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Pro-Test: standing up for science
Pro-Test Blogs!
11:36:16 pm, by Tom, 312 words, 15144 views
Pro-Test: Five Year Anniversary
Pro-Test: Five Year Anniversary – Friday 25th February 2011
Five years ago, in a climate of fear and harassment from animal rights extremists, 1,000 students, staff and members of the public marched through the centre of Oxford to defend life-saving medical research.
Led by a 16-year-old student, Laurie Pycroft, the Pro-Test rally helped change the attitudes of public, politicians and media towards animal research in the UK.
On Friday February 25th 2011 Pro-Test are holding a series of events to celebrate the progress Pro-Test has made over the last five years.
From 12 – 2pm Pro-Test will be manning a series of stalls on Cornmarket in order to show its continued efforts to educate the public about the crucial role of animals in medical research. Come along and support the cause!
At 4pm Pro-Test members will head online to Nature's live Q&A on the animal research issue (link). Pro-Test members have already provided background articles for Nature to support this event.
At 7.15pm (Lecture Theatre 23, Balliol College) Pro-Test will hold a discussion in conjunction with the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society (PPE Soc) to talk about how Pro-Test's efforts have helped to shift the public attitude on animal research. Speakers will be:
Laurie Pycroft – Founder of Pro-Test and currently an undergraduate at Oxford University – Pycroft will talk about the birth and growth of the Pro-Test movement in the UK
Prof. Tipu Aziz – Consultant Neurosurgeon at Oxford University – Prof. Aziz will give his views on the changing climate of research at Oxford University and beyond
Tom Holder – Founder of Speaking of Research, Pro-Test's US sister-organisation formed in 2008. Holder will discuss successful campaigning methods, and the lessons learned from the UK and US pro-research movements.
University members will be required to bring their university card. Non-university members should email tom[at]pro-test.org.uk to book tickets.
Pro-Test
A fish named Hope.
If you have watched TV in the past week or two, you may have seen the excellent ads produced by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) as part of a major fundraising drive to support their new Mending Broken Hearts campaign.
The Mending Broken Hearts campaign is a major new multidisciplinary initiative which seeks to harness the power of regenerative medicine to better treat, and one day cure, heart failure. If you want to learn more about this work, the BHF website has information on the science behind the initiative, and why their scientists are studying zebrafish.
It is an ambitious and fascinating project, and an excellent example of how the differences between species can be as valuable to medical advancement as the similarities.
But that's not all that is striking about this campaign.
This is a fundraising campaign by a major medical research charity that not only acknowledges the importance of animal research, but places it centre stage. Little more than a decade ago that would have been unthinkable.
When I first started my career in science in the late 1990's public support for animal research in the UK was considerably lower than it is now, and few scientists willing to discuss their work in public or counter the misleading propaganda of animal rights activists. Animal rights extremists appeared to be able to harass, intimidate and coerce at will, using tactics such as hate mail, vandalism, arson, grave robbing and violence to force several animal breeders to close, and even contributing to a decision by Cambridge University to abandon plans to construct a new primate laboratory in 2004. As the 21st century dawned the future of biomedical research in the UK looked very bleak.
But behind the scenes things were changing. The tireless efforts of research advocacy groups including RDS and the Coalition for Medical Progress (now merged to form Understanding Animal Research ), Sense about Science, and Seriously Ill for Medical Research, who spoke up for animal research and countered the distortions spread by animal research, and the bravery of individuals including the Oxford neuroscientist Professor Colin Blakemore and patient activist Andrew Blake, who continued to speak out in support of animal research despite threats against themselves and their families, began to yield dividends. As time went on more and more scientists were persuaded to discuss the role of animal research in their work in more detail when talking to journalists, rather than referring obliquely to "laboratory studies", and by the middle of the decade opinion polls indicated that public support for the use of animals in medical research had increased dramatically. Politicians also began to wake up to the threat posed to science in the UK by animal rights extremism, and the danger that other unrepresentative minorities might adopt the tactics of animal rights extremists to foist their views on the rest of society: Something had to be done. A series of laws were passed to prevent intimidation and harassment being used as campaign tools, while for the first time sufficient resources were made available to police units to counter domestic extremism.
