After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency.Creatures of Caincharts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed ...man's evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder.
Drawing on a wealth of archival materials and in-depth interviews, Erika Lorraine Milam reveals how the scientists who advanced this "killer ape" theory capitalized on an expanding postwar market in intellectual paperbacks and widespread faith in the power of science to solve humanity's problems, even to answer the most fundamental questions of human identity. The killer ape theory spread quickly from colloquial science publications to late-night television, classrooms, political debates, and Hollywood films. Behind the scenes, however, scientists were sharply divided, their disagreements centering squarely on questions of race and gender. Then, in the 1970s, the theory unraveled altogether when primatologists discovered that chimpanzees also kill members of their own species. While the discovery brought an end to definitions of human exceptionalism delineated by violence, Milam shows how some evolutionists began to argue for a shared chimpanzee-human history of aggression even as other scientists discredited such theories as sloppy popularizations.
A wide-ranging account of a compelling episode in American science,Creatures of Cainargues that the legacy of the killer ape persists today in the conviction that science can resolve the essential dilemmas of human nature.
The problem of environmental degradation on the African continent is a severe one. In this book, Cajetan Iheka analyses how African literary texts have engaged with pressing ecological problems in ...Africa, including the Niger Delta oil pollution in Nigeria, ecologies of war in Somalia, and animal abuses. Analysing narratives by important African writers such as Amos Tutuola, Wangari Maathai, J. M. Coetzee, Bessie Head, and Ben Okri, Iheka challenges the tendency to focus primarily on humans in the conceptualization of environmental problems, and instead focuses on how African literature demonstrates the interconnection and 'proximity' of human and nonhuman beings. Through this, Iheka ultimately proposes a revision of the idea of agency based on human intentionality in African literary studies and postcolonialism: that texts yoke the exploitation of Africans to the despoliation of the environment, and they recommend responsibility toward human and nonhuman beings as crucial for ecological sustainability and addressing climate change.
Human Rights at Risk Hafner-Burton, Emilie M; ten Napel, Hans-Martien; Davis, Jeffrey ...
2022, 2022-06-17
eBook
Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century. The volume is ...organized based on three overarching themes that highlight the challenges and risks in international human rights: international institutions and global governance of human rights; thematic blind spots in human rights protection; and the human rights challenges of the United States as a global and domestic actor amidst the contemporary global shifts to authoritarianism and illiberal populism. One of the very few books that offer new perspectives that envision the future of transnational human rights norms and human dignity from a multidisciplinary perspective, Human Rights at Risk comprehensively examines the causes and consequences of the challenges faced by international human rights. Scholars, students, and policy practitioners who are interested in the challenges and reform prospects of the international human rights regime, United States foreign policy, and international institutions will find this multidisciplinary volume an invaluable guide to the state of global politics in the twenty-first century.
Evidence for Hope Sikkink, Kathryn
2017, 2017., 20170908, 2017-09-08
eBook
A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights work
Evidence for Hopemakes the case that, yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in ...serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. They point out that Guantánamo is still open, the Arab Spring protests have been crushed, and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But respected human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to pessimistic doubts about human rights laws and institutions. She demonstrates that change comes slowly and as the result of struggle, but in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective.
Attacks on the human rights movement's credibility are based on the faulty premise that human rights ideas emerged in North America and Europe and were imposed on developing southern nations. Starting in the 1940s, Latin American leaders and activists were actually early advocates for the international protection of human rights. Sikkink shows that activists and scholars disagree about the efficacy of human rights because they use different yardsticks to measure progress. Comparing the present to the past, she shows that genocide and violence against civilians have declined over time, while access to healthcare and education has increased dramatically. Cognitive and news biases contribute to pervasive cynicism, but Sikkink's investigation into past and current trends indicates that human rights is not in its twilight. Instead, this is a period of vibrant activism that has made impressive improvements in human well-being.
Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century,Evidence for Hopelooks at how these essential advances can be supported and sustained for decades to come.
In the last six decades, one of the most striking developments in international law is the emergence of a massive body of legal norms and procedures aimed at protecting human rights. In many ...countries, though, there is little relationship between international law and the actual protection of human rights on the ground.Making Human Rights a Realitytakes a fresh look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.
Emilie Hafner-Burton argues that more progress is possible if human rights promoters work strategically with the group of states that have dedicated resources to human rights protection. These human rights "stewards" can focus their resources on places where the tangible benefits to human rights are greatest. Success will require setting priorities as well as engaging local stakeholders such as nongovernmental organizations and national human rights institutions.
To date, promoters of international human rights law have relied too heavily on setting universal goals and procedures and not enough on assessing what actually works and setting priorities. Hafner-Burton illustrates how, with a different strategy, human rights stewards can make international law more effective and also safeguard human rights for more of the world population.
