According to Ana Veciana-Suarez, author of “Thank Heaven for Little Boys,” many traits of boys and girls are instinctive and we are born with them. The genetics we are born with may affect our physical abilities, but children learn to act in certain ways by watching people in society. For example, when young boys watch cartoons or certain male-orientated TV programs, they are influenced to act like the characters they see on TV. The characters on these shows are shown in a more aggressive or violent manner; therefore, the children act that way. The main characters in shows like Batman or Superman are portrayed as strong athletic heroes who influence young boy’s everyday actions.

In shows such as these, boys are often depicted as aggressive and destructive, therefore this shows boys that they should act competitively. Even as adolescents we are influenced by TV, movies, books, and music. For example the artist Eminem influence males to be violent, has homosexual references, and condemns women. At this young age, people are not mature enough to make their own decisions and they are easily influenced by society. People emulate what Eminem says in his lyrics about violence. For example in Columbine, the boys that killed innocent students got their ideas through certain movies and TV shows. This shows that teenagers are at a very vulnerable age and can be influence by society to act the way. Adolescents are more likely than adults to be influenced by society to act a certain way because they are easily influenced to mold to the person society projects as an ideal person.

In Veciana-Suarez argument, she claims that she raised her children equally but subconsciously she must have treated her children differently because of the way society influences parents to raise their children. When girls are young they are often given Barbies and baby dolls to play with. The girls are subjected to beautiful but fake looking toys and they become confused about what they should look like. “Since they are only given attractive, clean, and overly perfect toys they assume that they should look like their own dolls. Research shows that by 3 years old children have already begun to learn the figurative or metaphorical meanings of gender. . . . Children learn an underlying framework for understanding the nature of masculine and feminine that does not depend on the specific models having appeared in their environment”(Sapiro, 83) Typically, girls are less athletically-inclined than boys because of genetics. Therefore, parents often do not treat girls and boys in the same way when it comes to sports. Boys are taught to be more aggressive because it is expected that boys should be more athletic than girls. Girls also are encouraged to express their feelings and to cry openly. Boys often have feelings such as excitement and anger that are socialized to replace “inferior, feminine” feelings such as distress and fear. (Murnen, 361) Boys are therefore influenced to never cry and to not complain, but to “tough it out,” or “be a man.”

At a young age, children are also influenced to act a certain way by their peers. A child can get made fun of if he or she does things that are considered to be not typical of their gender. For example, a boy can be teased by his peers if he likes to play in the kitchen or play with dolls. Society influences children only to play with certain toys that are meant for their gender. Advertisements on TV show certain toys for each gender and show only girls or boys playing with them. For example, when I was little all the girls only played house or with dolls, and the boys only played sports or with trucks. It is not socially acceptable for girls to play with boy’s toys or boys to play with girl’s toys. Because of this influence of society girls and boys act the way they do.

Even in adulthood, especially in the work force, adults are expected to act as society requires them to. Men are still very dominant in high position jobs, because society automatically thinks that men can handle the job more than woman would be able to. Since our society values competition and individuals being successful on their own, women’s orientation towards caring for others and/or cooperatively building the community is considered (by the male dominated society) to be of lesser importance. These value differences are reflected in the gender roles established by our culture. (Crespi, 2) There are continual stereotypes projected onto women that they are not capable of what men are because that is the way the majority of people were raised to think. Therefore, men often get “better” jobs than women and have more opportunities in the work force because of the gender stereotypes they are commonly put into action in today’s society. For example, it is not considered socially acceptable often for a female to coach a men’s sports team at any level. This is a huge disadvantage because the woman might be a great coach, the players miss out on gaining experience, and she does not get the opportunity to coach and do her job just because she is female. Society judges your capabilities only on what gender you are which is very unfair. Often the “better” jobs offer more money and females are at a larger disadvantage based solely on their unavoidable principle of gender.

Even when people begin to date there are certain things expected by each gender because of societies influence. Men are often expected to pay for the date, drive on the date, ask the girl out, etc. There are also certain roles that woman have to play in the dating game. Even when people get married they are assuming certain roles according to their gender. Often men go to work during the day, and women stay at home to take care of the children. There is no biological trait that told men and woman to enforce these assumed roles in society. Society influences the couple to act in this way and they think this is what is expected of them.

We are born knowing which gender we are, but through further interactions we learn how society expects us to act. There is no way that we could have learned these things through biological influences; society has a much stronger influence on the way people act according to their gender. We are born with some instinct on how to act relative to our gender, but the way we are raised by our parents, how we interact with our peers, and the influences that the media has on us is what influences our gender identity.

