Tournament: JW Patterson HS Invitational | Round: 5 | Opponent: Livingston RB | Judge: Liyanage, Nethmin
Fink 7-30-21
(Jenni, https://www.newsweek.com/who-warns-world-blind-understanding-covid-spread-hurting-ability-end-pandemic-1614722)
A lack of testing for COVID-19 in parts of the world is preventing
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We can test for it and we can treat it," Ghebreyesus said.
Kumar, PhD, 7-12-21
(Rajeesh, Associate Fellow Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, https://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/wto-trips-waiver-covid-vaccine-rkumar-120721)
In October 2020, India and South Africa had submitted a proposal to the World
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not expedient in a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Guy R. McPherson, PhD, 20 ~PhD Range Science, Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology~, "Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?" Eart and Envi Scie Res and Rev, Volume 3 Issue 2, 4-8-2020, https://opastonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/will-covid-19-trigger-extinction-of-all-life-on-earth-eesrr-20-.pdf
Small lives matter. Indeed, the "human body contains about 100 trillion cells
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that a microscopic virus could pull the trigger on our extinction ~15~.
Continued COVID spread causes great power war and is the death knell of the LIO—diversion, nationalism, psychology
Kitfield 20
(James, the only three-time winner of the prestigious Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/will-covid-19-kill-the-liberal-world-order/, 5-22)
For a brief moment it seemed that the worst global pandemic in a century might
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dangerous period when cooler heads may not prevail among the great power leaders."
Risk of U.S.-China nuclear escalation to total war is high – Chinese planners don’t believe nuclear weapons are usable and US decisionmakers are too confident in limited nuclear war.
Fiona CUNNINGHAM Poli Sci @ GW AND Taylor FRAVEL Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ’19 "Dangerous Confidence? Chinese Views on Nuclear Escalation" International Security 44 (2) p. EBSCO
Chinese views of nuclear escalation are key to assessing the potential for nuclear escalation in
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but it investigates only one of multiple pathways to nuclear escalation.~11~
COVID vaccine debate will kill the WTO- there are no alternate causes and solvency is reverse causal
Meyer 6-18-21
(David, Senior Writer, https://fortune.com/2021/06/18/wto-covid-vaccines-patents-waiver-south-africa-trips/)
The World Trade Organization knows all about crises. Former U.S. President
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all our ambassadors to the table to negotiate a text," she said.
Shaffer, JD Stanford, 21
(Gregory Shaffer is Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the forthcoming book, "Emerging Powers in the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law." https://thehill.com/opinion/international/559049-the-us-must-engage-with-china-even-when-countering-china, 6-21)
A policy statement heard around the world is that U.S. engagement with
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outcomes, such as to provide vaccines globally and to develop green technologies.
The WTO reduces war through peace dividends, interdependence, and rule of law
Baldwin, PhD, and Nakotomi 15
(Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Michitaka, Consulting Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) and a Special Adviser to the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). https://cepr.org/sites/default/files/policy'insights/PolicyInsight84.pdf, July)
The WTO, and the GATT before it, has been one the planet’s precious
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only – example of a multilateral and nearuniversal framework of rules and law.
Communication from India and South Africa to the WTO 20
(WAIVER FROM CERTAIN PROVISIONS OF THE TRIPS AGREEMENT FOR THE PREVENTION,
CONTAINMENT AND TREATMENT OF COVID-19 https://docs.wto.org/dol2fe/Pages/SS/directdoc.aspx?filename=q:/IP/C/W669.pdfandOpen=True, 10-2)
5. An effective response to COVID-19 pandemic requires rapid access to affordable medical products
including diagnostic kits, medical masks, other personal protective equipment and ventilators, as
well as vaccines and medicines for the prevention and treatment of patients in dire need.
6. The outbreak has led to a swift increase in global demand with many countries facing acute
shortages, constraining the ability to effectively respond to the outbreak. Shortages of these
products has put the lives of health and other essential workers at risk and led to many avoidable
deaths. It is also threatening to prolong the COVID-19 pandemic. The longer the current global crisis
persist, the greater the socio-economic fallout, making it imperative and urgent to collaborate
internationally to rapidly contain the outbreak.
