BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Patents constitute physical and economic barriers to treatment of HIV/AIDS patients

This house believes that all patents should be removed from anti-retroviral drugs in order to fight AIDS. AIDS is an incurable disease which results from infection with the Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) are the only way to extend the lives of people infected by HIV. Without treatment most HIV/AIDS patients would die quickly, but treatment with ARVs can double their life expectancy, and also improve the quality of their lives. The patents on ARVs limit the freedom to manufacture these life-saving drugs and also hike the cost of treatment, thereby barring most patients from obtaining such treatment. Therefore, it is clear that the removal of patents on ARVs would remove two significant obstacles in the fight against AIDs: 1) Physical barriers to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients 2) Economic barriers to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients Removal of Physical Barriers to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients The patents on ARV drugs limit the manufacture of these drugs to a few companies and in some cases to certain countries. Consequently ARVS are not readily available to HIV/AID patients across the world. The removal of patents on ARVS would allow more companies and governments in affected countries to freely manufacture ARVS for the treatment of their citizens. Consequently, this would facilitate worldwide distribution of ARVS, and facilitate a ready supply of anti-retroviral drugs in all regions of the world. Removal of Economic Barriers to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients In so far as patents limit the availability of ARVS across the world, they create an artificial shortage which hikes ARV drug prices in all countries. In addition, in countries where ARVS are not manufactured, the cost of treatment is further hiked by drug importation costs, such as transport charges, freight costs, insurance, port duties, etc. As a result, ARV treatment is simply too expensive for most HIV/AIDS patients. The removal of patents on ARVS would not only prevent artificial shortages, it would also increase price competition and lower ARV drug prices to reasonable amounts. Lower treatment costs would lead to increased access to ARV treatment for all patients, irrespective of their personal wealth. - Mojisola
Importance of patents in incentivizing pharmaceutical research

In response to the opposition's argument that patents are important. We think the opposition would agree that governments owe a duty of care to their citizens when a humanitarian crisis or emergency occurs. AIDS is a global epidemic. The AIDS epidemic has claimed more than 25 million lives since 1981. [[UNAIDS 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic]]. The statistics are frightening, but they speak for themselves: 1) As of 2007, about 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS; developing countries accounted for 95% of this total. 2) Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans. 3) Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide. 4) In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs. [[Source: http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm%5D%5D It is apparent from these statistics that the AIDS epidemic is a humanitarian crisis. Consequently, governments worldwide have a duty to respond to this crisis by making ARV treatment fully accessible to their people through the removal of ARV patents. During a crisis, economic gain ceases to be a consideration. This was the case with disasters such as the 2004 Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the 1984/1985 famine in Ethiopia. In the same vein, the humanitarian imperative to fight the AIDS epidemic and save lives far outweighs the economic gain that ARV patents represent to drug companies. - Mojisola
Patents constitute physical and economic barriers to treatment of HIV/AIDS patients

The proposition assumes that the currently existing anti-retroviral drugs are sufficient for solving the HIV/AIDS problem. The proposition team themselves points out that anti-retroviral drugs are not a cure for HIV/AIDS but simply a means of extending the lives of people suffering from HIV. Even for that the drugs we currently have are far from perfect: the drugs can have serious side effects[[http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite?page=ar-05-01]], but moreover patients need to follow strict regimens in order for the treatment to work, not adhering to the regimen can cause the virus to develop resistance to the treatment[[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12617573]]. This means there needs to be constant development work done on new drugs and treatment regimens to address these issues. Regarding patents as economic barriers: There are other less harmful ways to make drugs more accessible to poor people. Such as funding from charities, foundations or international plans. Removing patents would allow generic drugs producers to produce anti-retroviral drug cheaply, because there is no ingredient in the drugs that justifies their high price, it is the years of work put into development that makes the expensive. Removing patents will mean further development work will cease because drug companies can no longer earn back the huge investment they need to make. Generic drug companies will not have effective drugs to produce in the future once the virus has become resistant to the treatments currently available, if there is no one to do the development. In the long run everyone is still worse off. Removing patents will have no effect on "drug importation costs, such as transport charges, freight costs, insurance, port duties, etc". These are indeed actual barriers to spreading anti-retroviral drugs in poor countries, especially in Africa[[http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidinthenews/articles/jama_101701.html]] and these cannot be addressed by the removal of patents.
The treatment of HIV/AIDS patients should not be restricted in order to make profit.

