Tort law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Tort law - Essay Example One of the requirements of offer is the offeror’s intention to be bound by the made proposal and elements of seriousness are necessary. Terms of the proposal must also be definite to the involved parties and the court must be able to ascertain the terms. In addition, the proposal must be communicated to the target party in order to constitute an offer. Another essential element of a contract is acceptance of the offer and this must be consistent with terms of offer and within a reasonable period. Offer and acceptance constitute an agreement (Miller and Jentz 2010, p. 208- 218). Another element of a valid contract is existence of consideration for the offered benefits. Consideration must be a valuable object, recognized by law, and can be present or be a promise to be executed in future. Parties to a contract must also have legal contractual capacity such as majority age, sound mind, and freedom from intoxicants. In addition, the subject matter of the contract must be legal, no t contrary to any existing law or repugnant to natural justice or humanity (Miller and Cross 2012, p. 189- 190). Annabel Constructions Ltd. builds residential flats. In one of its ventures, it entered into agreements with clients to complete and deliver apartments to the clients. The agreement stipulated date of delivery and included a penalty clause for any delay on delivery. Annabel contracted different suppliers for deliveries and completion of its apartments and Murray & Co. won the contract for supply and fixing of double-glazed windows. The company had however under quoted its bid, realized its inability to complete the work, and communicated this to Annabel before Annabel agreed to pay additional  £ 20000 for completing the work in time. Murray the completed the work within the original schedule but Annabel Constructions refused to pay the additional  £ 20000 as had been agreed between the parties. A breach of contract exists if a valid contract

Managing under uncertainty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Managing under uncertainty - Essay Example However, man is governed by some social structure, economic setups or even cultural moral and ethics that dictate the decision making process. Social sciences have developed models and theories through which the decisions made by an individual can be analyzed and understood. Being ethical or better still making ethical decisions is the ability to choose between options that are presented guided by personal respect, trustworthiness, fairness, responsibility good citizenship and caring attitude. Instances come up when in general reasoning, any decision to be taken which in other instances are regarded badly may present the fairest deal ever. Persons are as well presented with the opportunity of testing the appropriateness of any decision made by subjecting them to the models and theories prior to making the decisions. This paper therefore intends to critically analyze through reflection the process of decision making through which a person makes a decision though the outcome is not sat isfying to his. We shall; use a case study of a decision that I made while at classroom. Presented with an option of doing anything under the cover of invisibility different people would act differently. However, the power of decision-making is pegged on more than personal gratification principle. Since time immemorial, human beings have had the capacity to be guided by instincts while making decisions. Human socialization too has taken a great way in shaping human interactions as far as decision-making is concerned. My case study analyzes a decision that I made while at class in my lower grades of learning. It was during the examination period when we were all preparing to have a class examination. I was inadequately prepared for the exam and I knew that I would not perform satisfactorily in the paper. Other people as well felt inadequately prepared to sit for the exam and everybody was busy designing the means through which he/she would pass. Though I understood the repercussions that would allow cheating in an exam, I was persuaded by my fear to take the risk and try cheating for the paper. I made a decision to do a summary of the critical points that I had not understood in class and carry them through small papers into the exam room. This entitled me to passing the paper when presented within those questions. Nevertheless, by following ethical reasoning as well as moral consideration, I overlooked the instincts. However, even after sneaking the papers into the exam room, I never managed to copy successfully as the teacher spotted me. After the confiscation, I was ordered to leave the exam room and I was suspended from school as a punishment for the offense. Moreover, the offense led to my disqualification to proceed to the next grade with the rest of the class through which I regretted most. The decision to carry with me the written papers with a motive to cheat through the exam had initially presented a satisfying solution to my problem of inadequately p repared for the paper. I took the decision as it presented the highest chances of solving my problem and seemed the most appropriate among the other options that were. My fears were overcome by ascribing to the reasoning of passing the exam through cheating. I had the option of preparing for the paper in advance or better still just write whatever I had in mind instead of choosing to cheat in the exam. However, my rational thinking directed my choice to

