Human Organ Transplant Act

With the Human Organ Transplant Act, or HOTA, Singapore now has a working system for saving lives by transplanting organs from the deceased into the patients. However, this system is not and will never be infallible, as there are many loopholes and these have led to many heated arguments in the past decade.

With HOTA, how far is it viable to forego consent in harvesting organs? I say that while being used to save another’s life is a noble cause, simply taking an organ from someone who has passed away without any kind of permission is in fact very immoral and wrong. Therefore, consent must be given before the deceased’s organs are removed and transplanted.

However, this has led to the government adapting an opt-out system, which is effective, but considered by many people as unethical, mainly due to the fact that most of the perfectly healthy people are simply not aware of the HOTA and therefore will not think of opting-out of the system. This has led to many conflicts between those that have a need to carry out the HOTA, and the family of the deceased. Another reason why so many conflicts such as the SGH incident occurs is because of the fact that a next-of-kin is not allowed to make decisions themselves on behalf of their dying relatives. However, the point here is that people in a coma cannot talk, and even if they could, they would be asking for their loved ones instead of saying “I want to opt out.” There are many cases like this where individuals cannot opt-out themselves and their family are also helpless to opt-out on behalf of the individual, and all they can do is watch their loved one’s organs get cut out and transplanted.

Another point of the HOTA that I would consider immoral is that those who opt-out of the system, being unwilling to donate their own organs should something happen to them, are given lower priorities on the waiting list should they ever need a transplant. What this basically means is that just because one wishes to keep his organs after death, he has to watch helplessly as people leapfrog him in the queue for an organ transplant. Does this really coincide with the ideals of democracy, where all of the citizens have equal liberty and rights?

The situation desperately needs improvement and to tackle the first issue of people being unaware of the opt-out system, we need to enforce education to the mass public so that they know about this system before they are critically ill. This can be done through campaigns in HDB zones that are mostly inhabited by the elderly, as well as through other forms of advertisement such as pamphlets and posters. Another way to tackle both the first and the second problem is to have an opt-in system instead of an opt-out system. While we do know that the main worry of the government is that not enough people opt-in and therefore lives will be wasted because there were no available organs. However, I believe that if the government makes the incentives of opting-in attractive, there will be enough volunteers, and the problem of ethics can then be solved.

How Advertising Informs To Our Benefit

I certainly agree with the writer about the fact that there is a useful connection between advertising and information. When we need information about something, noticing an advertisement might give us critical information, or it might spur us to carry out more research on our own. It is natural that an advertisement strives to give as much information as possible crammed in a short period of time. Along with this information, people know more about their products, their products can therefore sell.

However, while advertisements do provide immense amounts of information, one must be careful when it comes to what type of information they are providing to the public. As we all know, advertising something means to promote this product while denouncing all others. Therefore, we can conclude that the information that a particular commercial gives will only be those that support the uses of the product. For example, from an advertisement encouraging safe sex, the information provided would be that HIV and AIDS is a major cause of deaths around the world, that everyone should protect themselves. However, it fails to give the actual statistics which show cardiovascular diseases to be much more a potent killer than AIDS. Therefore, the viewers might be misguided by the advertisements due to the fact that the information given to them is selective.

The passage also says that through advertisements, we can get extra information at no charge. I agree on this statement, because while their main purpose is to promote something, advertisements often do so by giving information that causes the viewers to understand something and understand that their product has that something, or solves that something. For example, being a teenager, I have never really been interested in milk powder commercials, but having seen them so many times between my favourite shows, I would have remembered that the advertisements keep saying that DHA is good for babies, or that some product contained ImmunoFortis. While people like me see this as extra knowledge, these are actually the selling points of the product. The information giveaway propels the public to get the product, and in this way, the company makes money, which translates into money for making the commercial, which somewhat translates into paying for this information. However, this is merely based on case-by-case interest of the people who are attracted, and for the major public, it is just free information.