Greed is good. It is a simplistic approach to simply say that HIV/AIDS is incurable and fatal it is therefore unjust to be making a profit on anti-retroviral drugs. Almost any disease, if left untreated will result in death. We still think it is fine for developers of drugs to ask money for their work, just as we allow doctors to earn a pay for their work of saving people. We will argue that by allowing drug companies to make a profit we are actually improving the situation of people with HIV/AIDS. AIDS is a terrible condition that causes suffering. This suffering needs to be reduced. In order for this suffering to be reduced, anti-retroviral drugs are needed. These need to be first developed and then produced by large drug companies. People respond to incentives. The prospect for making a profit is an incentive. This prospect is guaranteed by patents on new drugs. This has been recognized by drug companies who in their pursuit for profit have developed a wide variety of anti-retroviral drugs that improve and extend the lives of many around the world. In this case the greed of the pharmaceutical developers leads to the humanitarian ends of treating HIV/AIDS.
Patents on ARVs prevent drug companies from collaborating in the search for a cure for AIDS

The current patents on anti-retroviral drugs are held by various pharmaceutical companies. As long as the patents exist, it is unlikely that these companies will share their resources and information in order to develop a cure for AIDS. As a direct result, the AIDS epidemic has been fed and sustained by the patents on ARVs. Thus, under the current patent regime, the profit 'incentive' is actually a disincentive to finding a cure for millions of HIV/AIDS victims. In view of this fact, we believe that the opposition should concede that in the fight against AIDS, greed is bad. - Mojisola
Homework has little educational worth and adds nothing to the time spent in school. Some schools an...

Homework is a vital and valuable part of education. There are only a few hours in each school day – not enough time to cover properly all the subjects children need to study. Setting homework extends study beyond school hours, allowing a wider and deeper education. It also makes the best use of teachers, who can spend lesson time teaching rather than just supervising individual work that could be done at home. Tasks such as reading, writing essays, researching, doing maths problems, etc. are best done at home, away from the distractions of other students.
Homework is almost always done when a child is already tired from a long day at school. As a result...

Having homework also allows students to really fix in their heads work they have done in school. Doing tasks linked to recent lessons helps students strengthen their understanding and become more confident in using new knowledge and skills. For younger children this could be practising reading or multiplication tables. For older ones it might be writing up an experiment, revising for a test, reading in preparation for the next topic, etc.
Homework produces large amount of pointless work of little educational value, but marking it ties up...

Teachers accept that marking student work is an important part of their job. Well planned homework should not take so long to mark that the rest of their job suffers, and it can inform their understanding of their students, helping them design new activities to engage and stretch them. As for recruitment, although teachers do often work in the evenings, they are not alone in this and they get long holidays to compensate.
Homework takes a lot of time up. Being young is not just about doing school work. It should also a...

Again, just because some teachers are bad at setting homework that is not a reason to scrap it altogether. Homework needs to be well designed and should not take up all of students’ spare time. Recent American surveys found that most students in the USA spent no more than an hour a night on homework. That suggests there does not seem to be a terrible problem with the amount being set.
Homework is a class issue. In school everyone is equal, but at home some people have advantages bec...

Education is a partnership between the child, the school and the home. Homework is one of the main ways in which the student’s family can be involved with their learning. Many parents value the chance to see what their child is studying and to support them in it. And schools need parents’ support in encouraging students to read at home, to help with the practising of tables, and to give them opportunities to research new topics.
Homework has little educational worth and adds nothing to the time spent in school. Some schools an...

Homework has little educational worth and adds nothing to the time spent in school. Some schools and some countries don’t bother with homework at all, and their results do not seem to suffer from it. Studies show that homework adds nothing to standardised test scores for primary/ elementary pupils. International comparisons of older students have found no positive relationship between the amount of homework set and average test scores. If anything, countries with more homework got worse results!
Homework is almost always done when a child is already tired from a long day at school. As a result...

Homework is almost always done when a child is already tired from a long day at school. As a result few students are at their best when they sit down in the evening to yet more work. Homework ends up being done in a hurry, by students fighting fatigue, and poor quality work is produced. Worse still, students who have been up late trying to finish off their homework, then come tired into school the next day, and so are less ready to learn. Really, what is the point?
Setting homework does little to develop good study skills. It is hard to check whether the homework...