7. As new diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19 are developed, there are significant
concerns, how these will be made available promptly, in sufficient quantities and at affordable price
to meet global demand. Critical shortages in medical products have also put at grave risk patients
suffering from other communicable and non-communicable diseases.
8. To meet the growing supply-demand gap, several countries have initiated domestic production
of medical products and/or are modifying existing medical products for the treatment of COVID-19
patients. The rapid scaling up of manufacturing globally is an obvious crucial solution to address the
timely availability and affordability of medical products to all countries in need.
9. There are several reports about intellectual property rights hindering or potentially hindering
timely provisioning of affordable medical products to the patients.3
It is also reported that some
WTO Members have carried out urgent legal amendments to their national patent laws to expedite
the process of issuing compulsory/government use licenses.
10. Beyond patents, other intellectual property rights may also pose a barrier, with limited options
to overcome those barriers. In addition, many countries especially developing countries may face
institutional and legal difficulties when using flexibilities available in the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). A particular concern for countries with
insufficient or no manufacturing capacity are the requirements of Article 31bis and consequently the
cumbersome and lengthy process for the import and export of pharmaceutical products.
- Internationally, there is an urgent call for global solidarity, and the unhindered global sharing
of technology and know-how in order that rapid responses for the handling of COVID-19 can be put
in place on a real time basis.
12. In these exceptional circumstances, we request that the Council for TRIPS recommends, as
early as possible, to the General Council a waiver from the implementation, application and
enforcement of Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II of the TRIPS Agreement in relation to prevention,
containment or treatment of COVID-19.
13. The waiver should continue until widespread vaccination is in place globally, and the majority
of the world's population has developed immunity hence we propose an initial duration of ~x~ years
from the date of the adoption of the waiver.
14. We request that the Council for TRIPS urgently recommends to the General Council adoption of
the annexed decision text.
The plan creates a new goldilocks patent law that exempts pandemics
Lindsey, JD Harvard, 21
(Brink, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/, 6-3)
Waiving patent protections is certainly no panacea. What is needed most urgently is a massive drive of technology transfer, capacity expansion, and supply line coordination to bring vaccine supply in line with global demand. Dispensing with patents in no way obviates the need for governments to fund and oversee this effort. Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference. Furthermore, and probably even more important, this is almost certainly not the last pandemic we will face. Urbanization, the spread of factory-farming methods, and globalization all combine to increase the odds that a new virus will make the jump from animals to humans and then spread rapidly around the world. Prior to the current pandemic, the 21st century already saw outbreaks of SARS, H1N1, MERS, and Ebola. Everything we do and learn in the current crisis should be viewed from the perspective of getting ready for next time. THE NATURE OF THE PATENT BARGAIN When we take the longer view, we can see a fundamental mismatch between the policy design of intellectual property protection and the policy requirements of effective pandemic response. Although patent law, properly restrained, constitutes one important element of a well-designed national innovation system, the way it goes about encouraging technological progress is singularly ill-suited to the emergency conditions of a pandemic or other public health crisis. Securing a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments would thus establish a salutary precedent that, in emergencies of this kind, governments should employ other, more direct means to incentivize the development of new drugs. Here is the basic bargain offered by patent law: encourage the creation of useful new ideas for the long run by slowing the diffusion of useful new ideas in the short run. The second half of the bargain, the half that imposes costs on society, comes from the temporary exclusive rights, or monopoly privileges, that a patent holder enjoys. Under U.S. patent law, for a period of 20 years nobody else can manufacture or sell the patented product without the permission of the patent holder. This allows the patent holder to block competitors from the market, or extract licensing fees before allowing them to enter, and consequently charge above-market prices to its customers. Patent rights thus slow the diffusion of a new invention by restricting output and raising prices. The imposition of these short-run costs, however, can bring net long-term benefits by sharpening the incentives to invent new products. In the absence of patent protection, the prospect of easy imitation by later