The tide finally turned in the spring of 2006 when hundreds of citizens, scientists, students in Oxford joined together under the banner of Pro-Test to march in support the construction of a new animal research laboratory. Responding to threats by animal rights extremists, and inspired by the example set by Laurie Pycroft, the marchers showed that they would not be silenced and would not be intimidated. That rally, and the widespread coverage it received in national and international news media, released a pent-up wave of support from animal research that almost instantly changed the tenor of the debate on animal research in the UK. The new Oxford laboratory was completed in 2008.
Now five years later many of the animal rights extremists whose terror campaigns made the lives of so many people a misery are behind bars, and scientists are more willing than ever before to talk about the contribution of animal research to medical progress.
So the zebrafish are not just an example of the promise of 21st century medicine, but show us that if scientists and supporters of science stand together we can defeat extremism, we can counter the lies and distortions spread by animal rights campaigns, and we can secure the future of scientific medicine. That's a lot of hope for such a small fish.
Paul Browne
11:12:30 am, by Tom, 2088 words, 15072 views
Categories: Information
Albert Sabin and the monkeys who gave summer back to the children.
Albert Sabin has been called "the doctor who gave summer back to the children."*
Because of his decades of research to develop the oral polio vaccine, children today know nothing of the fear that polio brought to the United States every summer well into the 20th century. Swimming pools and movie theaters were closed and children were kept inside their homes by frightened parents. Worldwide, the disease killed millions of people and left legions of others permanently disabled.
We've just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the introduction of Dr. Sabin's vaccine. Estimates suggest that in just its first two years of worldwide use, the vaccine prevented nearly 500,000 deaths and five million cases of polio. Today, the world is on the brink of realizing Dr. Sabin's lifetime dream: the eradication of polio from the planet.
The development of the oral polio vaccine required years of extensive research with rabbits, monkeys and rodents.
Animal rights activists long ago seized on a single phrase by Dr. Albert Sabin, and have been using it ever since to try to support their outrageous claim that the developer of the oral polio vaccine(OPV) opposed the use of animals in research.
That phrase, "The work on prevention (of polio) was long delayed by an erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of disease in monkeys" spoken by Dr. Sabin during a congressional hearing in 1984, has been used in animal rights publications and comments for over two decades.
Dr. Sabin, a member of the Board of Directors of the pro-research Americans for Medical Progress until his death in 1993, spent years working to correct the record. Here is a letter he wrote to the editor of the Winston Salem Journal, published in 1992.
Winston-Salem Journal
The Correct Conclusion
In a recent letter to the Journal ("Misrepresenting Research," Feb. 20), Dr. Stephen R. Kaufman, the chairman of the Medical Research Modernization Committee, correctly quoted my 1984 testimony before Congress but he drew wrong conclusions from it. Dr. Kaufman was also wrong when the said "the polio vaccine was based on a tissue culture preparation … not animal experimentation."
On the contrary, my own experience of more than 60 years in biomedical research amply demonstrated that without the use of animals and of human beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but also among animals.
In my 1956 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 162, p. 1589), I stated that during the preceding four years "approximately 9,000 monkeys, 150 chimpanzees and 133 human volunteers were used thus far in studies of various characteristics of different poliovirus strains." These studies were necessary to solve many problems before an oral polio-virus vaccine could become a reality.
Albert B. Sabin, M.D.
Washington"."
It is true that in the early years of polio research some lines of inquiry eventually proved unsuccessful. An overreliance on a strain of the virus known as the MV strain that had become adapted to survive only in nervous tissue, and the fact that the Rhesus macaque, while a good model for many aspects of polio, cannot be infected through ingestion via the mouth, led to the incorrect assumption that polio could only infect nerve cells (despite evidence to the contrary from both clinical studies and laboratory studies with other polio strains and monkey species). These mistakes were unfortunate, though understandable given the fact that virology as a science was in its infancy.
However, these failed attempts do not cancel out the fact that animal research, and research using monkeys in particular, was absolutely crucial to the development of vaccines for polio. Without it the polio vaccine would certainly not have been developed by the end of the 1950's, and we might even still be waiting for it.
