The moral question Do you think that wrong ethics impact one’s life? Society and individual hold on different values in moral aspect. Wrong ethics look like the contamination of soul. In this materialistic age, people do not pay attention to our surroundings. Moreover, social groups do not care about human rights. In the following, Nikki White’s story reflects two values of American. Nikki White died of lupus erythematosus in The United Stated. When she died, she was only thirty-two years old. She had too much money to quality for health care under welfare but too little money to pay for the treatment bill. Even though she asked for help, she still died. Ms. White’s death could be explained by two American values. Equality means that the same status, rights and responsibilities apply to all the members of a society, group or family. In a positive way, regarding equality provides more opportunities for people. It means that people must be treated with same status. People achieve what they want in same situation. No matter who you are, you have equal right. However, in this case, people cannot gain same treatment in The United States. This is unequal for people who really need to get assistance. People in middle class, are qualified for health care. They cannot pay for bills of serious disease such as lupus. That reason lead to death. Another American value is Materialism. This means a desire for wealth and material possessions. Moreover, material life is the most important thing for people who are materialism. Again, this value has two sides. The positive element of materialism is that it brings material enjoyment. People can be satisfied by having wealth or improving their level of living quality. From another perspective, the negative factor is about lack of humanitarian. Insurance companies only focus on how much money you have or what conditions you have. They do not care whether people are able to afford the bills. Thus, the consequence is always in tragedy. In my point of view, people set up the right principles and beliefs in moral aspect. Everybody has the right to be alive or have the same opportunity to accept help from the government. People should be kindly treated. The government should provide the basic human needs, especially human life in order to promote a harmonious society. In conclusion, it is important that people build the right behavior for facing on life. As life based on values of equality and non-materialism, people should be unselfish, be multi-love and be more care. Three different ways of learning Do you know how many types of learning in college? Many students are looking for some opinions of experienced student about diverse methods of leaning. Three different modalities of learning ways, which are face to face, online and hybrid, are recommended. Firstly, the generally know type of learning is face to face. Students and teachers get together to communicate directly in the courses. Also, there are lots of advantages as students can share opinions with classmates. This really assists students to understand better. In addition, it is not only students are able to more focus on learning, but also it helps students to build a standard schedule which means make students having regular time to study. Furthermore, according to my classmates, students can ask questions if they misunderstanding about the teacher. It is a good way to get information easily. From another perspective, learning time is wasted by transportation. Students have to spend more time on the way. Students can choose online classes instead of face to face because it saves more time to study. Secondly, there is another way to study which is online. This is a type of visual class using your computer to watch video. In a positive way, students have more time to study. Thus, students were able to save time on the way. Moreover, students can control their personal time which means flexi-time is used fully. Next, it is an efficient modality to repeat information immediately. For instants, an online assignment I attended, “Human Guinea Pigs: Involuntary Medical Experimentation”- A Global Perspective. Sometimes I cannot catch the point of the speaker. So I also use the pause key of the computer to repeat unlimited times about the content. That helps me a lot to finish the assignment which is given by teacher. The disadvantage of online learning, students cannot ask questions. The detail of the topic cannot be discussed. Next, students are easily influenced by environment. To illustrate, when students are studying at home or neighbors who live near you make noise outside such as weeding around their yard. It is hard to focus on study. Students can frequent concentrated thinking by developing their personal knowledge through active online learning. Finally, there is a neutral type of learning by hybrid which means taking class both face to face and online learning. It combines above those advantages which are face to face and online. Students use both of these ways that are efficient and effective ways to use time maximum. Hybrid can promote understanding the issues of learning. Specifically, sometimes school stop courses in bad weather or teacher who cannot provide classes to students has their private thing to deal with. At this time, teacher will give us some online assignment that we have to use computer to log on the website about the video class. This way helps us fully take advantage of time to study. Three kinds of learning ways are introduced above, which are essential learning ways in college life. Widespread way of learning is face to face. Online learning provides students self-control time in study. Hybrid class content humanized requirement for students. Volunteerism Nowadays, social institutions provide many opportunities for people. More and more people donate their person time to devote themselves to public programs. Why do people take part in volunteer group? The answer is benefit, people can acquire diverse benefits. In the following, I will discuss this issue. People are more responsible as their social role. The importance of responsibility is that people set up right principle and ethics in