market entrants can deter would-be innovators from incurring the up-front fixed costs of research and development. But with a guaranteed period of market exclusivity, inventors can proceed with greater confidence that they will be able to recoup their investment. For the tradeoff between costs and benefits to come out positive on net, patent law must strike the right balance. Exclusive rights should be valuable enough to encourage greater innovation, but not so easily granted or extensive in scope or term that this encouragement is outweighed by output restrictions on the patented product and discouragement of downstream innovations dependent on access to the patented technology. Unfortunately, the U.S. patent system at present is out of balance. Over the past few decades, the expansion of patentability to include software and business methods as well as a general relaxation of patenting requirements have led to wildly excessive growth in these temporary monopolies: the number of patents granted annually has skyrocketed roughly fivefold since the early 1980s. One unfortunate result has been the rise of "non-practicing entities," better known as patent trolls: firms that make nothing themselves but buy up patent portfolios and monetize them through aggressive litigation. As a result, a law that is supposed to encourage innovation has turned into a legal minefield for many would-be innovators. In the pharmaceutical industry, firms have abused the law by piling up patents for trivial, therapeutically irrelevant "innovations" that allow them to extend their monopolies and keep raising prices long beyond the statutorily contemplated 20 years. Patent law is creating these unintended consequences because policymakers have been caught in an ideological fog that conflates "intellectual property" with actual property rights over physical objects. Enveloped in that fog, they regard any attempts to put limits on patent monopolies as attacks on private property and view ongoing expansions of patent privileges as necessary to keep innovation from grinding to a halt. In fact, patent law is a tool of regulatory policy with the usual tradeoffs between costs and benefits; like all tools, it can be misused, and as with all tools there are some jobs for which other tools are better suited. A well-designed patent system, in which benefits are maximized and costs kept to a minimum, is just one of various policy options that governments can employ to stimulate technological advance—including tax credits for RandD, prizes for targeted inventions, and direct government support. PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCIES AND DIRECT GOVERNMENT SUPPORT For pandemics and other public health emergencies, patents’ mix of costs and benefits is misaligned with what is needed for an effective policy response. The basic patent bargain, even when well struck, is to pay for more innovation down the road with slower diffusion of innovation today. In the context of a pandemic, that bargain is a bad one and should be rejected entirely. Here the imperative is to accelerate the diffusion of vaccines and other treatments, not slow it down. Giving drug companies the power to hold things up by blocking competitors and raising prices pushes in the completely wrong direction.
Erfani et al, 21
(Parsa Erfani, Fogarty global health scholar1 2, Agnes Binagwaho, vice chancellor2, Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, vice president3, Muhammad Yunus, chair4, Paul Farmer, professor57, Vanessa Kerry, associate professor810 Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA 2University of Global Health Equity, Rwanda 3Sierra Leone 4Yunus Centre, Bangladesh 5Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA 6Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA 7Partners In Health, USA 8Seed Global Health, USA 9Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA 10Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA Intellectual property waiver for covid-19 vaccines will advance global health equity BMJ 2021; 374 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1837 (Published 03 August 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;374:n1837 https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1837.full) The barrier to adequate vaccine supply today is not lack of vaccine options, nor even theoretical production capacity; the problem is the intellectual property (IP) protection governing production and access to vaccines—and ultimately, the political and moral will to waive these protections in a time of global crisis. Without such liberty, there will not be enough vaccine fast enough to prevent the spread of variants, the avoidable deaths, and the continued choking of low and middle income countries (LMICs) through poor health. Beyond donor based models of global vaccine equity As covid-19 became a pandemic, global efforts emerged to help ensure vaccines would be delivered across the globe to the highest risk populations. One of the first was Covax, a risk sharing mechanism in which countries, tiered by means, contribute to collectively source and equitably distribute vaccines globally. The effort, however laudable in intent, has been undercut by vaccine scarcity and underfunding. Covax aims to vaccinate 20 of the population in 92 low and middle income countries by the end of 2021. At the end of