History of Chemotherapy and Cancer Treatment Research

History of Chemotherapy and Cancer Treatment Research An Early Victory A few doors from Freireichs office at the NCI, Min Chiu Li and Roy Hertz had been studying choriocarcinoma, a cancer of the placenta, which often metastasizes rapidly into the lung and the brain. Choriocarcinoma cells secrete a hormone called choriogonadotropin. The level of that hormone, also called the hcg level, was used by Li to track the course of the cancer as it responded to the therapy. In 1956, a young woman called Ethel Longoria suffered from choriocarcinoma that had metastasized to her lungs. Her tumors had begun to bleed into the linings of her lungs. Li and Hertz stabilized her and then treated her with methotrexate. After the first dose, when the doctors left for the night, they didnt expect that theyd find her in rounds the next morning. But she was alive. After four rounds of therapies, her tumor disappeared; the chest X-ray improved; and the hcg level rapidly plummeted toward zero. The tumors had actually vanished with chemotherapy. The trouble was the hcg level had not gone all the way to zero. Although the tumor seemed to have vanished, Li continued to treat her with chemotherapy based on her elevated hCG levels. The NCI administration disapproved, feeling that Li was experimenting on his patients, and fired him in July 1957. However, Li was ultimately proven to be right. Those patients whose chemotherapy were stopped once the visible tumors disappeared inevitably relapsed, while those who continued the treatment until their hcg levels had gone to zero were cured. Li had stumbled on a fundamental principle of oncology: Cancer needed to be systemically treated long after every visible sign of it had vanished. Mice and Men Adding vincristine to the arsenal of chemotherapy drugs had put the researchers at the NCI in a bind. It would take forever for the consortium to finish its trials because of the large number of permutations and combinations of drugs needed to be tested. Howard Skipper, a scientist from Alabama, provided Frei and Freireich a way out of the impasse. Skipper, who called himself a mouse doctor, was an outsider to the NCI. He had tested chemotherapy drugs in mice with leukemia, lymphomas and solid tumors as models for human cancers and came up with two pivotal findings: Chemotherapy kills a fixed percentage of cancer cells per treatment. The patients would need to be treated multiple times to get the compounded iterative effect; and Chemotherapy drugs are more effective when given in combination to optimize cancer killing capacity while minimizing drug resistance and side effects. Freireich and Frei were now ready to tackle a four-drug regimen known as VAMP, with each letter standing for one drug. VAMP When Frei and Freireich presented their preliminary plan for VAMP to the Acute Leukemia Group B (ALGB) at a national meeting on blood cancers, the audience hesitated. The group refused to sponsor VAMP until the many other trials had been completed. But Frei Came up with a compromise: VAMP would be studied at the NCI, outside the purview of the ALGB. The VAMP trial was launched in 1961. At the end of three intensively painful weeks, the leukemia cells went into remission. The remissions persisted for weeks, exceeding everyones expectation at the NCI. A few weeks later, the NCI sent another small cohort of patients to try VAMP. Once again, after the initial catastrophic dip, the leukemia vanished. The remissions were reliable and durable. In the fall of 1963, some children in remission came back to the clinic with minor neurological complaints such as headaches, numbness, and seizures. To investigate the possibility of cancer cells invading the brain, Frei and Freireich examined the childrens spinal fluid, and confirmed that leukemia cells were colonizing the brain. The neurological complaints were early signs of a more serious devastation. Eventually all the children came back with neurological complaints went into coma. It was a consequence of the bodys own defense system. The blood-brain barrier had kept VAMP out of the central nervous system, allowing the leukemia cells to colonize the one place that is unreachable by chemotherapy. But not all children had relapsed and died. About 5 percent of the treated children never relapsed with leukemia in the central nervous system. They remained in remission not just for weeks or months, but for years. An Anatomists Tumor In 1832, an English anatomist named Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) found a strange systemic disease among a series of cadavers. The disease