their personal life. It helps people to make right behavior in right way. Especially, when people are young, education methods are increasingly important. For instance, my elementary school provided some activities when I was in sixth grade. The one activity is that students as a volunteer visited old people who lived alone. Students brought some food and prepared some performance to show to the old people. Because these old people are the only person in their family, they should be treated with respect. The other is that some disabled people who lost their self- life ability were helped through students cleaning their house. These are good ways to train teenagers as volunteers through public practice. Volunteer can get management experience. It helps to strengthen your park group and be a park leader. To illustrate, an online website which I log in before, “www.Partnership.com”, is a program of city parts Foundation and New York City Department of Park & Recreation. It helps New Yorkers work together to make neighborhood parks thrive. Moreover, people become leaders in their communities through workshops, grants and one by one support. Volunteers also cooperate with local organizations to build community stewardship. People need these opportunities to increase the job experience. Volunteer can gain enjoyment. Volunteer whose is hot hearted can helps people who really need assistance. According to Recreation Program in AHRC New York City, people attend their “Super Saturday program”. Volunteering to be a part of a group not only broadens your social circle, but also you can enjoy whatever you are interested in and some field which you are good at. Volunteer can help people by some special areas such as yoga, fitness, cooking, art, drama, photography, which you want to share with others. People feel happy to help other people and also enjoy these actives. I would like to volunteer at this time. There are many options, so I can choose from the volunteer programs. These social activities help me to build integrity, to make my life abundant and to build personal ability. In conclusion, volunteering can bring a variety of benefits in different aspect for people. Volunteers are more responsible as their social role. In addition, volunteer experience makes people enhance their personal skills. Furthermore, people can gain enjoyment through assisting other people. Movie Review What would you think if you heard the U.S. government had supported secret medical experimentation for over 40 years? This is exactly what happened in Tuskegee, Alabama. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated. There is another example in the following. According to a 1997 television film, based on the true story of the decades long Tuskegee experiment, named Miss Evers’s Boys, this movie is about a U.S. Federal Government processes syphilis trial on poor African Americans who have syphilis and are attracted by free treatment in Alabama. Those African Americans are lead to believe that they can be cured well. However, the government only wants to study the effects of untreated syphilis. The central character of this movie, a nurse Eunice Evers who feels her role is to console the involved patients, is well aware of lack of treatment. She faces a difficult choice: abandon the experiment and tell her friends-these patients, or keep silent and continue to coordinate with doctors to give these patients placebos and liniment. Even through penicillin is discovered as a cure, those African Americans who are participants of the experiment on the list still cannot receive treatment. One of the trial subjects that leave that experiment, named Caleb Humphries, joins the military during World War II. He is cured by penicillin. He returns to help his friends on that list, but he fails. After Senate Investigation, the survivors of the study do receive treatment and financial compensation. Tuskegee study is one of the horrible experiments. The government and those surgeons were crazy for medical trial in 1932-1972. Unfortunately, there are similar experiments in the history. An online assignment “Human Guinea Pig: Involuntary Medical Experimentation - A Global perspective”, I learned that Unit 731, a section of the Japanese Army conducted lethal human experimentation during WWII. It was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development. Approximately 250,000 victims who were Chinese, Koreans and Mongolians died. People were persecuted by cruel methods such as live autopsies without anesthesia and inject chemical drugs. They were used for the experiment without consent. It is similar to the Tuskegee experiment because people lost their human rights. Nowadays, people around the world have to know this true history. It violates the human right, which is a kind of serious atrocity. With the development of society, human rights are gradually emphasized. These significant experiments are thought provoking because those video are informative watch. From my point of view, the movie Miss Evers’s Boys makes me lose my last belief in America. People, especially African Americans in that era, survived unequal racial discrimination. I am heartbroken how the government can do such an inhuman study through using the real people. I am angry that these doctors use deception without giving real treatment. This is an immoral medical event in human history, which disenfranchised African Americans to live. The movie opened my eyes to watch things around me in the present. The government should be ashamed of their behaviors. I hope one day a man has the huge power to change this evil world in the future so that this kind of historical event will not happen again. Better education will lead to better health According to the article-“Good Schools can Make Low-Income Teenagers Healthier”, students get healthy behavior in high-performing schools. Even through students come from low-income families, they can be admitted to enter good schools. The researchers who conducted the research of 1,000 students found that attending lower-performing schools lead to unsafe behaviors. A researcher, Dr.Michael Wong who is a medical doctor, states that better