April, however, it had shipped only one fifth of its projected estimates and lacked critical resources for distribution.3 LMICs are wary about participating in well worn dynamics of global health aid. Instead, they are mobilising to overcome the fundamental paucity of available vaccines by challenging established global IP rules. At issue is the 1995 Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, which established minimum protection standards for IP—including patents, industrial designs, trade secrets, and copyright—that all 164 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) must respect.5 Subsequent rulings (such as the Doha declaration) have strived to clarify safeguards on patents, including compulsory licensing, which allows governments to license patents to a third party without consent (table 1).6 Today, these rules provide strong IP protection for vaccine technologies and affect the quantity and location of vaccine production and availability. Table 1 Licensing of intellectual property View popupView inline In October 2020, South Africa and India submitted a proposal to the WTO to temporarily waive certain provisions of the TRIPS agreement for covid-19 health products and technologies. The waiver would prevent companies that hold the IP for covid-19 vaccines from blocking vaccine production elsewhere on the grounds of IP and allow countries to produce covid-19 medical goods locally and import or export them expeditiously (table 1). Although the proposed IP waiver is supported by over 100 countries, WTO has not reached a consensus on the proposal because of opposition and filibustering by several high income countries, including the UK, Germany, and Japan.7 Waiver opponents argue that the limited capacity of LMICs to produce complex covid-19 vaccines safely is the true barrier to global production, not IP. They suggest that the TRIPS waiver would penalise drug companies, stifle biomedical innovation, and deter future investments in research and development—in sum, that it would reduce returns on investment and dismantle an IP system that provided the goods needed to end the pandemic. Others are concerned that an IP waiver would fuel supply chain bottlenecks for raw materials and undermine ongoing production. Moreover, policy makers argue that a waiver is unnecessary as company driven voluntary licensing—in which companies decide when and how to license their technologies—and existing TRIPS flexibilities (such as country determined compulsory licensing) should suffice in establishing production in LMICs (table 1). They suggest that waiving IP for covid-19 vaccines would provide no meaningful progress, but the data do not support this. What effect would a waiver have? Contrary to detractors’ concerns about the possible effect of a temporary TRIPS waiver, global health analyses suggest that it will be vital to equitable and effective action against covid-19. LMIC’s manufacturing capabilities have been underestimated, even though several LMICs have the scientific and manufacturing capacity to produce complex covid-19 vaccines. India, Egypt, and Thailand are already manufacturing viral vector or mRNA-based covid-19 vaccines,8910 and vaccine production lines could be established within months in some other LMICs,11 offering substantial benefit in a pandemic that will last years.11 Companies in India and China have already developed complex pneumococcal and hepatitis B recombinant vaccines, challenging existing vaccine monopolies.12 The World Health Organization launched an mRNA technology transfer hub in April 2021 to provide the logistical, training, and know-how support needed for manufacturers in LMICs to repurpose or expand existing manufacturing capacity to produce covid-19 vaccines and to help navigate accessing IP rights for the technology.13 Twenty five respondents from LMICs expressed interest, and South Africa was selected as the first hub, with plans to start producing the vaccine through the Biovac Institute in the coming months.14 Removing IP barriers through the waiver will facilitate these efforts, more rapidly enable future hubs, engage a greater number of manufacturers, and ultimately yield more doses faster. Moreover, as the waiver facilitates vaccine production, demand for raw materials and active ingredients will increase. Coupled with pre-emptive planning to anticipate and expand raw material production, the waiver—which encompasses the IP of all covid-19 vaccine-related technology— can offer a path to overcome bottlenecks and expand production of necessary vaccine materials. Current licensing mechanisms inadequate Voluntary licences have not and will not keep pace with public health demand. Since companies determine the terms of voluntary licences, they are often granted to LMICs that can afford them, leaving out poorer regions.10 For example, in South Asia, AstraZeneca has voluntarily licensed its vaccine to the Serum Institute of India, even though the region has multiple capable vaccine manufacturers.9 Many covid-19 vaccine developers have not taken steps towards licensing their technologies, simply because there is limited financial incentive to do so.11 To date, none have shared IP protected vaccine information with the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) established last year.15 Relying on the moral compass of companies that answer to shareholders