Setting homework does little to develop good study skills. It is hard to check whether the homework students produce is really their own. Some students have always copied off others or got their parents to help them. But today there is so much material available on the internet that teachers can never be sure. It would be better to have a mixture of activities in the classroom which help students to develop a whole range of skills, including independent learning.
Homework puts students off learning. Studies have shown that many children find doing homework very...

Homework puts students off learning. Studies have shown that many children find doing homework very stressful, boring and tiring. Often teachers underestimate how long a task will take, or set an unrealistic deadline. Sometimes because a teacher has not explained something new well in class, the homework task is impossible. So children end up paying with their free time for the failings of their teachers. They also suffer punishments if work is done badly or late. After years of bad homework experiences, it is no wonder that many children come to dislike education and switch off, or drop out too early.
Homework takes a lot of time up. Being young is not just about doing school work. It should also a...

Homework takes a lot of time up. Being young is not just about doing school work. It should also about being physically active, exploring the environment through play, doing creative things like music and art, and playing a part in the community. It is also important for young people to build bonds with others, especially family and friends, but homework often squeezes the time available for all these things.
Homework is a class issue. In school everyone is equal, but at home some people have advantages bec...

Homework is a class issue. In school everyone is equal, but at home some people have advantages because of their family background. Middle-class families with books and computers will be able to help their children much more than poorer ones can. This can mean working class children end up with worse grades and more punishments for undone or badly done homework. On the other hand pushy parents may even end up doing their kids’ homework for them – cheating. And homework is one of the most common causes of family arguments.
The internet has become a major source of information for many people. However, online information ...

The internet gives millions of people access to information they would not otherwise have had, which is a huge benefit. And people who read the news online are not that easy to fool. Especially when you spend a lot of time online, you can tell bloggers who just want to shout from bloggers who carefully refer to their sources. The type of people this argument worries about are not the type of people that read high quality newspapers in the first place, they would read the trashy ones. The problem of bad information and news making is not unique to the internet; there are lots of trashy magazines as well. We learn in schools to double-check our sources and not believe everything we read, and we can apply that skill whilst surfing the internet.
You can choose any identity you want when you are online. Many people hide behind profiles they hav...

Against this group of people who misbehave online is a group of people who have finally found individuals with similar mindsets. Not everyone likes the same things and the more unusual your preferences, the harder it will be to find friends. The internet has finally given many people a place where they can be themselves, and where they can meet likeminded people. It is a great relief for them that they do not have to fear being discovered by people they know.\ You cannot let a small group of badly behaved people ruin the freedom of many others. We should work on creating better policies to deal with rude people, but we should not go back to the old situation where people who are different in some way end up feeling isolated and lonely.\
Many people are just addicted to the internet. They can’t stop browsing, they are hooked on gaming ...

There is nothing wrong with sitting indoors. It’s better to sit indoors and actively research and surf online than to sit in front of a television and passively take in what the TV company decided you should watch. 20 years ago people used to worry kids spent too much time inside watching TV, but viewing hours have dropped as people choose to use the internet instead. There are lots of educational games and news sites we can browse around and learn from in much more effective way than television could ever provide. Furthermore, many people keep up their social contacts online. Saying they cannot appreciate a nice conversation, or a good book is just a wild claim.
Since the nineties, instant messaging and emailing has been used to extract passwords, bank account ...

It is unfortunate that people who are willing to help have been abused by others. However, there have been many campaigns that raise awareness about phishing. Governments and banks have provided guidelines about how to recognize phishers. We should firmly deal with the crime of phishing, but not forget how much easier our life has become now that we can do our financial business online and via bank cards.
The internet has allowed big companies to capture a lot of business online while smaller, local comp...

The internet has brought greater prosperity, allowing lots of different businesses to set up online. This has brought a lot more choice to ordinary people, and also driven down prices as people find it easier to compare different companies products. Small businesses can cheaply set up online and find a market for their goods and services. And by making it easier to work anywhere with an internet connection, it has allowed many more people to work from home and to share out projects with co-workers over the whole world.
The internet has become a major source of information for many people. However, online information ...

