20,398 research outputs found

    Consent and the Construction of the Volunteer: Institutional Settings of Experimental Research on Human Beings in Britain during the Cold War

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    This study challenges the primacy of consent in the history of human experimentation and argues that privileging the cultural frameworks adds nuance to our understanding of the construction of the volunteer in the period 1945 to 1970. Historians and bio-ethicists have argued that medical ethics codes have marked out the parameters of using people as subjects in medical scientific research and that the consent of the subjects was fundamental to their status as volunteers. However, the temporality of the creation of medical ethics codes means that they need to be understood within their historical context. That medical ethics codes arose from a specific historical context rather than a concerted and conscious determination to safeguard the well-being of subjects needs to be acknowledged. The British context of human experimentation is under-researched and there has been even less focus on the cultural frameworks within which experiments took place. This study demonstrates, through a close analysis of the Medical Research Council's Common Cold Research Unit (CCRU) and the government's military research facility, the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment, Porton Down (Porton), that the `volunteer' in human experiments was a subjective entity whose identity was specific to the institution which recruited and made use of the subject. By examining representations of volunteers in the British press, the rhetoric of the government's collectivist agenda becomes evident and this fed into the institutional construction of the volunteer at the CCRU. In contrast, discussions between Porton scientists, staff members, and government officials demonstrate that the use of military personnel in secret chemical warfare experiments was far more complex. Conflicting interests of the military, the government and the scientific imperative affected how the military volunteer was perceived

    Elite perceptions of the Victorian and Edwardian past in inter-war England

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    It is often argued by historians that members of the cultivated Elite after 1918 rejected the pre-war past. or at least subjected it to severe denigration. This thesis sets out to challenge such a view. Above all, it argues that inter-war critics of the Victorian and Edwardian past were unable to reject it even if that was what they felt inclined to do. This was because they were tied to those periods by the affective links of memory, family, and the continually unfolding consequences of the past in the present. Even the severest critics of the pre-war world, such as Lytton Strachey, were less frequently dismissive of history than ambivalent towards it. This ambivalence, it is argued, helped to keep the past alive and often to humanise it. The thesis also explores more positive estimation of Victorian and Edwardian history between the wars. It examines nostalgia for the past, as well as instances of continuity of practice and attitude. It explores the way in which inter-war society drew upon aspects of Victorian and Edwardian history both as illuminating parallels to contemporary affairs and to understand directly why the present was shaped as it was. Again, this testifies to the enduring power of the past after 1918. There are three parts to this thesis. Part One outlines the cultural context in which writers contemplated the Victorian and Edwardian past. Part Two explores some of the ways in which history was written about and used by inter-war society. Part Three examines the ways in which biographical depictions of eminent Victorians after 1918 encouraged emotional negotiation with the pas

    Metaphors of London fog, smoke and mist in Victorian and Edwardian Art and Literature

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    Julian Wolfreys has argued that after 1850 writers employed stock images of the city without allowing them to transform their texts. This thesis argues, on the contrary, that metaphorical uses of London fog were complex and subtle during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, at least until 1914. Fog represented, in particular, formlessness and the dissolution of boundaries. Examining the idea of fog in literature, verse, newspaper accounts and journal articles, as well as in the visual arts, as part of a common discourse about London and the state of its inhabitants, this thesis charts how the metaphorical appropriation of this idea changed over time. Four of Dickens's novels are used to track his use of fog as part of a discourse of the natural and unnatural in individual and society, identifying it with London in progressively more negative terms. Visual representations of fog by Constable, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Markino, O'Connor, Roberts and Wyllie and Coburn showed an increasing readiness to engage with this discourse. Social tensions in the city in the 1880s were articulated in art as well as in fiction. Authors like Hay and Barr showed the destruction of London by its fog because of its inhabitants' supposed degeneracy. As the social threat receded, apocalyptic scenarios gave way to a more optimistic view in the work of Owen and others. Henry James used fog as a metaphorical representation of the boundaries of gendered behaviour in public, and the problems faced by women who crossed them. The dissertation also examines fog and individual transgression, in novels and short stories by Lowndes, Stevenson, Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad. After 1914, fog was no more than a crude signifier of Victorian London in literature, film and, later, television, deployed as a cliche instead of the subtle metaphorical idea discussed in this thesis