to voluntarily license their technologies will have limited effect on vaccine equity. Their market is driven by profit margins, not public health. Compulsory licensing by LMICs will also be insufficient in rapidly expanding vaccine production, as each patent licence must be negotiated separately by each country and for each product based on its own merit. From 1995 to 2016, 108 compulsory licences were attempted and only 53 were approved.6 The case-by-case approach is slow and not suitable for a global crisis that requires swift action. In addition, TRIPS requires compulsory licences to be used predominantly for domestic supply, limiting exports of the licensed goods to nearby low income countries without production capacity.5 Although a "special" compulsory licence system was agreed in the Doha declaration to allow for expeditious exportation and importation (formalised as the article 31bis amendment to TRIPS in 2017), the provision is limited by cumbersome logistical procedures and has been rarely used.16 Governments may also be hesitant to pursue compulsory licences as high income countries have previously bullied them for doing so. Since India first used compulsory licensing for sorafenib tosylate in 2012 (reducing the cancer drug’s price by 97), the US has consistently pressured the country not to use further compulsory licences.17 During this pandemic, Gilead sued the Russian government for issuing a compulsory licence for remdesivir.18 Furthermore, while compulsory licences are primarily for patents, covid-19 vaccines often have other types of IP, including trade secrets, that are integral for production.19 The emergency TRIPS waiver removes all IP as a barrier to starting production (not just patents) and negates the prolonged time, inconsistency, frequent failure, and political pressure that accompany voluntary licensing and compulsory licensing efforts. It also provides an expeditious path for new suppliers to import and export vaccines to countries in need without bureaucratic limitations. Finally, there is no compelling evidence that the proposed TRIPS waiver would dismantle the IP system and its innovation incentives. The waiver is restricted to covid-19 related goods and is time limited, helping to protect future innovation. It would, however, reduce profit margins on current covid-19 vaccines. With substantial earnings in the first quarter of 2021, many drug companies have already recouped their research and development costs for covid-19 vaccines.20 However, they have not been the sole investors in vaccine development, and they should not be the only ones to profit. Most vaccines received a substantial portion of their direct funding from governments and not-for-profit organisations—and for some, such as Moderna and Novavax, nearly all.21 Decades of publicly funded research have laid the groundwork for current innovations in the background technologies used for vaccines.22 Given that companies were granted upfront risk protection for covid-19 vaccine research and development, a waiver that advances global public health but reduces vaccine profits in a global crisis is reasonable. Knowledge transfer An IP waiver for covid-19 vaccines is integral to boosting vaccine supply, breaking vaccine monopolies, and making vaccines more affordable in LMICs. It is, however, only a first, but necessary, step. Originator companies must transfer vaccine technology and share know-how with C-TAP, transfer hubs, or individual manufacturers to help suppliers begin production.23 In addition, governments must leverage domestic law, private sector incentives, and contract terms with pharmaceutical companies to compel companies to cooperate with such transfers.24 If necessary, governments can require technology transfers in exchange for continuing enterprise in a country or avoiding penalties. Politicians and leaders are at a critical juncture: they will either take the necessary steps to make vaccine technology available to scale production, stimulate global collaboration, and create a path to equity or they will protect a hierarchical system based on an economic bottom line. The former will not only build a vaccination trajectory that puts equal value on the lives of the rich and the poor, but will also help stem the pandemic’s relentless momentum and quell the emergence of variants. We are in the middle of one of the largest vaccination efforts in human history. We cannot rely on companies to thread the needle of corporate social and moral responsibility with shareholder and stock value returns nor expect impacted governments to endure lengthy bureaucratic licensing processes in this time of crisis. It will be a legacy of apathy and unnecessary death. As the human impact of the proposed IP waiver becomes clear, consensus behind it is growing. Countries that previously opposed the waiver—such as the US and Brazil—now support written text based negotiations.7 Opposing countries must stop blocking the waiver, engage in transparent text negotiations, and commit to reaching consensus swiftly. The longer states stall, the more people die needlessly. Covid-19 has repeatedly shown that people without access to resources such as strong health systems, health workers, medicines, and vaccines will preferentially fall ill and die. For too long, this cycle has been "other people’s" problem. It is not. It is our problem.
