THE FOREIGN CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

THE FOREIGN CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT - Essay Example In 1977, congress endorsed the FCPA in response to the revealed widespread bribery where company managements resorted to falsification of company records and bribery. Through the FCPA act, the congress aimed at protecting the image of American democracy abroad while reinforcing the integrity US companies. In addition, the enactment of FCPA was aimed halting corrupt practice while restoring public confidence. The main intention of the enactment was to illegalize payments completed to foreign government officials by some persons and entities in quest of attaining or sustaining business (Koehler, 2013, p. 6). Two provisions used to attain this goal focus on anti-bribery and accounting. Through the anti-bribery provision, FCPA prohibits bribery of foreign public officials despite their position or rank. Since FCPA does not cover private-to-private bribery, a foreign public official serving in the capacity of judicial or legislative position, individuals practicing public roles on foreign land, , or an official serving in public firms. The Act also prohibits firms against issuing valuable things like money, offers, payments, promises to give, or gifts (Harris, 2011). Companies that participate in such payments are subject to FCPA liability as well as violations of anti-bribery provisions that include offers and promises, and actual gifts and payments. In addition, firms are prohibited from using intermediaries like consultants, businesses associates, and partners among others, to ‘knowingly’ make payments or portions prohibited by FCPA. For local and international companies listed in the US SEC, FCPA requires meeting bookkeeping provisions. The aim is to enhance the FCPA anti-bribery provisions to oversee that companies not only make but also maintain accurate records and books reasonably representing the company’s transactions (Cragg, 2005). Additionally, the

Interoffice Memo Essay Example for Free

Interoffice Memo Essay Imagine that it is 1976, and you are an administrator in a human services organization. You have just learned of the ruling in the case,Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California. Write a 350- to 500-word summary in which you create an interoffice memo for all employees that explains this legislation. In your memo, also include the following information: †¢How the Tarasoff case has affected ethical decision making for human service professionals †¢How the case affects the human services code of ethics.   Format your summary consistent with APA guidelines. Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.