    The temporality of rhetoric: the spatialization of time in modern criticism

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    Every conception of criticism conceals a notion of time which informs the manner in which the critic conceives of history, representation and criticism itself. This thesis reveals the philosophies of time inherent in certain key modern critical concepts: allegory, irony and the sublime. Each concept opens a breach in time, a disruption of chronology. In each case this gap or aporia is emphatically closed, elided or denied. Taking the philosophy of time elaborated by Giorgio Agamben as an introductory proposition, my argument turns in Chapter One to the allegorical temporality which Walter Benjamin sees as the time of photography. The second chapter examines the aesthetics of the sublime as melancholic or mournful untimeliness. In Chapter Three, Paul de Man's conception of irony provides an exemplary instance of the denial of this troubling temporal predicament. In opposition to the foreclosure of the disturbing temporalities of criticism, history and representation, the thesis proposes a fundamental rethinking of the philosophy of time as it relates to these categories of reflection. In a reading of an inaugural meditation on the nature of time, and in examining certain key contemporary philosophical and critical texts, I argue for a critical attendance to that which eludes those modes of thought that attempt to map time as a recognizable and essentially spatial field. The Confessions of Augustine provide, in the fourth chapter, a model for thinking through the problems set up earlier: Augustine affords us, precisely, a means of conceiving of the gap or the interim. In the final chapter, this concept is developed with reference to the criticism of Arnold and Eliot, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and the philosophy of cinema derived from Deleuze and Lyotard. In conclusion, the philosophical implications of the thesis are placed in relation to a conception of the untimeliness of death

    Towards a more just refuge regime: quotas, markets and a fair share

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    The international refugee regime is beset by two problems: Responsibility for refuge falls disproportionately on a few states and many owed refuge do not get it. In this work, I explore remedies to these problems. One is a quota distribution wherein states are distributed responsibilities via allotment. Another is a marketized quota system wherein states are free to buy and sell their allotments with others. I explore these in three parts. In Part 1, I develop the prime principles upon which a just regime is built and with which alternatives can be adjudicated. The first and most important principle – ‘Justice for Refugees’ – stipulates that a just regime provides refuge for all who have a basic interest in it. The second principle – ‘Justice for States’ – stipulates that a just distribution of refuge responsibilities among states is one that is capacity considerate. In Part 2, I take up several vexing questions regarding the distribution of refuge responsibilities among states in a collective effort. First, what is a state’s ‘fair share’? The answer requires the determination of some logic – some metric – with which a distribution is determined. I argue that one popular method in the political theory literature – a GDP-based distribution – is normatively unsatisfactory. In its place, I posit several alternative metrics that are more attuned with the principles of justice but absent in the political theory literature: GDP adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity and the Human Development Index. I offer an exploration of both these. Second, are states required to ‘take up the slack’ left by defaulting peers? Here, I argue that duties of help remain intact in cases of partial compliance among states in the refuge regime, but that political concerns may require that such duties be applied with caution. I submit that a market instrument offers one practical solution to this problem, as well as other advantages. In Part 3, I take aim at marketization and grapple with its many pitfalls: That marketization is commodifying, that it is corrupting, and that it offers little advantage in providing quality protection for refugees. In addition to these, I apply a framework of moral markets developed by Debra Satz. I argue that a refuge market may satisfy Justice Among States, but that it is violative of the refugees’ welfare interest in remaining free of degrading and discriminatory treatment

    Understanding interactions between Ramularia collo-cygni and barley leaf physiology to target improvements in host resistance and disease control strategy