Animal Bodies, Renaissance Cultureexamines how the shared embodied existence of early modern human and nonhuman animals challenged the establishment of species distinctions. The material conditions ...of the early modern world brought humans and animals into complex interspecies relationships that have not been fully accounted for in critical readings of the period's philosophical, scientific, or literary representations of animals. Where such prior readings have focused on the role of reason in debates about human exceptionalism, this book turns instead to a series of cultural sites in which we find animal and human bodies sharing environments, mutually transforming and defining one another's lives. To uncover the animal body's role in anatomy, eroticism, architecture, labor, and consumption, Karen Raber analyzes canonical works including More'sUtopia, Shakespeare'sHamletandRomeo and Juliet, and Sidney's poetry, situating them among readings of human and equine anatomical texts, medical recipes, theories of architecture and urban design, husbandry manuals, and horsemanship treatises. Raber reconsiders interactions between environment, body, and consciousness that we find in early modern human-animal relations. Scholars of the Renaissance period recognized animals' fundamental role in fashioning what we call "culture," she demonstrates, providing historical narratives about embodiment and the cultural constructions of species difference that are often overlooked in ecocritical and posthumanist theory that attempts to address the "question of the animal."
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•Half-sandwich organoruthenium compounds are extensively investigated as cancer treatments.•Bidentate bioactive ligands with a wide variety of donor atom combinations are ...investigated.•Bidentate bioactive ligands endow in some Ru compounds multimodal anticancer activity.•The bioactivity of the organometallics is often determined by the bidentate ligands.•The complexes have been categorized into 5 structural design concepts.
The small molecule anticancer agent cisplatin and its Pt(II) analogs carboplatin and oxaliplatin are widely used to treat a variety of tumorigenic diseases. Despite their structural simplicity, side effects and disadvantages, they are cornerstones of cancer chemotherapy. Several strategies have been pursued to enhance the activity and reduce the side effects of metal-based drugs, for example, to use bioactive ligands that equip them with novel modes of action, enhance delivery, allow for selective activation, create synergistic effects or improve tumor accumulation. Many of these strategies have been developed for or adapted in the design of half-sandwich organoruthenium compounds. For such compounds decorated with bioactive ligands that coordinate monodentately to the Ru center, we have identified five design concepts (Coord. Chem. Rev. 2021, 439, 213890): (i) the bioactive ligand coordinates directly to the Ru center or (ii) after functionalization with a coordinating group, (iii) the ligand(s) and the Ru center solely define the overall shape of the molecule, (iv) the bioactive ligand is released, and (v) the bioactive ligand acts as a vector to the tumor (cell). Herein, we use these five concepts and explore their application to half-sandwich organoruthenium anticancer compounds in which the bioactive ligand is coordinated to the Ru center through a bidentate chelating motif.
Living Color is the first book to investigate the social history of skin color from prehistory to the present, showing how our body's most visible trait influences our social interactions in profound ...and complex ways. In a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Nina G. Jablonski begins with the biology and evolution of skin pigmentation, explaining how skin color changed as humans moved around the globe. She explores the relationship between melanin pigment and sunlight, and examines the consequences of rapid migrations, vacations, and other lifestyle choices that can create mismatches between our skin color and our environment. Richly illustrated, this book explains why skin color has come to be a biological trait with great social meaning— a product of evolution perceived by culture. It considers how we form impressions of others, how we create and use stereotypes, how negative stereotypes about dark skin developed and have played out through history—including being a basis for the transatlantic slave trade. Offering examples of how attitudes about skin color differ in the U.S., Brazil, India, and South Africa, Jablonski suggests that a knowledge of the evolution and social importance of skin color can help eliminate color-based discrimination and racism.
Human papillomavirus and cervical cancer Crosbie, Emma J, PhD; Einstein, Mark H, MD; Franceschi, Silvia, MD ...
The Lancet (British edition),
09/2013, Volume:
382, Issue:
9895
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Summary Cervical cancer is caused by human papillomavirus infection. Most human papillomavirus infection is harmless and clears spontaneously but persistent infection with high-risk human ...papillomavirus (especially type 16) can cause cancer of the cervix, vulva, vagina, anus, penis, and oropharynx. The virus exclusively infects epithelium and produces new viral particles only in fully mature epithelial cells. Human papillomavirus disrupts normal cell-cycle control, promoting uncontrolled cell division and the accumulation of genetic damage. Two effective prophylactic vaccines composed of human papillomavirus type 16 and 18, and human papillomavirus type 16, 18, 6, and 11 virus-like particles have been introduced in many developed countries as a primary prevention strategy. Human papillomavirus testing is clinically valuable for secondary prevention in triaging low-grade cytology and as a test of cure after treatment. More sensitive than cytology, primary screening by human papillomavirus testing could enable screening intervals to be extended. If these prevention strategies can be implemented in developing countries, many thousands of lives could be saved.