Overview of Cancer Treatment Trials

Overview of Cancer Treatment Trials Knowing the Enemy In an era gripped by the promise of cytotoxic chemotherapy, a few dissenting voices was heard. Indiscriminate chemotherapy could not be the only strategy to attack cancer. To attack a cancer cell, one needed to begin by identifying its unique biological behavior, and vulnerabilities. Hormone Therapy for Prostate Cancer Charles Huggins, a urological surgeon at the University of Chicago, was a specialist in diseases of the bladder, kidney, genitals, and prostate. The prostate is a small walnut shaped gland wrapped around the outlet of the urinary tract in men. Cancer of the prostate represents one-third of cancer incidence in men, six times that of leukemia and lymphoma. In the late 1920s, by performing surgical castration on dogs, Huggins found that the hormone testosterone kept both the normal and cancer cells in the prostate alive. Rather than performing a surgical castration on his patients, Huggins injected a female hormone into their bodies to inhibit testosterone function. He called the method chemical castration. As with surgical castration, Huggins found that patients responded to the therapy, with minimal side effects. But many of the patients who responded to the therapy eventually relapsed. Beatsons Riddle In the late 1890s, a Scottish surgeon named George Beatson had learned that the removal of the ovaries from cows changed the quality of their udders and altered their capacity to lactate. Intrigued by the inexplicable link between ovaries and breasts, Beatson surgically removed the ovaries of three women with breast cancer. To his astonishment, the breast tumors of his three patients shrank dramatically after the surgery. But when surgeons in London tried to apply the method to a larger group of women, only about two-thirds of the breast cancer patients responded. Solving the Riddle In the mid-1960s, Elwood Jensen, a young chemist in Chicago, working with Huggins, came close to solving Beatsons riddle. He found out that estrogen, the principal hormone secreted by the ovaries, worked by binding to a receptor in a target cell. He discovered that breast cancer cases could be divided into two types, depending on whether its estrogen sensitive or insensitive, ER-positive and ER-negative tumors. ER-positive tumors, possessing the receptor, would respond to Beatsons surgery. ER-negative tumors not possessing the receptor, would be unresponsive. The simplest way to prove this theory was to launch an experiment. But the surgical procedure had fallen out of fashion. An alternative was to use a drug to inhibit estrogen function. But Jensen had no such drug. Tamoxifen Trial Tamoxifen was an anti-estrogen compound developed by the hormone biologist Arther Walpole in the early 1960s. In the summer of 1969, Moya Cole, a Manchester oncologist specializing in breast cancer, launched a clinical trial at Christie Hospital in Manchester. Forty-six women with breast cancer were treated with tamoxifen. The response was almost immediate in ten patients. The tumors in the breast and the lung metastases shrank. But like Hugginss prostate cancer patients, many of the patients who responded to the therapy eventually relapsed. Halsteds Ashes Moya Coles tamoxifen trial in 1969 was designed to treat women with late stage metastatic breast cancer. But Cole wondered about an alternative strategy. What if women with early stage tumors were treated with tamoxifen? Bonadonnas Adjuvant Chemotherapy Trial A similar idea occurred to a 33-year-old oncologist named Paul Carbone at the NCI ten years ago. Inspired by Min Chiu Li, Carbone had launched a small trial in 1963 and found out that adding chemotherapy after surgery reduced the rate of relapse from breast cancer. Carbone and his team called this treatment adjuvant chemotherapy. It would remove microscopic deposits of malignant cells left behind after surgery, completing the cancer-cleansing task that the surgery had set out to do. In 1972, an Italian oncologist name Gianni Bonadonna proposed to the NCI a large randomized trial to study adjuvant chemotherapy for early stage breast cancer. In the summer of 1973, Bonadonna began his trial by randomizing nearly four hundred women half to treatment with CMF (a toxic three-drug cocktail) and half to no treatment. Bonadonna presented his results in the winter of 1975. About half of the women in the no treatment group had elapsed while only one-third of the group receiving the adjuvant chemotherapy had relapsed. So adjuvant chemotherapy had prevented cancer relapses in about one in every six patients. The Fisher Adjuvant Tamoxifen Trial What if the adjuvant therapy was done with hormonal therapy instead of chemotherapy? In January 1977, Bernie Fisher recruited 1,891 women with early stage ER-positive breast cancer. He treated half with adjuvant tamoxifen and the other half with no tamoxifen. By 1981, he found out that adjuvant therapy with tamoxifen reduced cancer relapse rates by one-half. In 1985, Fisher reported that the effect of tamoxifen treatment was even more dramatic. Among the 500 women older than fifty assigned to each group, adjuvant tamoxifen had prevented fifty-five relapses and deaths. Lessons Learned By the 1980s, the old paradigms of treatment had evolved into new paradigms. Halsteds radical approach to attack cancer cells was reborn as adjuvant therapy. Ehrlichs magic bullet was reincarnated as hormonal therapy. Although neither of these alternatives offer definitive cures, these trials had confirmed two important principles of cancer biology and cancer therapy: These trials etched the message that cancer was heterogeneous. Cancers came in variety of forms, each with unique biological behaviors. The heterogeneity was genetic: some responded to hormonal treatments, other not. And the heterogeneity was anatomic: some cancers were local, while others spread to distant organs. Understanding that heterogeneity was of deep consequence. It was essential to know the cancer as intimately as possible before rushing to treat it. For instance, tamoxifen treatment only applies to ER-positive breast cancers. Palliative Care Palliative care is the branch of medicine that focuses on symptom relief and comfort, founded by Cecily Saunders, an English nurse, physician and social worker. She created a hospice in London in 1967 to care specifically for the terminally ill and dying. Counting Cancer In November 1985, a Harvard biologist named John Cairns measured the progress in the War on Cancer by revitalizing old records that had existed since World War II. He went through the cancer registry, and state-by-state statistics on cancer-related deaths to get a portrait of cancer over time. He used the cancer registry to estimate the number of lives saved by the therapeutic advances since 1950 and divide these therapeutic advances into various categories. His findings were: (1)Less than 5 percent of patients diagnosed with cancer in America; and (2) Less than 10% of patients who would die of cancer, had enjoyed the advances in cancer therapy and screening. Cairns analysis was widely influential, but it needed some measure of the comparative trends in cancer mortality over the years. John Bailar and Elaine Smith from Harvard provided such an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine in May 1986. Bailar-Smith Analysis In the analysis, Bailar-Smith did not use survival-rate analysis because survival-rate analysis can be sensitive to biases such as cancer screenings. They used overall mortality instead. To compare samples over time, they normalized the population to the same standard. According to Bailar-Smith: Cancer-related deaths had increased by 8.7 percent from 1962 to 1985. The increase reflected many factors, but mainly because of the increase in lung cancer caused by the increase in smoking rates in the United States. Bailar-Smith noted that the 35 years of intense efforts to improve the treatment of cancer must be judged a qualified failure. As Cairns had already pointed out, prevention was the only intervention known to reduce the aggregate mortality for a disease. Bailar argued that prevention, as a strategy, had been neglected by the NCI in its pursuit of cures. Treatment strategies received 80 percent of the money while prevention research received about 20 percent. A similar bias existed in private research institutions. Bailar-Smith noted, A shift in research emphasis, from research on treatment to research on prevention, seems necessary if substantial progress against cancer is to be forthcoming

