Helping Harvard Medical School Make the Grade Essay - 1

Helping Harvard Medical School Make the Grade - Essay Example Some of these companies also sponsor only those where a positive outcome will be likely (Gagnon 1625). Therefore, tension exists between the desire to carry out the study for marketing advantage and adhering to laid down scientific principles. This concern is real thus cannot be said that they result in more good than harm. The pharmaceutical companies are a source of valuable resource for medical research. They are the primary funding of most of these studies. Banning it would not be practical as it will deny the companies data about their products and even lead to claims about products being made with minimal scientific evidence. As such, the finding should be controlled through disclosure mechanisms where those engaging with the firms reveal the details of the undertakings. This way, constant revaluation of the monetary aspects of the collaborations can be done. Moreover, the contractual agreement should be used for the benefit of the medical school and the industries. By protesting the Harvard conflict of interest policies, the student risked compromising the quality of education they receive. According to Morgan, Baker, and Evans, such policies are intended to ensure that there a right balance is struck between ensuring the integrity of the institution and permitting the members of the faculty to i mprove health through discoveries and eventual introduction of new drugs (670). By opposing the policies, they were compromising the ability of the institution to ensure that biomedical research funded by the companies are done in the appropriate way without emphasis being put on marketing advantage and economic gains both for the firms and the individual professors and lecturers. Even without the state passing similar regulations, Harvard could still have been able to pass its policies. Personally, I have not been in a class where the lecturers seemed to be giving biased information because of their work outside the university. However, should that occur, I believe it will be prudent enough to raise the concern so as to safeguard the quality of information given to the students. From the case, it is clear that dissent should be expressed through the right channels just the same way those who opposed the undertakings between the professors with the companies did by engaging the righ t authorities and administrators. Â  

Charles Dickenss Our Mutual Friend Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Charles Dickenss Our Mutual Friend - Essay Example He uses a kaleidoscope of characters to illustrate the various kinds of education, or lack of, and there is an underlying irony in his depiction of many of his middle class characters. One of the greatest contrasts Dickens' draws upon during the novel is between education and money. In the London society Dickens describes, for many, education does not matter as much as money. As mercenary Bella Wilfer exclaims at the end of Book III: 'And yet I have money always in my thoughts and my desires; and the whole life I place before myself is money, money, money, and what money can make of life!'1 Through his characterisation of individuals, such as Mr and Mrs Veneering, Dickens reveals how money can by you material possessions and social status but it cannot buy you education: Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, and their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new" (OMF, 5) The Veneerin The Veneerings are described as faintly ridiculous. They epitomise the 'frenzy of Victorian commodity culture'.2 Newness is the defining feature of the Veneerings. They are associated with surfaces and their nouveau riche world which is starkly contrasted to that of the riverside, described in the novel's opening scene. (Chavez, 20) The middle classes are satirized by Dickens's description of Podsnap, his 'analogous arch-bourgeois'.3 Podsnap is defined by routines and restraints: 'Getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five and dining at seven'. (OMF, 121) Podsnap is an example of one whose wealth and arrogance separates him from the rest of society: 'He never could make out why everybody was not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself'. (OMF, 120) Dickens reveals that despite being well off, 'Mr Podsnap's world was not a very large world, morally; no nor even geographically'. (OMF, 121) Due to the consumerism of Victorian society, Dickens does not depict education as a means of giving the working class a chance, especially if they are only being taught to abide by an erroneous set of rules. Instead, Dickens would appear to prefer a more humanistic form of education. During a speech he gave in 1844, Dickens stated: 'If you would reward honesty, if you would give encouragement to good, if you would stimulate the idle, eradicate evil, or correct what is bad, education - comprehensive liberal education - is the one thing needful, and the one effective end'.4 Dickens uses a number of characters to illustrate this view of education. Characters such as Bella Wilfer, Silas Wegg and Eugene Wrayburn are all lacking in social and moral education. Bella is obsessed about marrying money but is reformed through her 'education' from Mr Boffin. The Boffins are humble people whose inheritance causes