Food is one of the most essential elements of a person's life. Everyone needs to eat whether it be meat or vegetables. As a population continues to increase, more food is needed to sustain that population. Being able to produce or import the food that is need to support the population provides a strain on the environment to grow or produce the products that are needed. Eventually, any given place is going to reach its carrying capacity and will then not be able to sustain the populations within its environment.
The community that i came from is called Raft Swamp. It is not very big but contains many people for it's size. Resources within this community are limited due to the people that inhabit it. To obtain food and other resources, one must go outside of the community into the city to buy these essential goods. The amount of food needed to sustain the community can not be received there. Raft Swamp is not a sustainable community due to overpopulation and lack of resources. It is mainly composed of swamp land which restricts land use for farming and other types of agriculture.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
Human Testing: Ethical or not?
A
number of chemical pesticide manufacturers have been using human subjects in
their pesticide studies. They are using humans to discover the exposure levels
and the effects that these chemicals have on agribusiness workers. These
studies are being presented to the EPA without their prior knowledge. They
should not be performed without a complete review of poison control centers.
This kind of testing is unethical and can be very dangerous to the subjects.
Using humans to ascertain the risk and toxicity levels of a chemical does not
benefit the environment or existing environmental regulations.
The organizations that perform these
studies recruit people who have an extremely low income. This ensures the
organizations that the people will be willing to subject their bodies to the
levels of risk that are reached during these experiments. These people are paid
based on time spent and not the level of risk that is initiated. The results
from these experiments are supposed to remain unpublished and confidential to
the company. Another company would then duplicate the experiment and compare
results. This procedure has not been followed recently and raises ethical
concerns.
The agricultural workers and their
families can benefit from these experiments; however, the humans that are being
tested reap no direct benefit from the experiments. Ultimately, these types of
studies should only be allowed when no alternatives are available.
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