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Some other effects children encounter are behavioral problems. These include having tantrums, depression, anxiety, withdrawal, poor performance in school, and crying. It has been reported that higher occurrences of aggression have been linked to children whose parents are divorced (Frost & Pakiz, 1990; Hartill, 2001, Bray, 2001). Besides aggression, some other ways children react to divorce is by regression, anti-socialism, sadness, grief, and more extreme suicide. They feel insecure about relationships, and how they should act towards others, especially those of the opposite gender (Hofmann & Zippco, 1986).

Experts have observed that children act differently in both emotional and behavioral situations where divorce is involved. One of these situations is the interaction in peer relations. As mentioned above, children are not sure how to socialize and work cooperatively with other children. They feel that since their parents are divorced, they are different from other children.

A second situation is that their dependency on both parents has been altered. Do they have to select which parent they would like to live with? Do they stop depending on the non-residential parent now and more on the parent with whom they reside?

Another situation is the hostility they may now feel towards both of their parents. The child may feel anger towards one of their parents for forcing the other parent to move out and the other for leaving. Who do they turn to?

The fourth situation is withdrawal. These children become passive because of their fear again of being different than other children. They may also not want to interact due to dejection. This feeling may lead to school progress declining and lack of an appetite.

Lastly, children may suffer from depression. With children, depression and low self-esteem seem to appear to be in a negative correlation towards one another. When their self-esteem is high, their depression is low and vice versa. Along with experiencing low self-esteem, children also experience greater anxiety and feelings of distress (Bray, 2001; Brubeck & Beer, 1992). These feelings make it difficult for children to form friendships or resist from peer-pressures; thus, they isolate themselves.

Children, most of the time, feel that their parents are getting a divorce because of them. This feeling triggers many other emotions and behaviors. Children begin to worry excessively about many different items that are out of their control, such as who will take care of them, and what will happen next. They also fear being left alone (Cowen, Pedro-Carroll, & Alpert-Gillis, 1990). These feelings can result in children forming negative habits, such as cigarette and marijuana smoking, drinking alcohol, doing drugs, partaking in sexual relations, and stealing. These habits can lead to juvenile delinquency (Bray, 2001; Frost & Pakiz, 1990). They may even go to the extreme of planning or attempting to commit suicide.

Another emotion children feel is being rushed into adult roles and responsibilities. This is because one parent is or has moved out as a result of the divorce. For example, the parent with whom the child is residing has to work longer hours to make ends meet financially (Amato 2000). Thus, the child or children must help to do some of the parental jobs, such as cleaning the house, babysitting younger siblings, and running errands. As a result of taking on different responsibilities, males and females react in various ways.

Although some effects are the same in both males and females, some effects have a more dominant reaction in one of the genders. For example, females tend to have lower self-esteem, anxiety, and are more depressed than males. They also suffer more emotional trauma (Doherty & Needle, 1991; Videon, 2002). Females have a difficult time interacting with others, especially those of the opposite gender (Beer, 1991). Girls tend to become more sexually promiscuous and resentful towards the parent who has been over-dependent on them (Carlile, 1991, Teachman, 2001).

On the other hand, males are more likely to have behavioral problems, such as being delinquents, using illegal substances, and having violent tempers. Males react more intensely to the loss of their fathers because boys share a common bond with them. Research has shown that males whose parents divorced achieve lower scores in school.

However, unlike females, males show some positive effects of divorce. Males can develop more of a positive self-concept and have higher levels of social interaction with friends (Frost & Pakiz, 1990) Males are also less tense during the period of divorce, but after the divorce is final, they become extremely stressed (Bray, 2001; Doherty & Needle, 1991).

Although males experience more external effects and females more internal, both have many problems coping with divorce. These problems can be very traumatic; however, some effects only last a short period of time. The most devastating effects occur within the first year following the divorce. Many of these problems disappear after two years (Hofmann & Zippco, 1986)

In our study, we also found that divorced mothers were rated as more overprotective by their children than nondivorced mothers. It is my experience from working with divorced families that children can fall into the role of a “friend” for some divorced parents. Divorced parents are under stress from the divorce, have less time to socialize with friends, and they often find it easiest to “bond” with whoever is around the house. Divorced parents may be tempted to share their daily problems with their children, or seek physical or emotional comfort from their children when they are feeling tired or upset. Although the parent’s needs for support are real, the “friend” role places too much strain on children, who are already stressed by the changes in their lives caused by divorce. Research shows that kids who feel responsible for taking care of their divorced parents have more emotional problems.