Free College Admissions Essays: A Rare Encounter :: College Admissions Essays

A Rare Encounter    Very rarely in life does one encounter an individual who impacts you in such a way that they not only become ingrained in memory, but also shape the type of person you want to become. For me, Mrs. Peggy Jeens was one of these very special and unforgettable people.    Although I only had the pleasure of knowing Mrs. Jeens for two of my high school years, she affected me in ways far beyond the educational scope. Through her teaching, she showed me what true happiness and satisfaction were. How else could anyone teach for so long and still begin each day with a smile? With exciting and thought-captivating lessons, Mrs. Jeens managed not only to pass the information along to her students, but also make them enjoy learning in such a way that they looked forward to her class every day.    Outstanding teaching abilities, although essential, are not the only characteristics of an unforgettable teacher. In order for a teacher to have that unexplainable spark, you must know them outside of the context of school and have the opportunity to see their true personalities. I was most definitely able to do this with Mrs. Jeens by accompanying her on trips to Italy, Greece, Spain, and Morocco. During these week-long trips, I was able to get to know Mrs. Jeens in a way that most students cannot. I learned that she was an incredibly generous and fun-loving individual who made each trip an exciting adventure for her students. Even though we did not always encounter the best of circumstances, Mrs. Jeens always managed to take the worst situations and make them bright.    Although I learned many things from my association with Mrs. Peggy Jeens, the one I value above all is the ability to be happy with whatever life throws at you. Mrs. Jeens always emanated a happiness that infected everyone around her through her smiles, kind words, and loving nature. It is my personal belief that the most important thing in life is to be happy, as if you are happy, you are content with your life and want for nothing.

