Affirming the Ban on Harsh Interrogation

Beginning in 2002, lawyers for the Bush Administration began producing the now infamous legal memoranda on the subject of interrogation. The memoranda advise interrogators that they can torture people without fear of prosecution in connection with the so-called global war on terror. Much has been and will be written about the expedient and erroneous legal analysis of the memos. One issue at risk of being overlooked, however, because the memos emphasize torture, is that the United States must respect limits far short of torture in the conduct of interrogations. The United States may not use any form of coercion against persons detained in an armed conflict, nor may it engage in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at any time. The great effort of the memo writers to restrict torture to the most extreme conduct imaginable obscures the fact that the United States has wider obligations. Avoiding torture is not enough. Interrogators must also respect the broader restrictions on coercive, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The legal prohibition has, first, moral, but also pragmatic underpinnings. Apparently some in the Bush Administration have become persuaded that torture, coercion, cruelty and abuse can be effective methods of interrogation and that the need for information outweighs the illegality and immorality of using such means. The weight of the evidence is firmly against the conclusion, however, that forceful interrogation is as reliable as non-forceful methods. Using unlawful means has been counter-productive in effectively responding to terrorism. The evidence on information gathering supports international law\u27s absolute prohibition on torture, cruelty, and coercion

The New Militarism

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.O'Connell's primary research focuses on international legal regulation of the use of force and conflict and dispute resolution, especially peaceful resolution of disputes prior to an escalation to armed conflict.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, streaming video, event photo

Introduction to the Symposium Issue on The Americanization of International Dispute Resolution

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Prioritise water and sanitation in PRSPs to reach the MDGs

Prioritise water and sanitation in PRSPs to reach the MDG

Home birth in Ireland 1993 - 1997: a review of community midwifery practice

To date little is known about the practices of domiciliary midwives and the outcomes of home birth in Ireland. The purpose of this review is to provide some background information on the situation for women seeking a home birth and to document the outcomes of home births in Ireland between 1993 -1997. Design: Descriptive analysis of prospective data collected from domiciliary midwives regarding women who requested a home birth between 1993 and 1997. Participants: The questionnaire was distributed to 15 domiciliary midwives; this included all the domiciliary midwives known to the authors to be practising in Ireland at that time. Findings: During this period, 585 women planned to give birth in their home with the assistance of midwives, 500 women achieved this. The spontaneous vaginal delivery rate for women who commenced their labour at home was 96.9% (n = 554). These women gave birth without medications or other interventions. 544 (93%) of the women breastfed their babies and 538 (92%) were still breastfeeding at 6 weeks. This is the first review of domiciliary midwifery practice in Ireland in recent years. They obtained data from 11 independent midwives on 585 women who planned home births. Findings showed high rates of spontaneous vaginal delivery and breastfeeding. There were 500 babies born at home with three perinatal deaths, including one undiagnosed breech delivery, one infant with abnormal lungs on post-mortem and one infant with Potter's Syndrome who was stillborn

Treatment outcome and radioiodine dose-response in differentiated thyroid carcinoma

