BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
There is a fear amongst the US scientific community that the US is losing its dominance of the acade...

There is a fear amongst the US scientific community that the US is losing its dominance of the academic nuclear field because the US is not funding research for its scientists. Meanwhile states like China (which is developing new missile delivery systems and more sophisticated nuclear weapons) and Russia (which recently announced it had developed a new rocket system which would be able to avoid the proposed US National Missile Defence shield) are stealing a march on the USA. Furthermore, ex-Soviet nuclear scientists are being attracted to work for states like Pakistan, North Korea and China. The mini-nuke program would not only maintain US dominance of nuclear technology but, just as with German scientists in the post-WW2 era, provide an ideal way to ensure that top nuclear scientists from the old Soviet bloc were not employed by rogue nations or potential enemies of the USA.
The US is no longer faced with a situation where it is dealing with a single enemy who either will o...

Adopting a new approach to nuclear weaponry marks a dangerous break from tradition. Dangerous because it means that the US is developing nuclear weaponry which is, at its simplest, more likely to be used, and because it is likely to prompt similar action from other nations.\ Nuclear weapons have two key features which make it desirable that they never be used. Firstly, even the smallest of the mini-nukes under consideration are a hundred times more powerful that the most powerful conventional weaponry. This means they are not ‘smart’ bombs able to be used selectively against purely military targets, but weapons which will inevitably result in massive devastation to soldiers and civilians alike. Secondly, all nuclear weapons produce dangerous levels of radiation which significantly increase the long term damage of the initial blast and make an area uninhabitable for decades.
George W. Bush’s signing of the Moscow Treaty in 2002 (which requires the USA to cut its strategic n...

If the US were to conduct research and possibly deploy mini-nukes, states like Russia and China would feel they would have to do the same in order to be able to respond effectively. They would also have no qualms about breaking the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which President Bush is trying to get states like Iran to take more seriously) because the US would have broken it first. There is a significant risk that while the strategic nuclear arms race may have come to an end, mini-nukes might prompt a tactical nuclear arms race as US weapons placed to defend Taiwan, South Korea and Israel might force neighbouring states to develop their own weapons in response. \ The United Kingdom is supposedly considering adopting any US mini-nuke program by replacing its existing Trident system of submarines (due to retire in 2012) with the cheaper mini-nukes. If other nuclear states like France and Israel did this too, surely China and Russia would have no option but to do the same.
Given that the smallest of the strategic nuclear weapons the US has is powerful enough to obliterate...

The problem with a deterrence program based around the idea that you have to convince your enemies that you are capable of using nuclear weapons, is that it makes you more likely to actually use nuclear weapons. The January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review made it clear that the US should change the way it viewed nuclear weapons as different from other arms, and integrate nuclear with non-nuclear tactical weaponry. Yet a moral stigma has been associated with nuclear weaponry since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meaning that world leaders have been desperate not to use them - so they are different. With the world’s only superpower breaking the nuclear taboo, they lose any moral leverage they have over countries who do not have nuclear weaponry but are seeking to acquire it.\ Even worse, states like North Korea and Iran can justifiably see the development of mini-nukes as an aggressive step by the US to develop weapons designed for use against them, thus giving them a greater justification for developing their own nuclear weapons in response.\ The US should remember that nuclear weapons are the great leveller: a state like Iran will never have the funds or technology to match the conventional weaponry that the US can bring to bear, but with just one nuclear weapon all that conventional weaponry becomes almost irrelevant. The more states which feel the nuclear taboo has been broken or that they are under threat from the USA, the more states that will develop their own nuclear weapons and the less able the US will be to use its conventional forces as a genuine deterrent. \
Aside from dealing with tactical threats on the battlefield, the other main use for mini-nukes is as...