Animal Rights Final Research Paper

Animal Rights Final Research Paper Franco Pacheco ENGL-135 Prof. Gurin DeVry University December 13, 2012 Animal rights The idea of animal rights is not new. Through the 18th and 19th Century philosophers like Rousseau, Kant, Bentham, and Schopenhauer have produced different arguments in favor of the treatment of animals.Animal rights is the idea that nonhuman animals are entitled to the possession of their own lives and that they should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. All animals are equal in the sense that they all can sense pain and suffering however as far as treating them like humans, I do not think so. Humans have been eating meat for as long as we have been on this earth and there is nothing wrong with that. That does not mean people enjoy killing them for pleasure, their lives are taking for our survival.Eating meat is not wrong as long as we are conscious of their contribution to humankind over the years, providing us with transpo rtation, food, clothing, and companionship. Torturing and killing animals for pleasure is wrong, however, eating their meat moderately for survival is not. By the beginning of the 18th century, writers began to discuss animal feelings of pain and suffering, vivisection, and the cruel treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food.All animals have the same capacity for suffering, but how we see them differs and that determines what we will tolerate happening to them. Most people are not capable of killing what they eat with their own hands but if is cooked and served; there are no thoughts of how or where it came from. Over 9 billion chickens, pigs, cattle, turkeys, sheep, goats, ducks, and geese are bred, raised, and killed for food annually in America.Today, the breeding of farm animals is dominated by industrialized facilities that maximize profits by treating them as production units and forgetting that they can also feel pain as human do. The abuse of farm animals in facto ry farms, for example, did not see an influx until the early 19th century, when small family farms and traditional ranching of livestock started to cave under the pressure of larger institutional farming practices. As factory farms became the norm, so, unfortunately did the systematic and prolonged abuse of animals raised for human consumption.Most animals in these facilities are forced to endure physical and psychological abuse for months if not years on end, deprived of the ability to perform behaviors inherent to their species, and housed in overcrowded facilities with insufficient food, water, and natural light. Most are given steroids to enhance growth, and antibiotics to fend off illnesses that are likely to occur in such unsanitary conditions. Their eventual slaughter is often performed in a manner as inhumane as the condition in which they are forced to exist until that day.There are many people working for the improvement of the ways in which animals that are raised for foo d are handled and slaughtered; most notable is Temple Grandin. She is one of the leading authorities on the design of animal handling facilities, specializing in the humane handling of animals at the point of slaughter in the meat industry. She is credited with having â€Å"done more to improve welfare for animals at the point of slaughter than any human alive. † According to data extrapolated from U. S. Department of Agriculture reports that nearly 10. billion land animals were raised and killed for food in the United States in 2010. This is a 1. 7% rise from the 2009 totals, larger than the 0. 9% increase in US population, meaning that animals killed per-capita increased slightly. Based on January-August 2011 USDA slaughter numbers, it is projected that the number of land animals killed in 2011 will increase an additional 1% from 2010 numbers, rising to approximately 10,266 million animals. Fortunately, due to increased feed prices and sinking domestic demand, Bloomberg. om is speculating that there may be a 5% drop in animals raised for food in 2012! While the number of aquatic animals killed each year is not reported, meticulous calculations by researcher Noam Mohr estimate the number of finfishes killed each year for US consumption to be 13,027 million, and the number of shellfishes to be 40,455 million, resulting in a combined 53,481 million (over 53 billion) aquatic animals who died for American consumption in 2010. Becoming a vegetarian overnight will not stop the purposeful harm done to animals at the hands of human beings.Consequently, I agree that there is a lot that has gone very wrong with most of our meat production, but we are omnivores, and arguing that we are not is not going to get us anywhere. It may be possible to live without meat, but considering that all animals will eventually die, will be a sin not to eat them before other animals do. We feel bad of the killing of the animals we eat, but not bad enough to stop eating them comple tely. People have their own reasons for becoming vegan and not everyone is concern about the animal’s welfare.Becoming vegan will not stop animal abuse; people are still going to do what they want to do, especially if it involves animal cruelty. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) can do all they can, but you cannot right all the wrongs in the world. The most prominent of the abolitionists is Gary Francione, professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. He argues that focusing on animal welfare may actually worsen the position of animals, because it entrenches the view of them as property, and makes the public more comfortable about using them.I actually hate the way animals are treated and could not find a better way of killing them without making it go through torture. However, I am not switching to become vegan, just because a group of people considers it cruelty. I still love meat, but I treat animals with respect and morality because the y are providing the protein my body needs for survival. It is not admissible to cause animal’s unnecessary pain and suffering. I do not believe in the unethical treatment of animals, however I do believe in the ethical use of them.Confinement production of livestock and poultry has generated a major conflict between the meats, dairy, poultry industries, and reformist welfare and abolitionists animal rights group. They condemn and oppose factory farming because they view intensive production as inhumane, being carried out under unnatural conditions and causing suffering for the animal and poultry. Over the past 50 years, animal agriculture has increased from small family farms to large corporate factory farming systems.In