Advertisements do also elicit information from other sources. Through advertising, it is true that the society can become a better place under the influence of advertisements. Being affected by commercials, the public have a better awareness in that area, for example healthcare or self-protection.

Perhaps the most obvious way of advertisements benefitting us is the reduction of prices. When two or more advertisements of the same kind clash, this forms a sense of competitive advertising. Since competition brings out the best in us, same goes for the products and companies. While they look to out-advertise each other, they will inevitably and invariably adjust the price of their product so as to be more popular in demand than their rivals. The price reduction caused by this competition is perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to consumers since inflation rose by quite a bit.

Moving on to the honesty and integrity that companies that advertise their products should have. If you take a look at all the major companies, like the recent example of AIG, their values all include integrity. Yet, for an advertisement to be effective, it is almost impossible for it to be entirely true and unbiased. Therefore, it is a very fine line between positive influence and lying. Companies do need to have the trust of their consumers, and the integrity and transparency between them is a very important relationship. This is particularly important for healthcare commercials, since a single sentence unsaid might lead to deaths.

As a designer for a tobacco commercial, like in any advertisement, I would only state the benefits and pros of the product while entirely leaving out the cons. I feel that health warnings must still be made to warn the public, the rest is entirely up to the publics' discernment.

Science - A Menace to Civilisation?

Is Science actually a menace to civilisation? While I applaude the author of Text A of trying his best to convince us that the answer is yes, in my mind, there is just no way that science can be considered more a menace to civilisation than as a huge benefit to society and humanity as a whole. It is without doubt that science is in fact responsible for the atomic bomb being invented, but to think of it carefully, if the bomb was not dropped, more people would have died. While science is in fact responsible for the development of weapons of heavy destruction, without the advances in science, especially in the health sector, how many more would have died?

As with the author of Text B, my viewpoint is that science is definitely not a menace to civilisation, in fact, science nowadays is the essence of our lives. look around us, and we will discover that science is all around us. Why our computers are able to work, why coffee is black, why we are alive even after having a fever, these are just the tip of the iceberg when is comes to examples of science being in the world around us. Without science, the world is as dull as a world without colour. Let us take a look at the definition of science. Science is the human effort to discovermore about how our physical world works. In Latin, Scientia means "knowledge". Therefore, if the gaining of knowledge of our world, or the understanding of how things work, is not a benefit to society and humanity, then what is?

The development of science, as said before, is widely known to have played a major role in the natural evolution of Earth. By saying this, I am saying that science is the key to what is keeping us alive. Not only that, but science keeps us alive, and it lets us understand what keeps us alive, and how we are still alive. If development in Science had stalled early on, perhaps the president of some African country would have been struck with disease, perhaps the world would have erupted in an uncontrollable epidermic. A few decades ago, no one on Earth had a cure for cancer. What did we do? Scientists studied and researched and finally found that cancer was after all curable. So how exactly did they do that? We developed the cure not because we were lucky, not because we sat there an waited for nature to take its course, but because we, with the help of science, dived deep into the systems of our body, where we saw the real cause of the problem.

Many may say that the developement of science has caused many problems. But the truth is, while science has in fact caused these problems, by developing science further, we are able to solve these problems. An example would be global warming, where we agree that science is the major cause behind all the industrialisation and all the pollution of the environment. But here comes the marvel of science, and why it is useful to civilisation. In the near future, I am confident that scientists, through the development of science, will invent something that undoes all its past damage dealt to the society.

I would like to bring up another point about what Text A has said. Going back to the example on global warming, I like to break it up into three steps of action. First, the development of science which inspires industrialisation; next, the mass setting up of factories; third, the release of pollution into the air as the factories produce their products. While the development of science is responsible for the first step, it is entirely up to mankind whether science becomes constructive or destructive to society.

Therefore, concluding what I have said, the development of science is ultimately beneficial to society and civilisation, but that depends on whether mankind uses science properly, for it can save lives, but it can also kill.