education will lead to better health. It is important for low-income teenagers to go to good schools. Bad schools lead low-income students to get worse in bad behaviors. Because this is an invasive cycle, poor students stay in serious environment, which make them to have bad behavior easier and never become good behavior. In the following, I will discuss why poor student should go to high-performing school. First of all, good schools affect positive behavior. An article that I read in the New York Times, is about a student who lacked money. The poor student who lived in Bridgeport, CT, likes drinking high degree alcohol in bad school. Because he never gave up drinking, his score was influenced and got worse. When his parents helped him to transfer a good school, he changed his mind instead of focusing on study. In this case, he felt too strange about drinking in such a good environment of learning. All students who in good schools only pay attention to studying which is the only thing they can do at good schools. Because these students know they can get high score, they study hard. Nothing is more important than this. Secondly, it is a social responsibility to help low-income student to enter in good school. The government should provide more policies for poor students. If they do not have a chance to show their bad behaviors in bad environment, they can get healthier. Moreover, if local governments encourage and admit poor student to good schools, society will increasingly improve. Thirdly, taking care of students, especially in grades 10 through12, is the common principles in society. Good health can bring positive effects on education. For example, I attended a college lecture in China, which was about “the importance of kid health in school”. Good body can help students to achieve their personal goal. You can maximum perform your ability of study, which help you to get more awards in your school. When kids grow up, they can successful by making contributions for society, and to have good behavior in their life. In conclusion, getting a better education can assist low-income students to decrease bad behaviors. Social institutions, parents and governments should make a shared vision to treat poor students that helps students getting healthy by attending good school. 12/01/2015 Should Animals be used for Scientific or Commercial Testing? An estimated 26 million animals are used for experiments every year in the United States. How would you feel if some animals were used to develop medical treatment or were used to make profit testing? People have diverse opinions on this issue. A lot of people believe that animals should be used for medication to protect human health. However, there are three reasons to show that animals should not be used for scientific testing. First of all, animals testing are inhumane and terrible experiments. An institution, Humane Society International, animals are used to study the healing process by the infliction of pain. Researchers take advantage of asphyxiation, neck-breaking, and decapitation to hurt animals to study its effects and remedies. Animals are treated cruelly. Some cosmetic companies test irritable cause of shampoos. Some rabbits’ eyelids are kept open by clips, which cannot blink for many days until the test is over. These methods are inhumane, and animals should not be treated like this. Secondly, people can use alternative testing methods instead of animal testing. In vitro testing makes use of human cells, which can be cultured in glass, and produce more relevant results. Because animals are so diverse from human beings, researchers can get exact value by using human’s cells. In addition, people can use artificial human skin, which is made from sheets of human skin cells grown in the test tubes. That can conduct more useful results than testing on animal skin. Thirdly, animal tests are more expensive than alternative methods. Humane Society International compared animal tests and vitro tests. For example, a rat photo toxicity test costs $11,500, but the non-animal equivalent costs $1,300. Moreover, Us National Institutes of Health spends $14 billion of its annual budget on animal research. Another example, people have to eat 159 million animals annually in the United States. If research institutions want to do test on animal, they must to use more 26 million animals for research that costs extra money on animals. From another perspective, the proponents of animal testing say that it has contributed too many life-saving cures and therapy. Chris Abee, director of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson cancer center’s animal research facility, says that, “the use of chimps is our best hope for finding a vaccine for Hepatitis”, a disease that kills 15,000 people annually in the United States. In addition scientists invented the polio vaccine by testing animals, which reduce the disease from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 223 cases in 2012. Using animals testing are immoral behavior in the human history. Animals are the best friends of human beings. It is important to make a harmonious society. Humans and animals can coexist because lack of each of them, natural environment that we live will imbalance. However, although testing animals can save many lives, it is too cruel for animal. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks A book, named The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, is about HeLa cells. An African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, died of cervical cancer at age 31. Doctor took her cells without her knowledge or informed consent in 1951. Because her cells are immortal, it helped some of the most important advances in medicine such as the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, and more. The author wrote a true story about Henrietta Lacks and her family. Have you ever noticed “informed consent” in hospital? Who give the right to take the cell from the body of the patients to the doctor? Patients’ rights are the big issue in the hospital. In the following, I will discuss three different views which are in moral aspect, in human status and the main character of the book-Henrietta Lacks. It reflects a moral question when doctors and researchers obtain a sample from patients’ part of body to use in their research. Dr. TeLinde did not give any informed consent when Henrietta accepted the operation to cure her cervical cancer. In this book, one quote was recorded,”... no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor... .” In other words, Henrietta was not notified that cells from her cervix was taken by Dr. TeLinde and was sent to tissue culture researcher Gey. I do not believe they had the right to take tissues from the patient even though poor African Americans did not have too many rights in the era of Jim Crow. Patients should be treated fair, and doctor should explain what they are going to do on patients. If doctors and researchers randomly steal whatever they want from patients, their behaviors are immoral. Although poor black people did not have enough money to pay for their hospital bill, this does not mean that they can be freely used to do the research. Racial discrimination is a general phenomenon in the era of Jim Crow. In the book, on page twenty-nine stated, “Like many doctors of his era, TeLinde often used patients from the public ward for research, usually without their knowledge”. Doctors claimed that it is fair to use them as research subjects as a form of free treatment. However, this is unequal condition, which means a kind of violation of basic rights. Patients are treated as immunity of a human person and they are deprived of the right to be informed. No matter whether they can pay for the bill or not, they ought to be told if the surgery can cause any risk. Patients have the right to know what will happen after the operation or medical procedure. The main character of the book , Henrietta Lacks, is an optimistic and strong woman. I think that she would have given explicit consent to have a tissue sample used in medical research if she had been given all the information. The quote on page sixty-six said, “He told Henrietta her cells would help save the lives of countless people, and she smiled. She told him she was glad her pain would come to some good for someone”. What she means is that she was pleased her cells would be able to help others. Even though the cancer brought pain to her, she was still happy. Moreover, she never complained of feeling sick after the radium chemotherapy. She would like to help her cousins who needed food and got sick. These proved that Henrietta is a kind-hearted woman, so I think she would consent to her tissue being used in medical research. In conclusion, patients should have the right to be informed in hospitals. It is inalienable right to determine what will be done with a patients’ body. Sometimes I go to the hospital, and I do not thoroughly read consent forms before signing them. I will feel scared if the hospital does not explain what they are going to take from my body or to inject unknown drugs. 12/3/2015 American Ambivalence about Immigration and Diversity With the rapid increase of immigrants in the United States, many Americans hold ambivalent view about immigration and diversity. Some people have positive feeling towards immigrations, however, others oppose immigration. On positive side, there are many benefits to immigration. It is good for new immigrants to begin with a better life. There are many reasons that push them to leave their own country. For example such as economy reason, however, in new country, immigrants can find what they want such as political asylum and freedom or what they should have such as equal rights. For the host country, immigrants contribute to the society and the economy. An article that I recently read stated “more than half of the new technology companies in Silicon Valley were started by immigrants.” In other words, immigrants invest in high tech corporations and internet business in Silicon Valley. As we all known, Silicon Valley is the concentration of high tech industries. The importance of new immigrants is that they promote development of the high tech. Thus, some Americans have positive feeling about immigrants. Moreover, immigrants purchase homes and pay taxes, which further contribute to the development of social economy. Thus, immigration should be accepted by Americans. In contrast, other Americans have negative attitudes towards immigration. Immigrants face on discrimination in different aspect. One of the most important reasons is about job competition. A book that I recently studied, pointed out “more than 12,000 Chinese immigrants worked on the construction of the transcontinental Railroad.” This huge project made white workers hostile towards Chinese because Chinese took jobs away with low pay. Chinese became the targets of discrimination. From another perspective, Americans cannot understand the diversity of traditional custom. For instance, Chinese women who are over 50 years old, like to dance as teams which consist of approximately 30 people in public space such as community parks. They also like to play music with sound equipment. Many Americans feel uncomfortable and strange about their behaviors and wonder why their dancing occupies public parks and makes so much noise. How can they do such immoral things with a group! They cannot accept different culture with different appearance doing such different things. From my point of view, I support immigration because it can bring some positive aspects. It is good for immigrants to escape the worse economic environment from their own country. They can start with a brighter life by immigration. From the host countries perspective, countries need immigrants to create more valuable opportunity; immigrants can enhance the economic development. Furthermore, diversity of society can present new features to the country by different looks, various sounds and multiple cultures. I believe immigration will became a mainstream trend of the world in the future. In conclusion, I hope that governments can encourage immigration to strengthen country construction and cultural diversity. Immigration is not only for personal profits, but also brings benefit for national achievements. |