these factory-farming systems, their main concern is increasing the profits margins at all costs and the process has devastating consequences for the animals. Farmed animals lead a life of misery from the moment they are born to when they are slaughtered. Eve ry day, everywhere across the globe, millions of these animals are mishandled, kept in confinement, mutilated as part of routine husbandry practices, and deprived of their basic physical and behavioral needs. In September of 1994, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) designated the National Farm Animals Awareness Week (Guither, pg. 1). They criticized the cruelty of the confinement housing of such animals and they asked consumers to â€Å"shop with compassion. † Bernard E. Rollin an American philosopher and currently a professor of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University urges the food animal producers and animal industry â€Å"not to resist and combat the new ethic for animals , for they will not win, but rather to appropriate it into their production systems with the help of research that acknowledges and respects the patent truth that animals can both suffer and be happy†(Guither, pg. 9). In the last two decades hu ndreds of thousands Americans have fight animal rights as part of a new, powerful and controversial social movement. All animal liberationists believe that the individual interests of non-human animals deserve recognition and protection, but the movement can be split into two broad camps. Animal rights advocates, or rights liberationists, believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them; for example, the work of Philosophers Tom Regan and Peter Singer.They do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds (Utilitarianism in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number) that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy (Isacat, 2008). Dr. David Nibert is a Professor of Sociology at the Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. He teaches Animal s & Society, Global Change, Social Stratification, Minority Groups, and Law and Society.He is the author of Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Rowman/Littlefield). He conducted a survey among residents of Clark County, Ohio and found that support for animal rights is significantly related to seven of the eleven variables, suggesting the existence of an important link between one's disposition toward human and nonhuman animals. Five hundred and one residents of Clark County, Ohio, aged eighteen and older, responded to a telephone survey conducted April 16-18, 1993. This survey was designed to examine respondent’s opinions on several social issues.One of the questions was, â€Å"Some people say that animals have rights that people should respect. Would you agree or disagree? † They were also asked eleven questions adapted from the General Social Survey (Wood, 1990). Here are the results of the Nibert’s survey: â€Å"Of the 501 respondents, 246 (49. 1 %) were male and 255 (50. 9%) were female. 81 1 (20. 8%) were less than 30 years of age, 208 (41. 6%) were between 30 and 49 years old, and 184 (36. 8%) were over 50. 76 (15. 2%) had not graduated from high school, 277 (55. 3%) were high school graduates and 143 (29. %) were college graduates. The sample was predominantly white (461 or 92%) and married (334 or 66. 7%). In response to the animal rights question, 373 respondents (74. 5%) agreed, 84 (16. 8%) disagreed, 37 (7. 4%) were undecided and 7 (1. 4%) refused. For purposes of convenience, the respondents who agreed that animals have rights will be referred to as â€Å"animal rights supporters. † Examination of demographic variables reveals that age, sex, place of residence and religion were significantly related to support for animal rights.Younger people were more likely to support animal rights than older people, women more than men, and city residents more than those living in more rural areas of the county (Nibert 1994). † To summarize, Animal rights are a matter of personal choice. Every individual has a right to decide how he or she wants to treat others, including other species. Animals have been around on the earth for as long as humans have, if not longer. They play an important role in today's society whether or not we choose to admit it. To say that animals have rights is only to end the discussion before it starts.Animals will be animals and they will eat one another for the need of survival: that is a natural phenomenon. We can reduce some suffering by eliminating certain practices in certain areas, but this will not solve the problem. As explained above, we cannot humanely raise nine billion animals. Going vegan is the only solution. Also, keep in mind that some meat, eggs and dairy products are misleadingly marketed as â€Å"humane† but offer only marginal improvements over traditional factory farming. These animals are not raised humanely if they are in larger cages, or are taken out of cages only to live in overcrowded barns.And â€Å"humane slaughter† is an oxymoron. References Cavalieri, Paola. (2001) the animal question, why nonhuman animals deserve human rights. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Grillo, Alexander, (August 15, 2012), Five Reasons Why Meat-Eating Cannot Be Considered a ‘Personal Choice’ Free from Harm, Food and Psychology http://freefromharm. org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/ Guither, Harold D. (1998) Animal rights, History and scope of a radical social movement. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University PressIssitt, Micah & Newton, Heather (2011), p2-2, 1p – Animals Deserve the Same Rights as Humans. http://search. ebscohost. com. proxy. devry. edu/login. aspx? direct=true&db=pwh&AN=26608510&site=pov-live Rich, Alex & Wagner Geraldine (2011), p1-1, 1p Points of View: Animal Rights: An Overview. http://search. eb scohost. com. proxy. devry. edu/login. aspx? direct=true&db=pwh&AN=22827052&site=pov-live Thompson, Michael (2012) Why We Have Ethical Obligations to Animals: Animal Welfare and the Common Good more http://wpunj. academia. du/MichaelThompson/Papers/392701/Why_We_Have_Ethical_Obligations_to_Animals_Animal_Welfare_and_the_Common_Good April 12, 2011. American Humane Association hails ‘yes’ vote on humane standards for poultry in Washington http://www. americanhumane. org/animals/animal-welfare-news/american-humane-association-hails-yes-vote. html Report: Number of Animals Killed In US Increases in 2010 http://farmusa. org/statistics11. html Animal Rights and Human Social Issues David A. Nibert, Wittenberg University (1994) http://www. animalsandsociety. org/assets/library/283_s222. pdf