These vital contributions made by animal research to the development of polio vaccines were not limited to the work of Albert Sabin, and include:
(i) The discovery by Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper in 1908 that polio was caused by a virus, a discovery made by inoculating macaque monkeys with an extract of nervous tissue from polio victims that was shown to be free of other infectious agents.
(ii) The subsequent discovery by Simon Flexner that blood serum from infected macaque monkeys could protect against polio infection.
(iii) The discovery by Carl Kling and colleagues in 1911, following an earlier discovery that polio virus could be isolated from the lymph nodes of the small intestine of monkeys, that polio virus was present in the throat and intestinal tissues of people who dies from polio. Soon afterwards they isolated virus from the intestines of patients suffering from acute polio, and importantly from family members who did not display the symptoms of polio, establishing that healthy carriers played an important role in spreading the disease. In these studies the presence of polio was demonstrated by injecting filtered fluid from the patients into monkeys, the only method then available to confirm the presence of polio (Introduction to Epidemiology, fifth edition, by Ray M, Merill, Jones and Bartlett Learning).
(iv) The discovery in the early 1930's by the Australian scientists Macfarlane Burnet and Jean Macnamara that antibodies against one strain of polio did not always protect macaque monkeys against infection with another strain.
(v) The discovery by John Enders, Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins that the polio virus could be grown in a number of tissue types, not just nerve tissue as previously assumed, a discovery that required the use of mice and monkeys to prove that the cultured virus was indeed polio and still capable of causing paralysis.
(vi) The determination in 1949 by David Bodian and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University that there were three major families of polio virus, referred to as types 1, 2, and 3, and that a separate vaccine would be necessary for each to give broad protection against polio.
(vii) The confirmation by David Bodian and colleagues in the late 1940's and early 1950's that the polio virus entered the body through the mouth, and then needed to pass into the blood stream before it could infect nervous tissue, and that if you could block the infection in the blood you could prevent the virus from entering nerve tissue and causing paralysis. The work of Enders and Bodian paved the way for the development of vaccines by Salk and Sabin.
(viii) The evaluation by Jonas Salk and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh of vaccine candidates produced by inactivating the virus with formalin under a range of conditions, until a vaccine was identified that was effective and safe enough for human trials.
(ix) The evaluation by Albert Sabin of hundreds of polio virus strains in hundreds of monkeys and scores of chimps before identifying attenuated strains that were capable of efficiently entering the body through the digestive system and provoking an adequate immune response to protect against the different pathogenic strains of polio while not causing the disease themselves.
It is hardly surprising that those close to Albert Sabin are disgusted with the way in which his views are misrepresented by animal rights activists. Writing for the Wall Street Journal two years after his death Albert Sabin's widow, Heloisa Sabin, discussed the value of animals to his research.
ANIMAL RESEARCH SAVES HUMAN LIVES
The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1995
by Heloisa Sabin
Mrs. Sabin is honorary director of Americans for Medical Progress.
That scene in "Forrest Gump," in which young Forrest runs from his schoolmate tormentors so fast that his leg braces fly apart and his strong legs carry him to safety may be the only image of the polio epidemic of the 1950s etched in the minds of those too young to remember the actual devastation the disease caused. Hollywood created a scene of triumph far removed from the reality of the disease.
Some who have benefited directly from polio research, including the work of my late husband, Albert Sabin, think winning the real war against polio was just as simple. They have embraced a movement that denounces the very process that enables them to look forward to continued good health and promising futures. This "animal rights" ideology -- espoused by groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Humane Society of the U.S. and the Fund for Animals -- rejects the use of laboratory animals in medical research and denies the role such research played in the victory over polio.
The leaders of this movement seem to have forgotten that year after year in the early '50s, the very words "infantile paralysis" and "poliomyelitis" struck great fear among young parents that the disease would snatch their children as they slept. Each summer public beaches, playgrounds and movie theaters were places to be avoided. Polio epidemics condemned millions of children and young adults to lives in which debilitated lungs could no longer breathe on their own and young limbs were left forever wilted and frail. The disease drafted tiny armies of children on crutches and in wheelchairs who were unable to walk, run or jump. In the U.S., polio struck down nearly 58,000 children in 1952 alone.