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    Ramularia Leaf Spot (RLS) is an increasingly problematic disease of barley. Control options are limited as the causal fungus, Ramularia collo-cygni, has developed resistance to several of the major fungicide groups. Developing new methods for controlling this disease is therefore a priority. R. collo-cygni can grow systemically in barley plants from infected seed, without inducing visible symptoms. In the field, visible symptoms normally only appear after flowering. The relative contribution of the latent and symptomatic stages of the fungal lifecycle to reduction in barley yield is not currently known with any certainty. Two possibilities are that the effect of asymptomatic infection on pre-flowering photosynthetic activity, and the development of grain sink capacity, plays an important role; or that reduction in photosynthetic activity during grain filling, resulting from lesion development and loss of green leaf area, is the predominant factor. This research aimed to increase our understanding of the impact of different phases of the fungal lifecycle on barley photosynthesis and yield formation, to better target host resistance and disease control strategies. Controlled environment and field experiments were used to determine the relative effects of asymptomatic and symptom-expressing phases of R. collo-cygni infection on photosynthesis and yield formation in spring barley. In controlled environment experiments leaf photosynthetic activity was measured in seedlings inoculated with suspensions of R. collo-cygni mycelia. Measurements were made before and after visible symptom development using Infra-Red Gas Analysis (IRGA), chlorophyll fluorescence analysis and chlorophyll fluorescence imaging. No reduction in photosynthetic activity was observed in leaves infected with R. collo-cygni, compared to those of non- infected leaves, during the latent phase of infection. After the appearance of visible symptoms, photosynthetic activity within lesions reduced as the lesions developed. However, this did not lead to reductions in photosynthetic activity when measured across the whole leaf area, suggesting that for there to be a significant effect of disease on whole leaf photosynthetic activity, visible symptoms must develop into mature lesions and coalesce to cover larger areas of the leaf surface. In field experiments plots were treated with a full fungicide regime, left untreated, or inoculated with R. collo-cygni and treated with fungicide to which R. collo-cygni is resistant (the latter as a precaution against lack of natural RLS disease that year and/or other diseases developing on untreated plots). RLS was the only disease of significance that developed in untreated or inoculated plots. Symptoms first appeared after flowering, around Zadoks Growth Stage 72. Fungicide-treated plots remained free of disease. Chlorophyll fluorescence analysis of field plants showed no effect of infection on the maximum quantum efficiency of Photosystem II (Fv/Fm) before visible symptom development, consistent with results from controlled environment experiments. Grain yield of untreated and fungicide-treated plots was predicted from fixed common values of radiation use efficiency (RUE) and utilisation of soluble sugar reserves, and measured values of post-flowering healthy (green) leaf area light interception. Grain yields predicted from the difference in post-flowering light interception between fungicide-treated plants and untreated or inoculated plants displaying symptoms of RLS were comparable with the measured yield response to fungicide. This suggests that yield loss to RLS is primarily associated with a reduction in light capture during grain filling, resulting from lesion development and loss of green leaf area. Results from controlled environment and field experiments suggested that symptom expression was associated with leaf senescence. Further controlled environment experiments tested this relationship by using treatments to vary the onset and rate of leaf senescence. Seedlings that were treated with cytokinin to delay senescence after inoculation with suspensions of R. collo-cygni mycelia developed fewer lesions than control plants. Fungal growth, as measured by quantification of R. collo-cygni DNA in leaves, was also restricted in plants treated with cytokinin. Collectively these results suggest that prevention of visible symptom development, rather than prevention of asymptomatic growth, is the most important target for management of this disease. Control methods targeted at delaying senescence could be a useful avenue for further investigation

    The Reputations of Sir Francis Burdett

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    Unraveling the effect of sex on human genetic architecture