was characterized by a peculiar enlargement of lymph glands. He wrote up the case of seven such cadavers and presented it to the Medical and Chirurgical Society. It was received with little enthusiasm. Soon after publishing his paper, Hodgkin drift away from medicine, and his anatomical studies slowly came to a halt. Hodgkins disease is a cancer of the lymph glands. The tumor moves from one contiguous node to another. It is a local disease on the verge of transforming into a systemic one. In 1898, an Austrian pathologist named Carl Sternberg discovered the cancerous lymph cells when looking through a microscope at a patients glands. Henry Kaplan, a professor of radiology at Stanford wanted to use radiation to treat human cancers. He knew radiation could treat solid tumors could be treated with radiation, but the outer shell of the cancer needed to be penetrated deep enough to kill cancer cells. A linear accelerator (linac) with its sharp, dense beam would be ideal for that purpose. In 1953, he persuaded Standford to tailor-make a linac for the hospital. With the linac in operation, Kaplan contemplated on his cancer target. Since Linac could only focus on local sites, his natural target was Hodgkins disease, a predictable local tumor. Kaplan wanted to prove that he could improve relapse-free survival by using a technique called extended field radiation (EFR). Under EFR, the X-rays are delivered to an entire area of lymph notes rather than to a single swollen node. In 1962, Kaplan conducted a trial. The result showed that EFR had significantly reduced the relapse rate of Hodgkins disease. In 1964, he did another trial with a larger field of radiation on a limited cohort of patients with tumors in just a few contiguous lymph nodes. The result showed even greater relapse-free intervals, stretching out into years. Wasnt the logic of extended field radiation similar to radical surgery -carving out larger and larger areas for treatment? Why did Kaplan succeed where others had failed? Kaplan was successful because he restricted radiotherapy to patients with early stage local cancers. Those are the natural disease for radiotherapy. Advanced-stage cancers are inherently different and would require other forms of treatment. An Army on the March In 1963 at the NCI Clinical Center in Bethesda, a group of researchers, including Zubrod, George Canellos, Frei, Freireich, and Vincent DeVita were making a list of cytotoxic drugs on one side of a blackboard. On the other side was a list of new cancers they want to target breast, ovarian, lymphomas, lung cancers. Connecting between the two lists were lines matching combinations of drugs to cancers. One question that came to their mind was whether chemotherapy could ever cure patients with any advanced cancers. The only way to answer that generic question was to direct the growing army of drugs against other cancers. They knew leukemia responded to combination chemotherapy. If another kind of cancer also responded to that strategy, then combination chemotherapy might cure all cancers. To test the principle, they focused on Hodgkins disease-a cancer that was both solid and liquid, a stepping-stone between leukemia and, say, breast cancer or lung cancer. Kaplan had proved that radiation therapy can cure local forms of Hodgkins disease. If they could prove that combination chemotherapy can cure metastatic Hodgkins disease, then the equation would be fully solved. In 1964, DeVita led the test of combination chemotherapy for metastatic Hodgkins disease. He combined four drugs-nitrogen mustard, oncovin, prednisone, and procarbasine into a highly toxic cocktail called MOPP. The nausea that accompanied the therapy was devastating. The toxic cocktail had weakened the immune system allowing pneumocystis carinii (PCP), a rare form of pneumonia, to sprout up. The therapy had caused permanent sterility in men and some women. The result of the study was remarkable. At the end of six months, 35 of the 43 patients had a complete remission. The most disturbing side effect would emerge a decade later. Several patients, cured of Hodgkins disease, would relapse with a second cancer, typically a drug-resistant leukemia caused by the prior MOPP therapy. *** In May 1968, Frei and Freireichs VAMP combination chemo had cured most of the children with leukemia in their bone marrow, but not the leukemia that had spread to their brain. A 36-year-old oncologist name Donald Pinkel thought that VAMP had not been intensive enough. Pinkel, a protà ©gà © of Farbers, had been recruited from Boston to start the leukemia program at St. Judess Hospital in Memphis. He determined to push the logic of combination chemotherapy to its limit with four crucial innovations: To use combinations of combinations of drugs mixed and matched together for maximum effect; To instill chemotherapy directly into the nervous system via the spinal cord; To kill residual cells in the brain by high-dose radiation; and To continue chemotherapy for month after month, even after the cancer seemed to have disappeared. The treatment protocol started with the standard chemotherapy