We should be sceptical of claims by StratCom and other nuclear hawks in the US military about the potential benefits of mini-nuke bunker busters. Low yield is not no yield; these weapons are always going to result in some radioactive fall out. Even using the US military’s own research, it is clear that unless the bunker buster buries very deep and then explodes some radioactive fall out would escape. Current estimates suggest they would need to reach 100 metres underground (current test missiles have only managed to penetrate up to 10 metres) and it is thought that the force necessary for such penetration would probably result in the weapon melting under the heat created by the penetration.\ Furthermore, given that the claim is that it would be justifiable to use such powerful weapons because they would be destroying other WMD, we should be sure that mini-nuke bunker busters would actually succeed in such missions. Firstly, intelligence accurate enough to justify using nuclear weapons is unlikely to be available. Secondly, scientific studies suggest that there is a high likelihood that the weapons would not be completely destroy any biological stockpiles and that it might even disperse the biological agents into the surrounding area. \ There is, of course, an alternative to mini-nukes; firstly the US can try to cut down the number of states developing places to hide WMD stockpiles through strengthened arms controls (like supporting attempts to include better inspection and monitoring in chemical and biological weapons treaties), and attempts to limit proliferation and arms trading. Secondly, in dealing with HDBTs where they have been built, existing conventional weaponry like the Daisy Cutter fuel-air bombs used by the US against Al Qaeda operatives hiding in the Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan or by Russian forces in Chechnya provide immense explosive force (admittedly with only 0.6% of the force of a 1 kiloton mini-nuke) but without the long term radioactive fallout or problem of blurring the line between conventional and nuclear weaponry.
It would be possible to research and potentially to develop a new range of nuclear weaponry without ...

At some point it is highly likely that live testing will have to take place. Indeed Congress authorised such testing in 2003 and the NPR covered upgrading the testing facilities and retraining staff at sites like Los Alamos. With almost all of the scientists who have first hand knowledge of nuclear testing from the last round of live testing now retired, the idea of being able to develop new weapons based solely on computer simulations and academics’ calculations seems unlikely.\ While the US has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Congressional moratorium on testing has given some support for the treaty. Vocal US criticism of states like India, Pakistan and France for testing nuclear weapons has also helped to limit testing and development mainly to rogue states which have been isolated and condemned by the international community. A change of the USA's position on testing would certainly lead to other countries following its lead.\ We should also not forget that nuclear testing itself causes huge damage to the environment and any resumption would only serve to obliterate more Pacific atolls and parts of New Mexico.
There is a fear amongst the US scientific community that the US is losing its dominance of the acade...

Surely it would be far better to engage nuclear scientists in something of more benefit to humanity, like safer nuclear power stations or nuclear fusion? The risk of a massively funded nuclear program within the USA is that, just as with the Manhattan project, it is likely that any new technology would simply end up being stolen. The fact that scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory repeatedly lose laptops with sensitive information and that the FBI had to investigate allegations of spying at the facility in July 2004 makes research into mini-nukes look like a good way to spread new technology to China and Russia, not maintain US dominance.\ Secondly, there is the risk that whereas strategic nuclear weapons are kept under great security in missile silos, on submarines or at aircraft bases often on the US mainland, tactical weapons are likely to be placed near potential threats and in larger numbers. This makes it more likely that they will be stolen, lost or involved in accidents. Given that mini-nukes have yields low enough to make them practical for terrorist groups to use for political ends, combined with the almost inevitable adoption of mini-nukes by states other than the US, the possibility of a terrorist group acquiring them, potentially for an attack on the US itself, looks high.
Disastrous Impact on Other Transplants

Although in this debate we are solely focusing on the issue of liver transplant on the alcoholic patients, we also have to keep in mind of how the effectuation of this policy can impact other sectors of transplantation. Once this blame game is started on all patients for the supposedly "explicit" harms that they have brought on themselves, so many patients in dire need will be prone to denial of life. According to the logic of the Proposition, smoking and obseity, for example, could be identified as those harms that patients have been simply "irresponsible" with and lead to a denial of heart, lung, or kidney transplant. Meanwhile, once the need-based distribution system is kept, we do not have to waste any lives of the patients and also governmental effort on playing the blame game on questionable grounds.
The Responsibility of Those in the Medical Profession

The duty of a doctor is to save people who are in life-threatening situations, and not discriminate based on lifestyles. According to the ethical guide for doctors in the UK, which has replaced the Hippocratic Oath in modern-day UK— point 25 reads “Doctors must not allow their views about, for example, a patient's age, disability, race, colour, culture, beliefs, sexuality, gender, lifestyle, social or economic status to prejudice the choices of treatment offered or the general standard of care provided."1 In other words, according to principle, doctors should not have discretion upon such matters and they should simply carry out the responsibility of an doctor whose job is to save lives not to judge them. http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/current/library/witholding_lifeprolonging_guidance.asp#Non-discrimination
The proposition model is arbitrary and dangerous