Pornography

Pornography can be defined as any form of material which depicts the exploitation of sexual matters explicitly with the sole intention of arousing the viewer sexually. However, pornography can also be seen as the free expression of sexual desires, which would be culturally acceptable in many countries. Since pornography is speech, words, and pictures about sexuality, in terms of speech, there is a certain form of protection due to freedom of speech.

However, this brings us back onto the debate of whether pornography, although protected by freedom of expression, is infringing the viewers’ freedoms by making them uncomfortable. Many people argue that pornography is only for arousing sexual excitement and for no other purpose, furthermore, those who wish to view pornography are usually people who are not offended by it and who choose to view it for their own viewing pleasure. In some special cases where people do not have the chance to be involved sexually, they find solace by merely viewing pornography, be it on magazines or on the Internet. For these people in society, pornography is merely another means of fantasizing about the sexual pleasures that they cannot have with their own partners. Furthermore, whether or not pornography is disturbing depends solely on the viewer, and since the viewers are fine with it, pornography can be accepted as a form of art.

Pornography materials often depict women as wanting to be sexually exploited and this therefore degrades women and their moral standards. However, from another viewpoint, we can see that women who are involved in the pornography business actually enjoy the process and they often make a profit out of it. There are those that become famous after being labeled a “porn star”, who go on to become a famous figure in the modern world. Therefore, pornography is not completely immoral in the present society.

Despite all that, there are also downsides to pornography. Over the past few years, where pornography has become readily available, it has been linked to all sorts of crimes and public perception is that if someone watches porn, that person must have committed a crime and it is unwise to get close to him. The downgrade of women into sex objects is another cause for worry. Due to pornography fuelling male fantasies, many males tend to get overly excited, and not satisfied with only watching pornography, they decide to act it out on those sex objects. This is the major cause for many cases of rape of women and children, where the men who rape them see them as no more than an object that can be manipulated to fulfill their sexual desires. As a result, pornography becomes the fuel for crime because they impart the wrong morals into the viewers’ minds.

In conclusion, pornography can be accepted as a form of art if it does not infringe the viewers’ rights, but it is also the main cause behind rape cases and therefore not completely morally right.  

President’s Star Charity Show- is there a need for artistes to perform stunts to milk the public’s compassion for more generous donations?

President’s Star Charity Show- is there a need for artistes to perform stunts to milk the public’s compassion for more generous donations?

Over the past few years, we have seen numerous charity shows which are able to raise millions of dollars for all kinds of organisations which range from hospitals to cancer foundations to homes for the disabled and retarded. It is therefore unanimous in public view that charity shows are a great help to those who are unfortunate and not as well-off as most of us are. However, recently, a debate has been raging over whether charity shows need to have famous artistes from Mediacorp and even overseas perform dangerous stunts to milk the public’s compassion, so as to get more donations.

On one hand, there are members of the public who believe that compassion comes from within our hearts. They argue that performances by celebrities and dangerous stunts which show that artistes are risking their life to appeal for donations are redundant and do not serve the purpose and mission of the President’s Star Charity Show. I feel that even if there is no show whatsoever, people who are willing to donate will donate. These kind Samaritans do not need a reminder in the form of a charity show to donate as they have the correct mindset in their hearts, which is the fact that they are donating because they wish to support the less fortunate, rather than donating because they are touched that celebs are performing stunts that risk their own lives for helping the less fortunate. I feel that the charity shows have misguided us in our aims, because we are now donating more because the songs are nice, not because we are more compassionate. This can be seen in many reports that list the most popular song, dance, or performance items in terms of the number of donation calls that came in during the performance.