drugs given in rapid-fire succession. The spinal canal was injected with methotrexate at defined intervals. The brain was irradiated with high doses of X-rays. The treatment lasted up to 30 months. It was an all-out combat. In July 1968, the St. Judes team published its results: Twenty-seven out of the thirty-one treated had a complete remission. Ten had never relapsed. The median time to relapse had increased to five years. By 1979, 278 patients had completed their chemotherapy. About 20 percent had relapsed, 80 percent was still in complete remission, disease free, after chemotherapy. The Cart and the House By the fall of 1968, the successes of the trials in Bethesda and in Memphis shifted the landscape of cancer therapy. The success of chemotherapy for both leukemia and Hodgkins disease made it seem like a unifying solution for cancer. In Boston, Farber celebrated the news by throwing a public party. He recast the occasion as the symbolic twenty-first birthday of Jimmy. Conspicuously missing from the guest list was the original Jimmy himself-Einar Gustafson. The real Jimmy had returned to a private life in Maine, where he now lived with his wife and three kids. As clinical oncologists were offering their unifying solution for cancer, cancer scientists were offering its unifying cause: viruses. The grandfather of this theory was Peyton Rous, a chicken virologist at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. In 1911, Rous discovered that a malignant tumor growing on a chicken could be transferred to another chicken by exposing the healthy bird to a filtrate derived from the tumor cells. He concluded that the cancer was transmitted by a virus. This virus is now known as the Rous sarcoma virus, or RSV. This discovery had set off a frantic search for more cancer viruses. In 1958, an Irish surgeon named Denis Burkitt discovered an aggressive form of lymphoma among children in Africa. Analyzing the cancer cells from these children, two British virologists discovered a human virus inside them. The new virus was named Epstein-Barr virus or EBV. Because viral diseases were potentially preventable, the NCI inaugurated a Special Virus Cancer Program in the early 1960s to systematically hunt for human cancer viruses. The cancer virus theory needed a deeper explanation: how might viruses cause a cell to become malignant? The success of cytotoxic chemotherapy raised a fundamental question: how would the therapy, the cure, connect with the cause of the cancer? As Kenneth Endicott, the NCI director, acknowledged in 1963: The program directed by the National Cancer Institute has been derided as one that puts the cart before the horse by searching for a cure before knowing the cause. But for Mary Lasker, this cart would have to drag the horse.

Freedom in Braveheart and the Lord of the Rings :: Braveheart Lord of the Rings Essays

The Power of Freedom in Braveheart and the Lord of the Rings How far would you go to defend freedom? Would you overcome impossible odds? In the films â€Å"Braveheart† and â€Å"The Lord of the Rings,† the main characters, Mel Gibson and Elijah Wood, go to the ends of the earth to achieve their goals and bring freedom to the people within their society. The two main plots emphasize the concept that no matter what nation you live under, any man or woman will fight to defend their right to freedom. In â€Å"Braveheart†, Mel Gibson, plays William Wallace. In the movie his wife is brutally killed by one of the English kings. Before the death of his wife, Wallace also experiences the death of his brother and father by the hands of the same aggressor when he was a child. After this he decides that any aggressive action against those he holds dear will not be left unavenged. The day of his wife’s death, William waited for his wife at a secret hiding place and when he finds out she isn’t coming because she was killed, he takes the ways of the law into his own hands. When William becomes a revolutionary he leads the Scottish people to an uprising against the English government. William then begins to de-thrown all the kings in the English region. He loses all sense of inhibition while pursuing his desire to avenge his loved ones’ death and brings freedom to his people. â€Å"The Lord of the Rings† is a movie about the plight of mankind while defending itself against a great evil of a supernatural kind. In this movie, the main character, Frodo Baggins, played by Elijah Woods, must protect the ring of power on an arduous journey across the country in an attempt to destroy the ring. If he fails, all of mankind will be destroyed and ruled by sorcerers and unseen forces of evil. Although he faces many grueling obstacles during his journey, his determination and knowledge of the possible disintegration of the human race fuels him and gives him the strength to complete his journey. In the end, after many trials and near death experiences-not to mention the loss of close friends and his own personal struggles centered around the power the ring has over him-he accomplishes his goal and successfully destroys the ring and brings freedom to mankind.