Much research has concerned itself with the transmission of divorce from one generation to the next. Are children of divorced parents likely to get divorced, too? Evidence suggests that there is a heightened risk for divorce in children of divorce (see Amato, 1996, for a review). However, a recent study conducted at UCLA by Wolfinger (1997a) has found evidence for a downward trend in divorce transmission over the last 20 years. Specifically, children of divorce are 50% less likely to become divorced now than 20 years ago. Wolfinger suggests that the increased prevalence and acceptance of divorce may account for this trend.

Another interesting finding from Wolfinger’s research (1997b) is that children of divorce appear to marry other children of divorce at a rate greater than chance alone would predict. Furthermore, marriages of two children of divorce are especially likely to end in divorce. Clearly, even if the transmission of divorce has become more moderated as a result of the divorce revolution in the past 20 years, many children of divorce still carry considerable baggage with them into their own marriages which may, under some conditions, lead to a higher risk for divorce.

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“To spend to much time in studies is sloth” I could not agree more with this statement. Some people hide their aversion to work behind their compliance to studies; either consciously or unconsciously, they develop an attraction to any kind of knowledge-gaining means. They spend their whole life behind books, computers or research papers. They go from major to major, certificate after certificate, defeating one matter after another one; but seeming to conquer no specific objective. And you can say there is nothing wrong with liking studying whichever is the extent; but the drawback of this approach, is that they are missing the practical part, the hands-on fraction, the real world experience that help people bound to succeed. Personally, I always thought that theoretical knowledge was much more important than practical, but life has taught me that there is no complete education without applied experience. When people put theory into practice, the first one is perfected. Not only because they can see the tangible results of their study, but also because they tend to deepen in the study of the topic as they find, in the process, new problems to solve or new doubts to clear. Moreover, having just the theory only makes you be a good encyclopedia, someone to look for reference. But it seems that there are people who enjoy precisely that. They like to show off “to use them (studies) too much for ornament is affectation”. This group functions by pretending, by acting, by impressing others with ostentation of a knowledge that sometimes is not even real. They seek knowledge in order to attain discourse, to impact with their verbosity, to overwhelm with their intellect.

Their interest in studies is not acquiring knowledge to be used in life, but to be used in an act. They live by the opinion others have of them. They do not realize that what they are really showing is their incompetence to put all that knowledge into good use. But, if being as superficial as to seek knowledge only to impress is bad, being intransigent is worst. “To make judgment wholly by their (studies) rules is the humor of the scholar.” To form an opinion following only the statements of a thesis, without considering facts, exceptions, or special situations is humorous; but, the sarcastic kind of humor. Often, a person who is in the process of learning, tend to have a rigid mind about definitions. They judge things according to strict principles learned in school. They judge people according to the studies they have. They judge life according to what it should be. But once they experience the variations of a practical life, once they see the different ways a problem can be accomplished, they are able to expand their minds. - They can consider the rules and the exceptions-. Then again, a complete education is one that is supported by practice, by real life experiences.

Education is a fundamental part of life, is a privilege and something to take advantage of. If all you do is study and never use what you have learned, what have you achieved? If you only study to achieve recognition, what did you waste your time for? If your knowledge is narrowing your view instead of broadening it, what is the point of learning? Education can help you excel to your highest dreams if used in the right manner. That was Bacon’s message then, and that is the message today. Essentially, nothing has changed.

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(Gallaher) At the age of thirteen Zora’s mother died.(Gallaher) Zora felt like she had lost everything. Later that year, Zora’s father kicked her out of the house and made her go and care for her brother’s children.(Gallaher) Zora did not like this choice of living, so she started working for a white household. This is the house that sparked Zora’s intelligence. The woman that Zora worked for gave Zora her first book and arranged for her to go to school.(Gallaher) The school was Morgan Academy and she graduated in 1918.(Gallaher) In 1920, Zora received an associate degree from Howard University.(Gallaher) The early 1920’s marked Zora’s beginning as an author. In this time, she published her first stories, starting as a college publication and moving to contests, newspapers, and magazines.(Gallaher)

One story was “Spunk,” a tale about a man named Spunk who was fooling around with another man’s wife.(Hurston) In rage, the husband tries to kill Spunk, but fails at his attempt and dies instead.(Hurston) In revenge, the ghost of the dead husband comes back to haunt Spunk and eventually kills him.(Hurston) Another story was “Sweat.” “Sweat” was about a wife that slaved to keep up the house and was married to a man who abused her. The husband wishes to get his wife out of the house, so he brings in a real snake, her biggest fear, to get her to leave.(Kip) When she still doesn’t leave, he lets the snake out and ends up getting killed by the snake.(Kip) The woman’s revenge to her husband was that she just watched him die, instead of helping him.(Kip)