Conditions cannot be clear-cut in medical fields, especially when it comes to life-and-death issues. The same applies to these heavy drinkers; the problem is that once these people are restricted from receiving liver implants, the same standards must be applied to other patients as well. For example, what about people that have problems because of smoking or excessive consumption of fatty foods? Or what about those who inherited genetic problems related to the liver, such as Hepatitis B? Should these people be denied of implants as well? The fact is that some of these people have a higher chance of recurrence and a less chance of recovery. (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/hepatitisb.html) As established in the first argument, the proposition’s model basically brings in all the questions of whether a patient should be given a second chance to live, based on their lifestyles (and the impact it had on the disease) and presumed capacity to kick addictions. We think such judgments are extremely arbitrary and unclear to base life-saving decisions on, considering there are so many other factors that influence diseases. Bear in mind that alcohol is not the sole cause of liver failure; as stated in the rebuttals, other irresponsible behavior such as smoking, overeating, unprotected sex and the sharing of needles all can be reasons for liver diseases. According to the proposition, it would only be fair then that we deny liver transplants to all these people as well, and we think that would be exceeding inhumane, to deny all these people organs that could save their lives because of decisions they made in the past. If unhealthy irresponsible behavior should be grounds to knock people off transplant waiting lists, we wonder where we should be drawing the line at all. We challenge the proposition to show us how exactly we are to draw the line between those who are completely innocent in face of their diseases, and those who are not. According to this line of reasoning, we should deny not just livers, but all sorts of other organs as well to patients who are obese or drink too much or smoke too much because it’s presumably their fault. Given that we cannot cleanly divide those who got a disease because of “bad luck” and “bad genes” we don’t think we should let such simple criteria determine whether one is to live or die; we’d rather over-include people when we give help, rather than exclude them. Establishing this kind of precedent in medicine, that those who are supposedly to blame for their diseases should be taken off the transplant list, allows for a much greater population to be often quite unfairly be deprived of their chances of getting transplants as well. Please remember the complexities that we mentioned earlier in our refutation (the complexities in the reasons for liver disease and alcoholism) when you are judging this round and this argument.
Our model

We appreciate the simplicity of the proposition model and would also like to propose a similarly simple model. We, the opposition, recognize that in the earlier days of liver transplants, alcoholics were refused transplants, and we think this policy was overturned for a good reason—because the policy of the status quo is better. We do not think a blanket policy effectively giving all alcoholics with ailing livers a death sentence is fair, nor humane. Instead, we will give all alcoholics a chance to get liver transplants according to standard procedure currently in use (medical professionals assess how much the patient needs the organ and places him/her on a waitlist, in case of alcoholic patients, they follow a six-month abstinence period before surgery etc.), and incorporate sobriety and recovery programs into the post-surgery treatment, as done in places such as California in the status quo.1 In the status quo, people who are known to have little to no chance of living following a liver transplant regardless of the reasons for their liver disease are not given transplants, and we will like to keep that rule intact as well. Bear in mind that we will NOT, unlike the proposition, deny people transplants based on past alcoholism, but instead shall place faith in their futures. 1http://www.cpmc.org/advanced/liver/patients/topics/transplant.html#Evaluation%20Process).
Last Rebuttal 1: On Status Quo and Ethical Issue

Well, there is not too much to answer. Everything pretty much was already said before. But, anyway, few points of clarification. First what are the sources of the statistics of 85% and 90% survival rates? If the opposition is talking about their very first point then we feel a little bit betrayed, since they kindly asked us to ignore this point claiming that they cannot delete it. If you give such statistics reference it. Otherwise it seems counter intuitive. Moreover, if we take a look at their quote when these rates appeared, we could see just a clear flaw there. Quoting: "However for those patients that do receive an organ transplant, nearly 90% percent live for more than a year and 80% lives for more than 4 years. And even in case of alcoholic patients the survival rate for more than 10 years is 85% - exhibiting small difference from that of normal patients." How come 80% of all patients live for more than 4 years, but 85% of alcoholics live for more than 10 years. There is a clear mistake. Unfortunately, the link referencing this source doesn't work. Secondly, we deny livers to alcoholics not only because they "brought the disease upon themselves", but also because giving it to a non-alcoholic is more efficient. Even if we believe in the difference of 5% it is good enough to make a decision who gets the scarce resource. So, we will deny livers to alcoholics because of efficiency and fairness. This is also the answer to the point about relapse. Once again about the Hippocratic Oath. By the way the Hippocratic Oath claims "never do harm to anyone", which is nothing to do with the discrimination based on the previous lifestyle. The discrimination point is the product of ethical guidelines doctors have in the UK, which were developed as all the laws and could be changed. Anyway, we believe that no breaking of the Oath or any other ethical guideline is involved, since doctors allocate the scarce resource in the most efficient manner, and if non-alcoholics survive in the 90% of cases, while alcoholics only in the 85%, it is the best of doctors to cure non-alcoholics first. They already make such decisions and deny to those whose treatment possibility is doubtful, so they already discriminate. And as we pointed out in California (which laws the opposition brought as a counter-plan) it is allowed to discriminate based on socio-economic status. We see no problem then to discriminate also based on the past experience. Anyway, the doctors won't break the Oath, because the law will prohibit them from giving a transplant to an alcoholic, since the government believes that people have to pay for their mistakes. In such a way this burden is completely removed.
Our model