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    Sex is arguably the most important differentiating characteristic in most mammalian species, separating populations into different groups, with varying behaviors, morphologies, and physiologies based on their complement of sex chromosomes, amongst other factors. In humans, despite males and females sharing nearly identical genomes, there are differences between the sexes in complex traits and in the risk of a wide array of diseases. Sex provides the genome with a distinct hormonal milieu, differential gene expression, and environmental pressures arising from gender societal roles. This thus poses the possibility of observing gene by sex (GxS) interactions between the sexes that may contribute to some of the phenotypic differences observed. In recent years, there has been growing evidence of GxS, with common genetic variation presenting different effects on males and females. These studies have however been limited in regards to the number of traits studied and/or statistical power. Understanding sex differences in genetic architecture is of great importance as this could lead to improved understanding of potential differences in underlying biological pathways and disease etiology between the sexes and in turn help inform personalised treatments and precision medicine. In this thesis we provide insights into both the scope and mechanism of GxS across the genome of circa 450,000 individuals of European ancestry and 530 complex traits in the UK Biobank. We found small yet widespread differences in genetic architecture across traits through the calculation of sex-specific heritability, genetic correlations, and sex-stratified genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We further investigated whether sex-agnostic (non-stratified) efforts could potentially be missing information of interest, including sex-specific trait-relevant loci and increased phenotype prediction accuracies. Finally, we studied the potential functional role of sex differences in genetic architecture through sex biased expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and gene-level analyses. Overall, this study marks a broad examination of the genetics of sex differences. Our findings parallel previous reports, suggesting the presence of sexual genetic heterogeneity across complex traits of generally modest magnitude. Furthermore, our results suggest the need to consider sex-stratified analyses in future studies in order to shed light into possible sex-specific molecular mechanisms

    The Caribbean Syzygy: a study of the novels of Edgar Mittelholzer and Wilson Harris

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    The problem of racial inheritance - the "search for identity" - is a recurring theme in the criticism of Caribbean literature. It is a pre-occupation with Caribbean writers, affecting both subject matter and literary quality, as FM. Birbalsingh, for example, has shown with reference to the novels of John Hearne and E,R. Braithwaite (Caribbean quarterly Vols. 14, December 1968 and 16, March 1970). This study of the work of Edgar Mittelholzer and Wilson Harris will attempt to show that there are important areas still to be explored relating Caribbean literature to its complex racial and cultural background. Both Mittelholzer and Harris deserve close, critical study in their own right; but a parallel examination reveals similarities and differences which bring into sharper focus wider concerns of Caribbean literature. The two important directions of West Indian writing are more clearly seen: the one, pioneered by Mittelholzer, in which the writer looks outward towards a "parent" culture, and the other looking inward, seeking in its own, complex inheritance the raw material for new and original growth. Mittelholzer and Harris are both Guyanese of mixed racial stock, both deeply concerned with the psychological effects of this mixture, and both writers have a profound awareness of the Guyanese historical and cultural heritage. They also share a deep feeling for the Guyenese landscape which appears in their work as a brooding presence affecting radically -the lives of those who live within i-t. Mittelholzer's attitude to his mixed racial and cultural origins, however, produces in his work a schizophrenic Imbalance while Harris, by accepting racial and cultural complexity as a starting-point, initiates a uniquely creative and experimental art. Mittelholzer, in his approach to history, human character eM landscape, remains a vi "coastal" writer never really concerned (as Harris is) with. the deeper significance of the "Interior" and all that this implies, both in a geographical and psychological sense. The fact that Mittelbolzer's work reflects a psychological imbalance induced by a pre-occupation with racial identity has been demonstrated by Denis Williams in the 1968 Mittelholzer Lectures, and by Joyce Sparer in a series of articles in the Guyana Graphic. Mittelholzer's awareness of this imbalance, however, and his attempt to come to terms with it in his art remain to be examined and documented, as does Harris's attempt to create am "associative" art aimed at healing the breach in the individual consciousness of Caribbean Man. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that Mitteholzer and. Harris, although antithetical in impact and style (each representing an approach to fiction directly opposed to the other) are, in fact, the opposite elements of a dichotomy. Their work illustrates the negative and positive aspects of the racial and cultural schizophrenia of the Caribbean, for both writers in their different ways are preoccupied with (and therefore have embodied in their work) the juxtaposition and, contrasting of apparently irreconcilable emotional and intellectual qualities - the Caribbean Syzygy
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