Zora was partially influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.(Gallaher) She moved to New York in 1925, just as the Harlem Renaissance was at its crest. She attended Barnard College to study under the father of anthropology, Frank Boas.(Gallaher) In the late 1920’s Zora published many works. She gained financial partnership with wealthy New York patrons.(Gallaher) After graduation, Zora headed back to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida to collect folklore for her upcoming stories.(Gallaher) The 30’s and 40’s marked Zora’s peak. She completed graduate work at Columbia, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and published four novels and an autobiography.(Gallaher) Her writing brought her to the Caribbean where she got so involved with voodoo that she started to incorporate these ideas of voodoo into her stories and novels. One novel Zora wrote was Their Eyes Were Watching God. This novel was full of revenge. Not just revenge on one person, but on many different people in many different situations.

By the mid-1940’s Zora’s career started to drop. She was falsely arrested for molesting a 10-year-old boy.(Gallaher) That even left a scar on her reputation. One after another, publishers denied her works. Between 1950 and 1959, Zora attempted many jobs and even tried to revive her career one more time and failed. Due to this type of depression that Zora was experiencing, she became a “broken, penniless recluse.” Zora died of a stroke in 1959 and was buried in Fort Pierce, Florida.(Gallaher) Zora only received one award.(Witcover) It was in 1925. Zora won second prize for fiction in Opportunity literary contest. She worked with Langston Hughes on a play called Mule Bone. Things went sour when there was a disagreement on the play and both sides accused the other with plagiarism.

Zora had a rough beginning and was influenced by that rough beginning to do something with her life to get away. She took many things from her childhood and hometown and put them into her books. She felt she wasn’t free when she was young, so she used a certain theme in many of her stories. In a way, Zora’s real life consisted of revenge towards certain people. Thus, the theme that is common in all three stories, Spunk, Sweat, and Their Eyes Were Watching God is revenge.

The story “Spunk,” as described earlier, has a theme of revenge because of the husband’s need to take away the life of the man that took away his.(Hurston) Lena Kanty and Joe Kanty had been married for quite some time, but Lena wasn’t satisfied.(Hurston) Spunk Banks fell in love with Lena and Lena fell in love with Spunk.(Hurston) Lena and Spunk began to fool around behind Joe’s back.(Hurston) This drove Joe crazy, so he decided to attempt to kill Spunk, but in return, only got himself killed. The part of the story where revenge played in was when one night after the death of Joe Kanty, Lena and Spunk were getting ready for bed and there was a black bobcat walking around the house, howling.(Hurston) This showed that Joe was haunting Spunk for killing him. The final act of revenge was when Spunk supposedly slipped and landed in the circle saw. Before he died, he claimed that is was Joe that shoved him into the saw.(Hurston) Joe Kanty wanted revenge for three reasons. At first he wanted revenge against the towns people’s thoughts of him, because they considered him a coward. The he wanted to revenge Spunk and his wife for having an affair. Finally he wanted revenge against Spunk for killing him.

In the story “Sweat,” Delia Jones was married to Syks Jones for fifteen years.(Kip) Within that fifteen years, Syks had a mistress. Syks abused Delia and used her.(Kip) He tried to scare her away numerous times.(Kip) First he would hit her shouldes with a bull whip to make her think it was a snake.(Kip) Delia had a terrible fear of snakes.(Kip) Finally, Syks decide to bring in a real snake and set it up so that it might bite Delia.(Kip) His plan back fired on him when the snake ended up biting him and killing him.(Kip) Delia just watched from outside until she couldn’t bare it anymore. The view of revenge in this story is that delia was a very tired and upset wife. She wanted the best in her life and Syks got in the way of that. One phrase that delia said was, “Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil’s back, is got to come under his belly…”(Kip) had a future seeing of revenge needed to take place. Zora Neale Hurston was foreshadowing. Delia showed some revenge when she watched her husband walk into a death trap and watched him die instead of calling for help.
In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the main character, Janie Crawford, went through three husbands.(Hurston) At the beginning of her life, she had problems with her grandma, because Nanny wanted her to marry rich and not be a “mule” of the society.(Hurston) Janie’s first husband was good at first. He made her believe that she had done the right thing in listening to Nanny. Then her first husband, Logan Killicks, started to act different and irronically expressed an intention to purchase a mule.(Hurston) This was a sign for Janie to leave soon, so she did, with a man named Jody Starks who became the mayor of the first all-black town in Eatonville, FL. After Jody died, Janie met a young man by the nickname of Tea Cake.(Hurston) She fell madly in love and ran away with him.(Hurston) At the beginning of the story or the end of her journey, Janie returns to Eatonville. Janie showed some want of revenge on her first husband. She just up and left him. Janie had a feeling of revenge on the whole world for thinking that she couldn’t be who she wanted to be. She showed everyone up in the end. Zora Neale Hurston wrote many short stories, a few plays, and a couple novels. She had many similarities throughout her novels, from voodoo practicing to setting to theme. Derived from the three stories, “Sweat,” “Spunk,” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” a similar theme would have to be revenge. Zora’s main point in most of her stories is to show that there are people out there who are not going to play by the rules. Zora Neale Hurston wrote extraordinary books and facinated many readers with her interesting stories.