Ways to Promote a Sustainable Living

Ways to promote a sustainable living What is sustainable living? Sustainable living is to live in way to those values and respects the natural systems and species that co-exist on this earth by reducing the usage of Earth’s natural resources. A sustainable society can protect the future generations without the depletion of our Earth’s natural resources and coexistence with the flora and fauna. Sustainable design and sustainable developments are the main factors to sustainable living. First of all, we should educate the younger ones about the importance of living sustainably. The government can enforce a new curriculum to the school whereby the students will be educated and examined on the understanding of sustainable living. Moreover educational internships can be offered by nonprofit organization or government so that our young and bright generation can contribute to sustainable development and sustainable design. Secondly, we could also encourage the citizens to conserve water, electricity, petrol, reduction the emission of greenhouse gas at home. For example, after washing the rice, the water could be used to water the plants. Moreover, use the dish washer and washing machine whenever possible as it can save water. Citizens should car pool more often or finding alternative ways of transport such as bus, light rail transit, bicycle or monorail as it will be able to reduce the usage of petrol and the emission of carbon dioxide into the environment. Furthermore, people are encouraged to fix solar power on their rooftop as it uses the sunlight which is a renewable resource to generate electricity for the entire household. Thirdly, changing the way we eat also helps to promote a sustainable living. This is because the industrial meat production also involves high environmental costs such as soil erosion, land degradation and depletion of natural resources. Reducing the meat consumption by eating more vegetables will be able to reduce the environmentally industrial meat production. Beside this, urban gardening and organic farming should be introduce and promoted to all the citizens as it does need to use tremendous applications of nitrogen fertilizer to grow plants. Growing more plants at the backyard of your house will also encourage the citizens to eat more organic plants instead of meat. Finally, nonprofit organization can host and sponsors special events throughout the year, with festival, conferences and community gathering. For example we have campaigns such as Go Green which encourages people to use recyclable bags instead of using plastic bags, Earth Day whereby for a certain period of time we will switch of the usage electricity of the whole house. Moreover, nonprofit organization should provide resource center with information about the events in the area that promote sustainable living. Knowledge is power and enables the consumer to make wiser choices and to re-create their life and achieve sustainable living without losing comfort and joy. The earth needs a change, the world is hurting because of over usage and because of unwise decisions of humanity.