Unlike the braces on Forrest Gump's legs, real ones would be replaced only as the children's misshapened legs grew. Other children and young adults were entombed in iron lungs. The only view of the world these patients had was through mirrors over their heads. These, however, are no longer part of our collective cultural memory.
Albert was on the front line of polio research. In 1961, thirty years after he began studying polio, his oral vaccine was introduced in the U.S. and distributed widely. In the nearly 40 years since, polio has been eradicated in the Western hemisphere, the World Health Organization reports, adding that with a full-scale effort, polio could be eliminated from the rest of the world by the year 2000.
Without animal research, polio would still be claiming thousands of lives each year. "There could have been no oral polio vaccine without the use of innumerable animals, a very large number of animals," Albert told a reporter shortly before his death in 1993. Animals are still needed to test every new batch of vaccine that is produced for today's children.
Animal activists claim that vaccines really didn't end the epidemics -- that, with improvements in social hygiene, polio was dying out anyway, before the vaccines were developed. This is untrue. In fact, advanced sanitation was responsible in part for the dramatic rise in the number of paralytic polio cases in the '50s. Improvements in sanitation practices reduced the rate of infection, so that the average age of those infected by the polio virus went up. Older children and young adults were more likely than infants to develop paralysis from their exposure to the polio virus.
Every child who has tasted the sweet sugar cube or received the drops containing the Sabin Vaccine over the past four decades knows polio only as a word, or an obscure reference in a popular film. Thank heavens it's not part of their reality.
These polio-free generations have grown up to be doctors, teachers, business leaders, government officials, and parents. They have their own concerns and struggles. Cancer, heart disease, strokes and AIDS are far more lethal realities to them now than polio. Yet, those who support an "animal rights" agenda that would cripple research and halt medical science in its tracks are slamming the door on the possibilities of new treatments and cures.
My husband was a kind man, but he was impatient with those who refused to acknowledge reality or to seek reasoned answers to the questions of life.
The pioneers of polio research included not only the scientists but also the laboratory animals that played a critical role in bringing about the end of polio and a host of other diseases for which we now have vaccines and cures. Animals will continue to be as vital as the scientists who study them in the battle to eliminate pain, suffering and disease from our lives.
That is the reality of medical progress."
Animal rights activists are free to express their opposition to the use of animals in research, but they cannot do so by blatantly robbing society of scientific achievements. This one fact is clear -- if our critics had their way, today millions of children would be dead or disabled from polio and other infectious diseases.
* Of course Jonas Salk is equally, if not even more, deserving of this accolade.
05:54:36 pm, by Tom, 1011 words, 7397 views
Animal studies point to clinical trial of hypothermia for stroke victims
On Monday Dr Malcolm Macleod, head of experimental neuroscience at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, joined scientists from the European Stroke Research Network for Hypothermia (EuroHYP) in urging European governments to fund a trial of moderate hypothermia for the treatment of ischemic stroke victims. In ischemic stroke the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked, leading to the death of nerve cells in the affected area, which can result in death or long-term disability. In an interview with the BBC Dr Macleod was reported as saying that:
Every day 1,000 Europeans die from stroke - that's one every 90 seconds - and about twice that number survive but are disabled...Our estimates are that hypothermia might improve the outcome for more than 40,000 Europeans every year."
This call does not come as a great surprise for me; when I was researching the role of animal research in the development of brain cooling to treat perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HEI), a condition where a lack of oxygen and reduced blood supply during or shortly after birth causes brain damage, I found that all the papers I read cited animal studies of hypothermia to prevent damage in ischemic stroke. This is not surprising as in both conditions injury results from impaired blood supply.
IMAGE: CT image of an ischemic stroke. The dark area in top left quadrant of brain shows the damaged brain area. Welcome Images.