Black Feminist Theory Essay

Sula is Morrison’s main character and is a perfect example of a Liberated woman. According to Lois Tyson’s definition of a Liberated Woman, Sula has â€Å"discovered her abilities, knows what she needs, and goes about getting it. † Along with all these activities, comes pride and independence. It began when Sula was younger as she had Nel, her best friend, by her side. â€Å"In the safe harbor of each other’s company they could afford to abandon the ways of other people and concentrate on their own perceptions of things,† (55). Her friendship gave her the comfort to be herself and confident on acting on her own terms. Sula continued this attitude into adulthood but not everyone agreed with her actions towards getting what she wants. Sula leaves for 10 years to go to college and live her life beyond the Bottom. When she finally comes back, she and Eva get into an argument. Eva brings up her disappointment in Sula for not settling down with a family and Sula lashes back with, †I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself, † (92). She displays her aversion to not have anyone dependent on her and she wants to only care for herself. Having a family and a husband, in her opinion, would stop her from getting what she wants or needs and would put herself second in her life. Sula doesn’t want to be tied down and oppressed by a man, she wants to be independent and she’s not ashamed about being the only woman wanting her independence . When Nel finally confronts Sula about her affair with Jude, Nel accuses Sula of being proud but she responds with â€Å"‘What you talking about? I like my own dirt, Nellie. I’m not proud’,† (142). This shows how Nel, along with everyone in the bottom, thinks she’s proud or conceded, but in actuality, she’s just not ashamed of her decisions or life style. Lois Tyson continues the definition of a liberated woman with â€Å"the ‘liberated woman’ has already found herself and likes what she has found. † When sula says â€Å"I like my own dirt† she supports Tyson’s definition because Sula also â€Å"likes what she has found. † Sula’s independence, and her pride in being so, fully supports Tyson’s complete definition of a Liberated Woman. Nel’s character fits into an Emergent Woman as she â€Å"[comes] to an awareness of her own psychological and political oppresion†¦ usually through a harsh experience of initiation that makes her ready for change. † On Nel’s trip to meet her grandmother, Nel witnesses her mother’s â€Å"custard† being revealed. From then on Nel â€Å"resolved to be on guard- always. She wanted to make certain that no man ever looked at her that way. That no midnight eyes of marbled flesh would accost her and turn her into jelly† (22). Ashamed of the â€Å"jelly† or the weak substance â€Å"custard† that Morrison also associates with Helene, Nel makes certain that no man shall look at her, and make her into anything weak. In this secne, she becomes aware of her mother’s oppression and makes the decision to never allow it in her life. At the end of their trip, Nel lays in bed thinking about the possibility of ending up like her mother. To establish her independence separate from her mother, Nel states, †I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me,† (28). As an Emergent woman, she demonstrates her ability to make her own choices and establish her own independence. Years Later, filled with resentment towards Sula, Nel visits ill Sula in her deathbed. For years, her depression was encouraged by the thought that her husband was taken and now she is alone to take care of her children. She believed it was all Sula’s fault and she hated her for this, but one day she confronts Sula about taking Jude away from her, and Sula asks â€Å"What you mean take him away? I didn’t kill him, I just fucked him. If we were such good friends, how come you couldn’t get over it? † Nel starts to think of the idea of it not being Sula’s fault, that Jude was the one who put her through the heart break of being alone. Sula dies and Nel attends her burial. There she realizes that â€Å"all that time, [she] thought [she] was missing Jude,† but actually, she missed her friendship with Sula (174). Their friendship was more supportive than her marriage as Sula helped bring out the ’me’ in Nel that she lost in her marriage to Jude. Her epiphany helps her to notice how Jude was the one who hurt her , and now she can move on. Toni Morrison portrays Eva Peace as a