There are not many things that should be said about our model. Most countries in the world are currently using some principle according to which they distribute livers for transplantation. It is mainly a queue-based system. We are proposing not to include alcoholics in these queues. We acknowledge that sometimes it may be complicated to draw a line between alcoholics and other human beings. However, we believe that for alcoholism, as any other disease, there is a set of symptoms that professional doctors can use to decide whether a person is an alcoholic or not. We would urge the honourable opposition to focus on the core points in this debate.
[Summary]

We the opposition shudders at the thought of the world being so bitterly utilitarian that we would deny people a right to live because of one reason and one reason only. That they drank a certain legal beverage which is integrated into the very basic lifestyles of our society; that they have 5% more chance of dying than people that do not share their lifestyles. We the opposition shudders at the notion that they must pay for their first innocent gulp of alcohol with a slow, painful death that can be averted at will. We the opposition is especially horrified that a government, built meant to protect the people’s lives, might turn to it-is-your-fault discrimination on matters of life and death. Ladies and gentlemen, we the opposition truly believe that the policy of denying past alcoholics liver transplants is deeply shameful and essentially meritless. Although there were many enlightening points, there were two main clashes in the debate, and the opposition would like to summarize the debate accordingly. 1) Will this policy lead to saving many more lives? 2) Should organs be distributed according to need or according to merit? First, will this policy save many more lives? The proposition argued yes with a two-pronged approach. The proposition has argued that many alcoholics are prone to relapsing into their old habits, thus excluding them entirely from distribution will save much more lives. However, the opposition has given statistics that show that actually, the survival rate of past alcoholics and nondrinkers almost equal each other. The proposition then argued that excluding alcoholics from the recipient pool will foster liver donations. Yet the opposition pointed out that this argument was one gigantic assumption, and that people kind enough to donate their organs would definitely not want their organs distributed discriminatingly. Second, should organs be distributed according to need or merit? The proposition says that past behavior should be taken into consideration when deciding to give a man a chance or not. We the opposition see that the policy proposed is not “taking past behavior into consideration”. It is rather ignoring all the desperateness of the patient and sanctity of human life, based on whether a person drank or not. No one should play the game of moral calculus on matters of life and death. The opposition understands that we should not bury a man just because he used to dig his grave in the past. We believe that making certain mistakes in how much to drink in your past is too little a crime to deny life. We believe that making legislation, instead of human doctors, deal with the question of whether to save a man or not is not efficiency, but cowardice. For these causes, ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to oppose the silent neglects and murders that will take place under the government resolution.
Benefit of Need-based Distribution

While the proposition plan simply calls for a blame game on the patients with their lives at stake, opposition provides a plan that saves lives to the maximum. As in the status quo, the 100,000 patients on the waiting list will be prioritized by the urgency or the need for a transplant. The patients’ medical situation is assessed by the doctors and transplant coordinators with strict standards for categorization and prioritization.1 This need-based system is crucial in the aspect that liver transplant, like any other organ transplant, has its success determined by the timing. If transplants are not operated for the patients before cirrhosis completely overtakes the liver – an organ that exercises tremendous influence over the human circulatory system – the life expectancy of the patients are to drop drastically. However for those patients that do receive an organ transplant, nearly 90% percent live for more than a year and 80% lives for more than 4 years. And even in case of alcoholic patients the survival rate for more than 10 years is 85% - exhibiting small difference from that of normal patients.2 So, in the end, it all comes down to the question of the need. And we the opposition simply cannot forego the instances where alcoholic patients are neglected of their right to life because of abstract distrust of the addiction’s curability 1http://www.unos.org/ http://www.cpmc.org/advanced/liver/patients/topics/transplant.html#Evaluation%20Process 2http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119977720/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0