Never Let Me Go

So I am not completely done with the reading and am on page 141, but I am now pretty sure that the Hailsham students, now living in the Cottages, are clones. Kathy talks about the move from Hailsham to the Cottages. There are many things that she feels is different about it. Everyone is more mature one could say. However, porn floats around the place like its nothing. Sex is not as talked about as it used to be, but it is still viewed the same way. Kathy has had sex multiple times. She told Ruth about this. Ruth and Kathy stay up at night talking; the same way they did with the other girls, when they were all at Hailsham. Anyway, Kathy and Rose were talking and Rose's "possible" was mentioned. Apparently a "possible" is the person that they have been cloned from. Or at least, that is my understanding of it all. I am really enjoying this book. I like not knowing what is going on and figuring things out along the way.

Policy Paper - DOTS Program and TB

The main idea for my policy paper is preventing the spread of Tuberculosis, TB, by making treatment mandatory for all infected and watching the patients physically take the medication by way of the DOTS program. The DOTS program is a program that has been in use for a while, but it is not used strictly. In the DOTS program, a nurses aid or medical person of some sort goes to the home of the TB patient and watches them take their medication. This will happen on a daily basis for the amount of time the treatment is needed. Treatment usually lasts for a minimum of six months.

The treatment needs to be supervised so that TB cannot become resistant to the drugs used to treat TB, and the effect being that more people become infected with an even worse form of TB. Treatment also needs to be mandatory so that TB will not be allowed to spread.

Discussions

I like the discussions in class the best. Writing papers and giving speeches are not my favorite, but I enjoy debating and discussing any kind of topic with different people. I like learning other people's views on certain things. I love to read and so the readings usually are usually good. I have not had to pick a certain side to many of the topics that we discuss and I am glad that now I am learning more information about them. This way, I can come up with my own views and they will be able to be more stable, because I know more about the topics. I still do not know my views on everything that we discuss, but I enjoy it anyway.

Hailsham students

The Hailsham students are taught sexuality very casually. It is not immoral at all before marriage. In fact marriage isn't even mentioned I don't think. They are not expected to have children either. They are told that they cannot have children. They are taught how the people "outside" Hailsham treat sex though. The students at Hailsham are very disconnected to the world outside of where they live. It is disturbing to me that there are little values about sexual immorality.
Before, I was thinking that the reason the Hailsham students were so secluded and feared was because they had a disease or something like cancer. Now I think that these students are clones, or something of the sort. The book, Never Let Me Go, is a science fiction, and I think that it is supposed to be in the future. The students main purpose in life is to give donations. They do not have any other purpose. They cannot have children, they are secluded and not taught the same things as other students. They are "special" and different from the population outside of Hailsham, they are even different from their teachers.
I really like the story so far, mainly because I am so confused still. It will be very interesting figuring out the answers to all of the unanswered questions.

Anna's Topic on the Aids research in developing countries

To be completely honest, I do not know where I stand on the issue discussed in class on Wednesday, about research in Uganda. While reading the summary of the article presented, I noticed that studies in Third World countries were "equivalent" to sweat shops. Taking that idea, the research sounds absurd and completely unethical. However, the research in no way hurt the Ugandans. I might even venture to say that it helped them more than hurt them. Then there is the problem of creating a "double standard," which I do not think that I still fully understand that concept.

Another idea, however, caught my attention. "To allow [relativism] to seep into the international and national ethical standards will open the door to an idea that [condones] the possible abuse of those least able to protect themselves." (Clark, 2002) This idea jumped out at me because I hear "relativism" sometimes while discussing religion. To say that something is okay for one person, but not okay for another, is the relativity of that something. People tend to say that tolerance for one anothers' religions is important. Then to see relativism being bad with ethical standards (religion being as hard to define as ethics) seems to contradict the use of relativism. I agree that condoning a program that could lead to the abuse of people is bad. I also believe that relativism is not justifiable in religion, as well as ethics.

Clark, P. (2002) Aids research in developing countries: Do the ends justify the means? Medical Science Monitor, 8, 5-16.

Quarantines for deadly diseases

I think that it is necessary for quarantines to be used to stop the spread of deadly infections. Before, I only thought that the ethical issues were between the general public and the people with the infections. Which, pretty much is the case, except that I now have a new way to think about it. The people with the infections may not want to be quarantined because it disables them from all of their individual rights. But then who is to say that the rights of everyone else is being protected when a disease/infection can be spread to them from people who are not being quarantined. Utilitarianism is a new word for me, and I am going to be using it as a main reason why quarantines should be used if needed. Utilitarianism is: the ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons (http://dictionary.reference.com/). Utility is the good to be maximized from actions, and "The ends justify the means," or the moral worth of an action is determined by the outcome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism). Basically, it would be okay to quarantine people because it helps many more people. And the total individual rights of the general population is much greater than the individuals rights who has the infection.

Looking for sources

I found it difficult to find anything about quarantines and infectious diseases on EBSCOhost. I resorted to searching on Google Scholar. I found plenty of sources there which was a lot more encouraging. I don't know if it was just bad key words or what.