suspended woman. According to Mary Helen Washington, a suspended woman is a â€Å"victim of men and of society as a whole, with few or no options. † Morrison starts off Eva’s story with her discontented marriage to her husband, BoyBoy. BoyBoy â€Å"liked womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third,† (32). Eva, disappointingly, tolerates all his abuse, because of her dependency on BoyBoy. One day, when he leaves her and their three children, her dependency becomes clear. Being inconsiderate of his family’s welfare, he leaves as his worst affliction to his wife. Now, abandoned with nearly no money,Eva realizes that â€Å"the children needed her† and â€Å"she needed money,† (32). This shows her desperation and how BoyBoy belittled her as she had to beg and rely on the neighbors for basic necessities like food for her children. Her Neighbors â€Å"were very willing to help, but Eva felt she would soon run her welcome out† and the fact that she had to continue begging, knowing she had ask for enough, embarrassed her. Eva struggles to raise them on her own and one day her son, Plum, stopps having his bowel movements. When all the stress and pressure gets to her, â€Å"Eva squatted there wondering†¦ what was she doing down on her haunches†¦ She shook her head as though to juggle her brains around, then said aloud, ‘Uh uh. Nooo,’†(34). Eva leaves her children with her neighbor for more than a year and comes back with one leg, losing the other for money to care for her children. If BoyBoy had never abused or had left her, she would have never been a victim and never would have had to sacrifice her pride and her leg. This proves she’s a suspended woman because BoyBoy’s abuse and abandonment left her with the only option to leave her children and sell her leg, because as a black woman in their society, she had very few options. Toni Morrison exemplifies Mary Helen Washington’s definitions in Nel, Sula, and Eva through out Sula, using their experiences and personalities. Sula’s independence, Nel’s epiphany, and Eva’s abuse all characterize them into their type of African American female character, making Sula a Liberated Woman, Nel an Emergent Woman, and Eva a suspended woman.

Compassion in The Witch of Blackbird Pond Essay

Compassion is important in every walk of life. The definition of compassion is : a virtue of empathy for the suffering of others and a desire to alleviate that suffering. Compassion is important because it makes up who you are and is a strong part of human love. Without compassion, no human could ever get close to each other or function together as a society. Without compassion, people would not be able work together because they would not care about anyone else’s pain. There would be no working together towards a common goal, that is one of the key pillars of society. Compassion is reason we have doctors and nurses. Compassion is reason that when we see someone hurt, on the ground, we help them up. In the novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Kit and Nat show compassion for Hannah Tupper when her house burns down. She is their friend and they are sympathetic for her and do anything to help her. They even go into the building to retrieve her cats. They are feeling compassion for her and will help to alleviate her suffering, risking the possible legal repercussions of aiding a witch. Another instance in the novel in which the characters show compassion is when Kit teaches Prudence to read and when she defends Prudence from her mother by lying at the trial. The first time was compassion because kit saw prudence had low self worth because her mother has lead her to believe that she is stupid and never will be able to read. Kit sees her suffering and decides to alleviate her suffering, risking Goodwife Cruff’s wrath by teaching her to read and write. Later in the book, once kit is accused of practicing witch craft and the townspeople present the evidence of the hornbook with Prudence’s name written in it repeatedly, Kit lies for Prudence’s sake. She doesn’t want Prudence to get beaten by her mother. She risks possible death in compassion for Prudence’s situation. Finally, prudence shows compassion to Kit. Against all odds, though she has been educated to not show compassion by watching her mother, she shows everyone that she can write. She risks her mother’s abuse to save Kit, a girl she has recently met, but who has taught her a very important value: compassion.