance appraisal. | GAP 3 The Gap between Customer driven service designs and standards and service delivery. The Employees’ roles in service delivery |Human Resources Strategies | | | | |Ineffective recruitment |Hire the right people | |Role ambiguity and role conflict | | |Poor employee-technology-job fit |Develop people to deliver service quality | |Inappropriate evaluation and compensation systems| | |Lack of empowerment and teamwork |Provide needed support systems | | | | | |Retain the best people | | | | | |(Details in the human resource strategies wheel pg 312 Zeithaml) | |Key factors related to Intermediaries |Strategies for effective service delivery through intermediaries | | | |Channe l conflict over objectives and performance |Develop and implement: | |Channel conflict over costs and rewards |Control strategies | |Difficulty controlling quality and consistency |Empowerment strategies | |across outlets |Partnering Strategies | |Tension between empowerment and control | | |Channel ambiguity | | |Key factors related to Customers |Strategies for enhancing customer participation | | | | |Customers lack understanding of their roles |Define customers job | |Customers unwilling or unable to perform their |Recruit, Educate and reward customers | |roles |Manage the customer mix | |Customers are not rewarded for good performance | | |Other customers interfere | | |Market segments are incomplete | | |Key factors related to demand and capacity |Strategies for matching supply and demand | | | | |Failure to smooth peaks and valleys of demand |Match supply and demand through (i) shifting demand to match capacity or | |Overuse of capacity |(ii) flexing capacity to meet demand | |Attracting inappropriate customer segments to |Demonstrate the benefits and risks of yield management strategies in | |build demand |establishing balances mong the service variables | |Relying too much on price to smooth demand |Manage waiting lines for time when capacity and demand cannot be aligned | |Legal and Cultural barriers in International |Opportunities in International services | |marketing |Adapting the service | | |Adapting promotion and distribution | | |Adapting entry modes | | |Adapting communications | | |Adapting workforce management | | |Adapting service employees incentives | | |Adapting service standards | | |Adapting market research internationally | GAP 4 The Gap between Service Delivery and External communications to Customers Factors relating to communications |Strategies to match service promise with delivery | | | | |Inadequate management of service promises |Manage service promises | |Over promising in advertising and personal selling|Reset custom er expectations | |Insufficient customer education |Improve customer education | |Inadequate horizontal communication |Manage horizontal communications | |Differences in policies and procedures across | | departments | | |Key factors relating to pricing |Pricing Strategies | | | | |Assuming customers have reference price for | | |services |Match customer perception of value with appropriate pricing strategy that | |Narrowly defining price as monetary cost |match each customer definition | |Signaling wrong quality level with inappropriate |Cost based | |price |Demand based | |Not understanding customer value definitions |Competition based | |Not matching price strategy to customer value |Value based | |definitions | | |Key factors related to Physical Evidence |Physical evidence strategy | | | | |Incompatible or inconsistent physical evidence | | |Over promising through physical evidence |Recognize the strategic impact of physical evidence | |Lack of physical evidence strate gy |Map the physical evidence of services | | |Clarify roles of the services cape | | |Assess and identify physical evidence opportunities | | |Be ready to update and modernize the evidence | | |Work cross-functionally |