However, some people believe that artistes do indeed need to perform to increase the overall effectiveness of the charity show. We cannot deny that performances like songs and dances and amazing stunts do attract and increase the number of people watching and therefore donations, they also encourage the captivated audience to donate for simply because of the fact that they are putting so much hard work into pulling off a stunt which looks as if it could cost their lives. By seeing that even famous people are giving their all for a charity, it silently inspires the audience to call in and donate more. However, I realise that instead of celebs dancing around on poles, a more effective way would be to play more clips about the beneficiaries as well as the challenges the less fortunate are facing, so as to appeal to the audiences’ emotions to achieve more generous donations. I remember on a charity show some years back, I was really and only touched by the story of this teenage boy who had a rare disease of which his bones would shatter every time he sneezed. Therefore, I think that celebs performing on charity shows are redundant and not very effective.

In conclusion, the aims of a charity show should be to touch the audience emotionally and appeal to them for donations, and I do not see how artistes performing stunts would help to achieve that. That being said, this is only my personal opinion, so I am open to criticism and comments. 

Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in SG

Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in Singapore

Over the past few months, there has been a debate over one of Singapore’s most sensitive and controversial topics – whether online commentaries about politics should be banned. As we all know, politics in Singapore are often mentioned in hand with its restrictions due to sensitivity about the issue.  However, over the Net, we can still find many satirical websites that provoke and mock the government such as talkingcock.com and Mr Brown’s blog. These websites feature various articles that can be viewed as having a joke about Singapore’s current affairs and they often make fun of local issues that are usually political.

With new regulations, political podcasts, which are part of political commentaries that make use of the streaming of videos for entertainment or advertising, are now banned during election periods. On top of that, individual bloggers that post political commentaries will now have to register with the Media Development Agency if they are to continue their blogging about politically biased views. Also, they are banned from advertising anything to do with politics and political parties during the elections. During non-election periods, they can continue to post but bloggers who step over the line of political harmfulness will be given a warning and subsequently a serious fine or jail term.

The government has banned political podcasting during elections due to the fact that they are worried that these podcasts would potentially spell trouble for the election fairness. Their main concern is that bloggers use their anonymity on the Internet to amass huge crowds of people to be politically biased. Therefore, the ban is there to make sure that there are no political podcasts and advertisements during the election period to act as propaganda and that bloggers who hide behind the veil of the Internet cannot use similar tools to manipulate the opinions of a large amount of people to be politically biased.

In my opinion, the ban is justified. Since Singapore is not North Korea, our government must allow us some freedom of speech. The definition of that is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. So, the government, over the past few years, has aimed to give us an increased bubble size in which we can freely comment and even mock the way the government is handling issues. However, what I feel is that this ban is put in place just to ensure that we Singaporeans do not go over the board and step over a boundary into territory that can be potentially dangerous for the fairness, governance, and ultimately safety for the country. Furthermore, the ban on political podcasts only come in during the elections as the major concern of the government here is that these podcasts will affect public opinion and therefore affect the total fairness and authenticity of the election and the election results. In view of this fact, I feel that the government is doing this not because they are afraid that political podcasts might smear their reputation, but rather because of the benefit of the whole country. Therefore, I feel that this ban is reasonably justified and while bloggers will be disappointed, they should not be too upset due to the reasonably loose restrictions of this ban.

Next, the main reason why this ban was enforced is because the Internet has become a frequent source of abuse and attack. This is mainly due to the fact that when someone goes onto the Internet, his or her identity is anonymous as long as he or she does not want to reveal it. Furthermore, even if the individual does want to reveal his or her identity, it might not even be real. These are why the government has enforced bans in the cyber-technological area, since every person has as much chance as being Osama bin Laden as the next. To ensure the safety of our country, the ban is a must to deter anonymous bloggers to continue to post comments harmful to the cohesiveness between government and people, which is why they must now register with the Media Development Agency if they want to post anything like that.

All in all, this ban ultimately protects the justice and fairness of our country and I do not see how it is harmful to our lives, apart from the fact that just a little bit of daily entertainment is taken away.

Hi all, 

This is an English blog strictly for English only. 

Feel free to comment. =D

Kerry