The internet has become a major source of information for many people. However, online information has usually not gone through the same checks as newspaper articles or books. There is a higher risk that some of the facts or quotations from a particular source in an article are false. Whereas newspapers might lose customers if people find out they gave been ‘selling lies’, a blog can be easily deleted. If people base their opinions on information they find online, they could well be basing their opinion on false facts. Since the internet gives equal space to material of greatly varying quality, this is a serious risk.
Everyone’s privacy is greatly harmed by the internet. We can quickly see what politicians and celeb...

Everyone’s privacy is greatly harmed by the internet. We can quickly see what politicians and celebrities are doing when the paparazzi posts news pictures online, but people can also see what we’ve been doing. Some sites store information. Some ask us to fill in information which can be sold to other sites for commercial purposes. Once we post something online, it is almost impossible to erase it from the net. For example, if I break up with a person, they can take revenge and post embarrassing photos of me online. There have been numerous court cases where a woman demanded that her ex remove some privately taken photos from a dating site, so that she would be left alone. Unfortunately, the law cannot protect your right to privacy in this area.
You can choose any identity you want when you are online. Many people hide behind profiles they hav...

You can choose any identity you want when you are online. Many people hide behind profiles they have made up. They start making nasty remarks on public forums or chat rooms. They would never have normally said these things, but because they can hide behind an identity they start upsetting and hurting others. Even though other people can try to stop them from this behaviour, their warnings are not as effective as a warning from someone you know very well, like a friend, a parent or a teacher. The internet’s anonymity allows them to show sides of themselves that, for good reasons, they normally wouldn’t have shown. This increases the risk that, because they get away with it online, they show similar behaviour in their real life. This harms everyone.
Many people are just addicted to the internet. They can’t stop browsing, they are hooked on gaming ...

Many people are just addicted to the internet. They can’t stop browsing, they are hooked on gaming and they spend too much time indoors. Instead of going out for a walk or play outside, they sit behind their computers for hours. A sad consequence of the addiction is that they are so used to high speed information by just clicking on the next link that they can no longer appreciate a good book, or a nice conversation with a friend. By failing to take exercise they grow fat and unhealthy. Their family life suffers and their only relationships are online – they can’t cope in the real world.
Since the nineties, instant messaging and emailing has been used to extract passwords, bank account ...

Since the nineties, instant messaging and emailing has been used to extract passwords, bank account details or credit card numbers. This phenomenon is called phishing. A phisher uses professional-looking websites and profiles, and tens of thousands of people have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to phishers. If we could better control who contacts us, this would not have happened on such a large scale.
Changing views of the needs of states within the system

In the late 17th century, particularly for Louis XIV, the wars were primarily fought for gloire, prestige and renown gained through victory, gaining territory was not a necessity, except to show that the state had won.[[John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV: 1667 – 1714, Longman, London, 1999, pp.30-32.]] However by the late 18th century this had changed; territorial gains were judged in terms of geopolitics, economics and population.[[Michael Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars or Emergence: 1683-1797, Longman, London, 2003, p360]] This created the principle of ‘compensation’ in which a gain made by one state should be matched by gains for competing states.[[Evan Luard, The Balance of Power: The System of international relations, 1648-1815, Macmillian, Basingstoke, 1992, p.201.]] Similarly there was a principle of indemnities, the loser should pay the victors costs and allies should pay for any aid they received leading to grandiose partition schemes. This meant that the balance of power was as much the problem in international relations as a solution.[[Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763-1848, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), pp.6-7.]]
Intermediary bodies needed for stability

Austria had already realised the dangers to itself of preying on weaker powers, Poland and other intermediary bodies were needed for stability. The 2nd partition of Poland destroyed Poland’s value for Austria by creating a direct border with Russia.[[Schroeder, Transformation, pp.77, 122]] “The partition that erased it [Poland] from among the nations was the prelude to, in part the cause of, and perhaps to some extent the excuse for, these upheavals to which Europe has been prey.”[[Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Letter to Metternich, 19/12/1814, ‘Mémoires, documents et écrits divers laissés par le Prince de Metternich, Paris 1880-4. pp524-9, extract in wright, pp.98-104, p.101.]] Once France recovered, Germany was almost certain to become the scene of partitions. Alternatively the Holy Roman Empire would be destroyed by war as the other buffer states disappeared the stability in the system would be lost creating structural wars.