Georges Cuvier Biography

Georges Cuvier Biography Early Life and Education: Born August 23, 1769 - Died May 13, 1832 Georges Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769 to Jean George Cuvier and Anne Clemence Chatel. He grew up in the town of Montbeliard in the Jura Mountains of France. While he was a child, his mother tutored him in addition to his formal schooling making him much more advanced than his classmates. In 1784, Georges went away to the Carolinian Academy in Stuttgart, Germany. Upon graduation in 1788, he took a position as a tutor for a noble family in Normandy. Not only did this position keep him out of the French Revolution, it also gave him the opportunity to begin studying nature and eventually become a prominent Naturalist. In 1795, Cuvier moved to Paris and became a professor of Animal Anatomy at Musà ©e National dHistoire Naturelle. He was later appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte to various government positions related to education. Personal Life: In 1804, Georges Cuvier met and married Anne Marie Coquet de Trazaille. She had been widowed during the French Revolution and had four children. Georges and Anne Marie went on to have four children of their own. Unfortunately, only one of those children, a daughter, survived past infancy. Biography: Georges Cuvier was actually a very vocal opponent to the Theory of Evolution. In his 1797 published work entitled Elementary Survey of the Natural History of Animals, Cuvier hypothesized that since all of the different animals he had studied have such specialized and different anatomy, they must not have changed at all since the creation of the Earth. Most zoologists of the time period thought an animals structure was what determined where they lived and how they behaved. Cuvier proposed the opposite. He believed that the structure and function of organs in animals was determined by how they interacted with the environment. His Correlation of Parts hypothesis emphasized that all organs worked together within the body and how they worked was directly a result of their environment. Cuvier also studied many fossils. In fact, legend has it that he would be able to reconstruct a diagram of an animal based off of a single bone that had been found. His extensive studies led him to be one of the first scientists to create a classification system for animals. Georges realized there was no possible way that all animals could be fit into a linear system from most simple in structure all the way up to humans. Georges Cuvier was the most vocal opponent to Jean Baptiste Lamarck and his ideas of evolution. Lamarck was a proponent of the linear system of classification and that there were no constant species. Cuviers main argument against Lamarcks ideas was that important organ systems, like the nervous system or cardiovascular system, did not change or lose function like other less important organs did. The presence of vestigial structures was the cornerstone of Lamarcks theory. Perhaps the most well known of Georges Cuviers ideas comes from his 1813 published work called Essay on the Theory of the Earth. In this, he hypothesized that new species came into being after catastrophic floods, such as the flood described in the Bible when Noah built the ark. This theory is now known as catastrophism. Cuvier thought that only the highest of the mountain tops were immune to the floods. These ideas were not very well received by the overall scientific community, but more religious based organizations embraced the idea. Even though Cuvier was anti-evolution during his lifetime, his work actually helped give Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace a starting point for their studies of evolution. Cuviers insistence that there was more than one lineage of animals and that organ structure and function depended on the environment helped shaped the idea of Natural Selection.

Democracy Essays - Democracy, E-democracy, Legitimacy, Free Essays

Democracy Essays - Democracy, E-democracy, Legitimacy, Free Essays Democracy Democracy Complete and true democracy is almost impossible to achieve, and has been the primary goal of many nations, beginning from ancient civilizations of Greece and Roman Empire, all the way to the government of the United States today. There are a few essential characteristics which must be present in a political system for it to be even considered democratic. One essential characteristic of a legitimate democracy is that it allows people to freely make choices without government intervention. Another necessary characteristic which legitimates government is that every vote must count equally: one vote for every person. For this equality to occur, all people must be subject to the same laws, have equal civil rights, and be allowed to freely express their ideas. Minority rights are also crucial in a legitimate democracy. No matter how unpopular their views, all people should enjoy the freedoms of speech, press and assembly. Public policy should be made publicly, not secretly, and regularly scheduled elections should be held. All of these elements and government processes are a regular part of the American government. Yet, even with all the above elements present in the governmental operations of our country, numerous aspects of the governmental process undermine its legitimacy, and bring to question if United States government is really a true democracy. Considering the achievement of complete democracy is most likely impossible, the political system of American government is democratic, but its democratic legitimacy is clearly limited in many respects. One of the first notable aspects of the United States government which brings the democratic legitimacy into question is the ever-occurring bias between classes of people that participate in the electoral voting. Class is determined by income and education, and differing levels of these two factors can help explain why class bias occurs. For example, because educated people tend to understand politics more, they are mo re likely to vote. In fact, political studies done at Princeton in 1995 clearly showed that 76 percent of all voters had college degrees. The same studies have been done in the next three years and showed the percentage steadily holding at 76 percent, except in 1997, when it dropped down by two percent (Avirett 11). This four to one ration of college educated voters versus non-college educated voters shows a clear inequality and bias in the American voting system. This also brings about the aspect of income. People with high income and education have more