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Affluenza affects our families because we misplace our time priorities. Instead of nurturing and investing our time in our families, we work more to buy more stuff. We must then ask ourselves, is this stuff really worth more than out children. The film gave the viewers an example of our fractured families. We tend to spend more time shopping as consumers than we spend with our children as parents.

Affluenza is a global infection as well as a fracture on our families. According to the film, one fifth of the world’s people live in absolute poverty. As Americans it is nearly impossible to envision what poverty is and even more difficult to realize why there is poverty at all since we Americans have everything at our fingertips. The film points out that since the 1950’s, residents of the United States have used more resources than all people who have lived on earth before them. The film also informs its viewers that each American uses twenty tons of resources a year.

Affluenza affects our families, other counties, and our environment. People, especially in developed countries use up a lot of the earth’s resources, resulting in over consumption and over population. The use of the earth’s resources results in the production of waste. Through the consumption of resources we see our forests being torn down to make more goods to be consumed. We see how these goods, in turn, pollute the air. Goods like our cars, aerosol strays, pesticides, toxic chemicals, and other products that we humans use in order to make our lives more comfortable. What we don’t realize though is the worst part. We neglect the fact that the production of these life-simplifying products actually may be making our lives more difficult and harmful.

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The human brain is constructed of a vast network of interconnected entities. These entities function together to enable us learn and to perform a diverse array of tasks. The neuron is responsible for this learning process and it is made up of three main parts the dendrites, the soma, and the axon. The dendrites form the input network that consists of branches, which connect to tens of thousands of other neurons. This interconnectedness is what determines our adaptability and creativity. The next element of the neuron is the Soma. This is the processing element that determines at which threshold the neuron will respond. A constant flow of chemical signals causes stimulation of an output once the integrated signal reaches a certain threshold value. When a signal is finally generated, it is conducted down the Axon, and then continues to another dendrite or to the muscle cells. (“Nervous System”, Encyclopedia Britannica)

During the learning process, adjustments to the response threshold values are made. These adjustments cause the Soma to become more excitable. This will allow the neuron to generate an output signal at lower integrated values of chemical stimulation. As we become more familiar with certain tasks, a lower level of excitation is exhibited. This lower level of excitation allows tasks to become “second nature”. Therefore tasks require less effort to perform. (Neurotransmission, Department of Psychology)

Our knowledge of how we learn is somewhat limited, but similar principles are found in biological neural networks. These can be used in artificial networks as well. As in the biological counterparts, the artificial networks have processing elements like the neuron. Neurons have interconnected pathways for inputs, similar to the dendrites. The neurons of the artificial networks also use a summation, or integral process, which determines the output threshold of the individual element. Each element is one of many that are arranged in layers, which are connected to numerous others within the layer. They are also connected to the other elements that occupy different layers. By this arrangement, a highly interconnected array of neurons is formed. This increases the flexibility of the system and allows it to closely mimic the capabilities of their biological counterparts. (Neural Networks, Christos Stergiou and Dimitrios Siganos)

There are two main methods of learning, supervised and unsupervised. These learning processes are similar to the biological model. In the supervised method, the system is informed of what the outcome should be based on the input values. The system then processes the inputs in order to create the same output with an acceptable error margin. If the desired output is not created, the system goes back to the interconnected weights of the processing elements. Here, adjustments are made until the error is acceptable. The adjustments are made to the integrating equations, which determine the excitability of an element within the network. This method of learning is used to create a network that can generate models when there are a vast number of input variables to be evaluated. The other method is to allow the system to make adjustments without an output model to compare against. It will make the necessary adjustments as needed to help the system discover patterns and inter-relations within the input data. (Artificial Neural Networks, Daniel Klerfors)