The standard is util.
Goodin 95 — Robert E. Goodin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Social and Political Theory in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, holds a D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University, 1995 ("Utilitarianism as a public philosophy," Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521462630, p. 8-10)
The strength of utilitarianism, the problem to which it is a truly compelling solution, is as a guide to public rather than private conduct. There, virtually all its vices - all the things that make us wince in recommending it as a code of personal morality - loom instead as considerable virtues. Consider first the raft of criticisms couched in terms of the impersonality of utilitarianism. Like all universalist philosophies, utilitarianism asks us to take "the view from nowhere."19 There is no obvious place within utilitarian theories for people's idiosyncratic perspectives, histories, attachments, loyalties or personal commitments. That rings untrue to certain essential qualities of personal life. The essence of the communitarian challenge is that everyone comes from somewhere. There are no free-floating individuals, of the sort with which liberals generally, and utilitarians paradigmatically, populate their moral theories."20 People have, and upon reflection we think they should have, principled commitments and personal attachments of various sorts.21~end page 8~ As an account of the peculiar role responsibilities of public officials (and, by extension, of ordinary individuals in their public capacities as citizens) that vice becomes a virtue, though. Those agents, too, have to come from somewhere, bringing with them a whole raft of baggage of personal attachments, commitments, principles and prejudices. In their public capacities, however, we think it only right and proper that they should stow that baggage as best they can. Complete neutrality might be an impossible ideal. That is another matter.22 But it seems indisputable that that is an ideal which people in their public capacities should strive to realize as best they are able. That is part (indeed, a central part) of what it is to be a public official at all. It is the essence of public service as such that public servants should serve the public at large. Public servants must not play favorites. Or consider, again, criticisms revolving around the theme that utilitarianism is a coldly calculating doctrine.23 In personal affairs that is an unattractive feature. There, we would like to suppose that certain sorts of actions proceed immediately from the heart, without much reflection much less any real calculation of consequences. Among intimates it would be extremely hurtful to think of every kind gesture as being contrived to produce some particular effect. The case of public officials is, once again, precisely the opposite. There, it is the height of irresponsibility to proceed careless of the consequences. Public officials are, above all else, obliged to take care: not to go off half cocked, not to let their hearts rule their heads. In Hare's telling example, the very worst thing that might be said of the Suez misadventure was not that the British and French did some perfectly awful things (which is true, too) but that they did so utterly unthinkingly. Related to the critique of utilitarianism as a calculating doctrine is the critique of utilitarianism as a consequentialist doctrine. According to utilitarianism, the effects of an action are everything. There are no actions which are, in and of themselves, morally right or wrong, good or bad. The only things that are good or bad are the effects that actions produce.25 That proposition runs counter to certain ethical intuitions which, at ~end page 9~ least in certain quarters, are rooted deeply. Those who harbor a Ten Commandments view of the nature of morality see a moral code as being essentially a list of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" - a list of things that are right or wrong in and of themselves, quite regardless of any consequences that might come from doing them.26 That may or may not be a good way to run one's private affairs. 27 Even those who think it is, however, tend to concede that it is no way to run public affairs. It is in the nature of public officials' role responsibilities that they are morally obliged to "dirty their hands" — make hard choices, do things that are wrong (or would ordinarily be wrong, or would be wrong for ordinary private individuals) in the service of some greater public good.28 It would be simply irresponsible of public officials (in any broadly secular society, at least) to adhere mindlessly to moral precepts read off some sacred list, literally "whatever the consequences."29 Doing right though the heavens may fall is not (nowadays, anyway) a particularly attractive posture for public officials to adopt.