Radioiodine (131I) has been used to treat differentiated thyroid carcinoma for the past fifty years. The activity administered remains empirical and most clinicians prescribe a fixed activity for ablation and therapy based upon experience and likely side effects. This lack of tumour dosimetry contrasts sharply with planning for external beam radiotherapy where precise tumour-dose prescription is mandatory. Estimation of absorbed radiation dose delivered to target tissue has been largely ignored in the past partly beacuse of the difficulty in measuring that part of the target volume which is metabolically active. Where absorbed dose has been estimated there is no consensus as to what absorbed dose should be delivered in order to destroy thyroid remnants and metastatic lesions. In order to calculate the absorbed radiation dose to those tissues which concentrate radioiodine, three parameters must be determined: the initial activity in the target tissue; the effective half-life of the radioiodine and the mass of tissue. Tumour and normal thyroid absorbed doses have been determined using a dual-headed whole-body scanner with special high- resolution low-sensitivity collimators. Improved accuracy in the estimation of functioning tumour mass has been achieved using positron emission tomography with a low-cost large area multi-wire proportional chamber camera, developed by the Physics Department of the Royal Marsden Hospital in collaboration with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories. Dosimetry studies were performed for 54 patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (40 papillary, 14 follicular). There were 39 females and 15 males, ages 22 to 79 years. Dose-response graphs have been constructed in order to determine the tumouricidal dose for differentiated thyroid carcinoma metastases and thus enable precise activities of radioiodine to be prescribed in order to maximise tumour kill and minimise morbidity. The clinical data demonstrate that the administration of fixed activities of radioiodine results in a very large range of radiation absorbed dose to residual normal thyroid tissue and metastases of differentiated thyroid carcinoma. Following near-total thyroidectomy and 3.0 GBq 131I, a mean absorbed dose of 349 Gy achieved complete ablation of thyroid remnants in 67[percent] of patients (73[percent] of sites). Patients who had persistent uptake in the thyroid region on subsequent radioiodine scanning had received a mean absorbed dose of only 80 Gy. Failure to ablate may be attributed to two possible factors: large residua following less than radical surgery and the presence of tumour in association with normal tissue. Radioiodine therapy appears to be most effective in destroying small volumes of tissue after optimum surgical cytoreduction. Moreover, when tumour remains in association with normal tissue, the results here indicate that a much lower concentration of radioiodine can be achieved. For these two groups of patients, higher activities of are indicated. Successful destruction of cervical node metastases has been accomplished with absorbed doses of 150 Gy following functional neck dissection. Bone metastases, which are generally associated with a poor prognosis, require doses in excess of 100 Gy for eradication but this can be achieved for solitary deposits following initial surgical debulking. Nevertheless, worthwhile palliation may still be achieved with absorbed doses lower than this. However, the clinical data suggest that absorbed doses less than 20 Gy are sub-therapeutic and that alternative therapy should be considered if less than this can be achieved with radioiodine therapy. The dose-response data explain the spectrum of clinical response to fixed activities of radioiodine. In future they will enable precise prescription of radioiodine to achieve tumouricidal doses whilst avoiding the morbidity, staff hazards and expense of ineffective therapy

New insights into the biological role of mammalian ADARs; the RNA editing proteins

The ADAR proteins deaminate adenosine to inosine in double-stranded RNA which is one of the most abundant modifications present in mammalian RNA. Inosine can have a profound effect on the RNAs that are edited, not only changing the base-pairing properties, but can also result in recoding, as inosine behaves as if it were guanosine. In mammals there are three ADAR proteins and two ADAR-related proteins (ADAD) expressed. All have a very similar modular structure; however, both their expression and biological function differ significantly. Only two of the ADAR proteins have enzymatic activity. However, both ADAR and ADAD proteins possess the ability to bind double-strand RNA. Mutations in ADARs have been associated with many diseases ranging from cancer, innate immunity to neurological disorders. Here, we will discuss in detail the domain structure of mammalian ADARs, the effects of RNA editing, and the role of ADARs in human diseases

Adaptive evolution of the human fatty acid synthase gene: Support for the cancer selection and fat utilization hypotheses?

Cancer may act as the etiological agent for natural selection in some genes. This selective pressure would act to reduce the success of neoplastic lineages over normal cell lineages in individuals of reproductive age. In addition, humanâs relatively larger brain and longer lifespan may have also acted as a selective force requiring new genotypes. One of the most important proteins in both processes is the fatty acid synthase (FAS) gene involved in fatty acid biosynthesis. Avariety of other proteins, including PTEN, MAPK1, SREBP1, SREBP2 and PI are also involved in the regulation of fatty acid biosynthesis. We have specifically analysed variability in selective pressure across all these genes in human, mouse and other vertebrates.We have found that the FAS gene alone has signatures indicative of adaptive evolution.We did not find any signatures of adaptive evolution in any of the other proteins. In the FAS gene, we have detected an excess of non-synonymous over synonymous substitutions in approximately 6% of sites in the human lineage. Contrastingly, the substitution process at these sites in other available vertebrates and mammals indicates strong purifying selection. This is likely to reflect a functional shift in human FAS and correlates well with previously observed changes in FAS biochemical activities. We speculate that the role played by FAS either in cancer development or in human brain development has created this selective pressure, although we cannot rule out the various other functions of FAS