Many large corporations have begun to use neural networks in a wide range of applications. Medical institutions have started investigating their benefits in areas such as the complicated nature of diagnosis of patients. By inputting various symptoms, the computer would research the vast number of possible afflictions. This would greatly assist in the diagnosis and severity of illnesses. Financial Instructions are also researching various applications. These include, stock market forecasting, assisting in fraud detection, and in foreign market trend analysis. Research is also being done to possibly use neural network software in optical character recognition of cursive handwriting. (Applications of Artificial Neural Networks, Letze Anderung)

The potential uses of neural network technology are a widely diversified market with many possibilities. I believe that as our understanding of biological networks and learning increases, artificial neural networks will continue to advance. The potential of such a system is virtually limitless. These systems are not confined to being controlled by algorithms, as are typical computers. As a result, these systems are not limited in their numerous possibilities of applications. In my opinion, the highly intricate nature of nonlinear mathematics and the increased complexity of ever-growing numbers of interconnected processing elements, will make the evolution of artificial networks difficult but extremely functional.

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The mutual love between Henry and Catherine begins as just a playful game of seduction, exchanging feigned plans for the future and almost numb kisses. However, it eventually grows to a point of passion, although it may be a subconscious illusion on both of their parts, where he does not want to be without her for the long stretches of time that he spends at war. Lieutenant Henry is wounded on the battlefield and sent to the hospital to have a necessary knee operation and then recuperate. Very fortunately, Catherine is transferred to the same hospital in Milan, allowing her to be with Henry during his recovery. Over this time of healing, the love between the two intensifies and becomes seemingly real, making Henry want to stay with her and not return to battle as an ambulance driver.

The other possible outcome of this problem is that Henry will continue his work as an ambulance driver. He is a young American, but speaks enough Italian to converse with other Italians easily. He feels a strong obligation to continue serving in the Italian army, but does not necessarily enjoy it. When he is wounded and sent to the hospital, able to spend extensive time with Catherine, he realizes the sincerity of his love for her and decides that he does not want to leave her again to return to war. He is given three weeks convalescence leave after his knee has healed, after which he is told he will be returning to war. He attempts to plan a vacation with Catherine, but then he contracts jaundice, which the superintendent of the hospital deems as intentional and the convalescence leave is revoked. Henry is restored to health and is sent back to the war.

This issue, over which Henry constantly struggles with himself, is integral in the novel and the two options fluctuate in weight throughout. At different times, one will seem to stand out as what he thinks is more important and then this will seem to change, judging by his thoughts, statements, and actions. At first, the war takes precedence over everything and Henry rarely even considers leaving it and abandoning his fellow soldiers. Though later, as his love for Catherine evolves and becomes more important in his life, he begins to reevaluate his priorities. This inability to decide rips at him throughout the story. Even after making the decision, he finds himself regretting it at times, but then dismisses these feelings. This makes the reader wonder if his passion was extreme for both his loyalty to the war and for Catherine, or if it was never extraordinarily strong for either.

In the end, Henry winds up choosing to flee the war and quit the army, devoting the remainder of his life to Catherine. The two reunite in a town called Stresa and they borrow a boat and Henry rows all night to escape to the safety of Switzerland and live peacefully in a town called Montreux. This marks his parting with weaponry and war altogether and his commitment to Catherine, also explaining the significance of the title, A Farewell to Arms.

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Obviously, this argument is much stronger than religious and philosophical assertions that cloning for whatever reason is unethical. Therefore, therapeutic cloning should be legalized because it is proved that it could help to cure many deadly and debilitating diseases. Also, the use of stem cells is not unethical because it is not in fact killing another human since cloning uses unfertilized cells.

Arguments
A. Therapeutic cloning could assist in finding cure for genetic diseases
Cloning for medical purposes should be legalized because “the use of genetic engineering in humans promises some extraordinary benefits, one of which is cure and prevention of many types of diseases that stem from faulty genes.” As statistics indicate, fourteen percent of newborns are born with a physical or mental problem. In addition, these genetic deficiencies may cause many other problems later in life. Moreover, scientists and doctors name more and more health disorders caused by faulty genes everyday. Examples of such diseases can be Down’s Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Anemia, Juvenile Diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and many others. Embryonic stem cell research has shown that there is a huge possibility to cure such diseases because these cells are easy to duplicate. Specifically, each cell can become anything – skin, bone, blood and any other cell of the 210 types of cells that make up the human body. Than, a faulty cell can be replaced with the good one meaning that a person condemned to death can easily be saved in this way. For example, a research project at Washington University proves that embryonic stem cells can easily regenerate after they are being inserted in the animal body. Specifically, the spinal cords of rats regenerated after stem cells were incorporated into their bodies to the extent that the animals were able to walk by themselves. Furthermore, the French example gives direct evidence that the cell exchange works out in practice not only in animal bodies but in human bodies as well. For instance, according to French researchers, a damaged heart can be repaired with a dose of stem cells. Their study provides the first direct evidence that stem cells injected into an injured heart do develop to take on some of the workload. Specifically, muscle stem cells, called myoblasts, were taken from the thigh muscle of a man who had suffered a heart attack. Then they were cultured and injected into his heart. The function of his heart was stronger after this treatment. When this person died after 18 months, the researchers were able to get factual evidence that the injected myoblasts had metamorphosed in his body. So, these examples prove that stem cells have the potential to change into any cell in the body, such as a heart tissue cell or a spinal cord cell. This means that the stem cell research would help to heal a lot of people who suffer from the deadly and debilitating diseases.

Next, therapeutic cloning should be legal because it would make the process of creating replacement organs much easier. Then, replacement organs could become freely available to sick and dying people at any moment they need them. Moreover, that would save countless numbers of lives and increase the quality of lives of countless others because these people would no longer need to wait years and years in order to get a perfectly matched replacement organ, or in many cases to die before they get the transplant. It should be mentioned that medical cloning with the purpose to create a completely new replacement organ has numerous advantages when compared to regular organ transplant by a second person. In this case there would be presumably no danger of rejection of the transplant because the organ’s DNA would match the patient’s DNA exactly. Furthermore, for transplants involving kidney, or any other organ that is duplicated in the body, another individual would not have to experience pain, inconvenience and potentially shortened life span in order to donate the organ. On the hand, the patient would not have to wait until an unrelated donor dies in order to obtain a transplant. Also, the patient would not have to make – do with a replacement organ that is old and may have reduced functionality because a brand – new organ would be grown specifically for him. Obviously, the procedure would save lives which would otherwise be lost waiting for a transplant that did not come in time, or did not perfectly fit to the patient.

So, it clear that cloning should be no longer treated as a criminal activity if it is done exceptionally for medical purposes because individual stem cells can be implanted in human bodies to repair the damage caused by degenerative illnesses. Also, stem cells have the potential to grow into complete organs that are desperately necessary for people who need replacement organs in order to survive.

B. Therapeutic cloning is ethically acceptable
Therapeutic cloning is not an unethical practice as it is held by a big number of people; therefore, its legalization can be easily justified. First, the religious assertion that a stem cell is a living person and that the research equals murder cannot in any way restrict the legalization of therapeutic cloning because it is not true. It is known that scientists use unfertilized eggs in the process of cloning, thus the cloned egg could never be a person. Consequently, if there is no person, there is no murder as well. Next, many scientists prefer to use healthy cells taken from abnormal human embryos that are condemned to die anyway. Specifically, these spare embryos are taken from couples undergoing medical treatment at fertility clinics. For instance, John Gurdon, head of the team at the Wellcome Cancer Research Institute in Cambridge, who made experiments with the cloned frog embryos, says that he cannot see why anyone would object to someone taking cells and working with them if an embryo is certain to die. Moreover, he thinks that if an embryo is destined to die within days, it’s not a potential human. Clearly, no objection on the grounds of unethical practice can be made in this case as well because there is nothing immoral to work with the cells that are going to die soon anyway. Furthermore, there is one more alternative proposition that makes stem cell research ethically justifiable. Obviously, there is nothing evil but the benefits of being able to develop an individual’s own cells in order to create a new source of cells for their own future treatment. Finally, the potential benefits of stem cell research are much more significant than these moral, ethical and religious concerns. Also, all these benefits, especially if therapeutic cloning is allowed to practice legally, would represent the best future of developing treatments and cures for a numerous amount of degenerative disorders.

Conclusion
As it is obvious from the facts and examples that are mentioned above in this paper, cloning for medical purposes should be definitely legalized because it provides the society with more benefits than harms. Moreover, ethical objections towards stem cell research are not substantial in order to deny this medical advancement that, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, would be beneficial for more than 100 million people suffering from mental and physical disorders that are caused by faulty genes. Therefore, if we want to save lives or improve the quality of lives of deadly ill people, we have to legalize this outstanding medical practice. Only then we will be able to regulate this process and avoid abusive practices in this particular field. Also, the interest of the most vulnerable persons in our society would be protected if we promote these advanced medical technologies rather than prevent them on vague, ambiguous and in practice harm resulting so – called ethical grounds.

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As we discussed in class, the population of older adults is much greater and continues to grow greater than the younger population. Many societies have different views on the older population, older adults themselves have their own particular views. Many people feel once you grow old, that’s it for you, that there is not much you can do but just sit around. A lot of these views do not necessarily arise from negative views of particular individuals, for instance a family member may choose not to let a grandparent go shopping anymore for groceries, because their getting old, and they may feel if they continue to go to the stores for themselves, they might not have the energy they had a few years ago and may over exert themselves. More often people feel this way about the older population, thus letting older adults themselves feel it is true, that growing old means you can not do the things you did a few years ago.

Many family physicians believe the same stereotypes. Many physicians lack the proper training, and trained assessment to detected depression. Studies found in the American Medical Association Journal, were by surveys were sent to family physicians and general internists to assess the knowledge and self attitudes regarding depression in the elderly. As to those who responded, 98.6 % agreed treatment for depression in the elderly was important, 29 % reported depressed elderly patients frustrated them, and 24.2 % reported they were pressured for time to investigate depression in the elderly. These figures are out of the 141 family physicians and general internists who responded to the survey. The age range was from 29 to 75 years of age. Although this survey was small, it gives us an idea on how some individuals, even doctors feel about the elderly.

When I went on my trip to the senior center a women was asking the social worker about a new medication prescribed by her physician, when she asked the physician how to take the medication he told her to ask the pharmacist. The pharmacist told her to read the booklet, she told him she could not see, and the pharmacist told her well I can’t do anything about that. The social worker called the pharmacist and he replied to her that he never said any such thing. In situations such as this, many elders will often take medications improperly, and can cause them more serious of a problem then they did before hand.

Although the FDA published a rule in 1997 on all pharmaceutical drug labels to include what type of side effects the drug may have on the elderly who might be taken the drug. ( Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct.22/29, 1997 ). Doctors very often have to take in to consideration the dose of the medication given to certain patients. Teenagers are often portrayed as the ones who might possibly abuse prescription drugs, but elders just as anyone else can abuse any drug. Doctors are under an assumption they know how to take medication, or would have a family member to assist them. Many do not have any one to monitor the use of a drug, so often a prescription may be taken too much or possibly not the full dose.

This can be very stressful and lead to a sense of doubt about ones own capabilities. Depression in the elderly is very serious and often very hard to detect by family and physicians. Sometimes people feel that there is an expiation for elders having depression, such as well his/her physical capabilities are not the same, and without these capabilities others and themselves have a tendency to feel what other purpose can they serve if they can not walk or lift groceries. There are just too many preventable reasons for depression and the elderly, it is very important for everyone to be aware of the stereotypes, and facts that society is not aware of regarding the elderly. Doctors should be trained with updated gerontology courses, so they too can be aware that just because one may look old they, are not old, and therefore should not be treated based on personal attitudes towards how they may feel about the elderly.

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Another reason why the Roman Empire fell was because of the barbarian invasions. First the civil wars weakened Rome’s forces and caused the Huns to attack the Empire. After the Huns attacked many German Tribes began to follow. After the Huns stopped attacking the Germanic Tribes kept on invading until they had conquered the entire Roman Empire. This is how Rome fell, however it was only able to happen because of the civil wars and a few other reasons. Basically this didn’t cause the fall of Rome it just made it official.

I don’t think the U.S. will have a problem like the Roman Empire did. The reason I do not think that the US will fall like the Roman Empire is because our army is too powerful. I also think that almost all Americans support the US. So this would throw away any chance of another civil war. I feel that, especially after 911 Americans have a huge amount of patriotism for their country. Our military is also too strong. This is one of the main reasons why I don’t see the US crumbling like Ancient Rome. There is little to no other military systems that can come close to competing with the US’s. The armies that are powerful are allies with the US. That is another reason why I do not think the US will fall. The US has powerful, and loyal allies, like England.

Something I think that could cause the US problems in the future is hatred towards it. There are many countries, especially in the Middle East that hate the US. The reason this could cause problems is because there are a lot of countries who hate the US and if they for some reason banded together, the US would be in trouble. The whole war in Iraq thing has only justified these countries’ hatreds toward the US. After invading Iraq and not finding any weapons of mass destruction, I am sure it hurt the US’s image. I think the US should try and win back some popularity from the countries who it. This is the only major problem I could see that would jeopardize the US of falling like Rome.

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