The publications page of the EuroHYP website lists the most important publications supporting their decision to initiate large-scale clinical trials of hypothermia in stroke. Among them is a 2010 review by Bart van der Worp, Malcolm MacLeod and Rainer Kollmar entitled "Therapeutic hypothermia for acute ischemic stroke: ready to start large randomized trials?" which highlights the importance of studies in animal models of stroke in demonstrating the potential of hypothermia in stroke, and states:
...we believe that hypothermia has been studied in sufficient detail and under a sufficiently broad variety of experimental conditions in animal models of ischemic stroke to support the translation of this treatment strategy to clinical trials"
Among the papers cited by this review is a systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2007 by a group of neurologists led by Dr Mcleod and Dr van der Worp which made a very thorough examination of over one hundred studies of different hyporhermia techniques in a range of animal models of ischemic stroke. This study is clear about the limitations of the studies, and identifies several areas where further animal studies are warranted, such as the longer term effect of hypothermia on the risk of developing pneumonia. Overall the authors conclude that:
In animal models of focal cerebral ischaemia, hypothermia improves outcome by about one-third under conditions that may be feasible in the clinic, with even modest cooling resulting in a substantial improvement in outcome. Cooling is effective in animals with co-morbidity and with delays to treatment of 3 h. Large randomized clinical trials testing the efficacy of moderate hypothermia in patients with acute ischaemic stroke are warranted"
This is important, as anyone familiar with stroke research will recognize Dr Macleod and Dr van der Worp as fierce critics of inadequate design and reporting of some preclinical animal studies, and of mistakes made when designing clinical trials due to the misinterpretation and misapplication of the results of animal studies. Quite often they found that the design of clinical trials was so different to the design of the preclinical study that it was impossible to tell whether the failure of a treatment in human patients actually contradicted the earlier success in an animal model, both outcomes were entirely plausible even if you assumed that there was absolutely no fundamental biological difference between the effects of stroke in the animal model and in human patients. For example, one problem is that the majority of neurprotective drugs evaluaded in the past few decades were shown to be effective in animal models of stroke only when administered very soon after induction of stroke - usually after less than half an hour - whereas in clinical trials there were usually long delays - four hours or more- before initiation of treatment. The fact that hypothermia has a neuroprotective effect in animal models up to three hours after stroke onset will make design of a clinical trial that matches the conditions under which treatment was successful easier, though as with all stroke treatment the earlier it is started the better!
It is notable that unlike animal rights campaigners who use deficiencies in some animal studies to call for a ban on it, Macleod and van der Worp understand its continuing importance to medical progress, and have worked with animal researchers to improve both the design and reporting of the preclinical animal studies that underpin the decisions to initiate clinical trials. Initiatives such as the ARRIVE guidelines are similar in many ways to recent improvements the design of clinical trials supported by the work of the Cochrane collaboration, and the widespread adoption of standards for the reporting of clinical trials.
So the animal evidence supporting the clinical initiation of trials of hypothermia for ischemic stroke had to satisfy a very strict panel of judges, we hope that funding is provided to initiate these important trials in the very near future.
Finally, and completely off topic, there was an interesting item in Nature news on the use of RNAi to attack block viral replication in a mouse model of HIV infection. It's an interesting application of an exciting new technology that I have discussed several times on the Speaking of Research blog, indeed back in 2008 I covered the work of another group who are using a mouse model of HIV to aid development of RNAi based therapies for HIV infection. It is fascinating work, though as the Nature article stresses the technique needs to be refined, re-evaluated and improved a lot in animal models before it can be tried out in clinical trials of HIV patients. I expect that Drs Macleod and van der Worp would agree with that sentiment.
11:31:05 am, by Tom, 857 words, 13697 views
The Basel Declaration: Standing up for Medical Progress
Top European scientists have pledged to engage in more public dialogue, openness, and education about animal research. Concerned about threats to the future of medical research, the scientists met recently and drafted a declaration that affirms commitment to responsible research and animal welfare and calls for increased effort to facilitate public understanding of the essential role that animal studies play in contributing to scientific and medical progress. The call for "trust, transparency, and communication on animal research" was adopted by the first Basel conference "Research at a Crossroads" November 29th. The Declaration can be found here, along with an invitation to sign up to it.
The Declaration underscores the importance of a wide range of animal research, from basic research that seeks to understand fundamental biological processes, to applied research that seeks to turn such knowledge into new medical treatments, and the critical ongoing need for this work:
"Over the last 100 years biomedical research has contributed substantially to our understanding of biological processes and thus to an increase in life expectancy and improvement in the quality of life of humans and animals. However, the list of challenges and new opportunities remains long.
Without research using animals, it will not be possible to overcome the social and humanitarian challenges posed by these problems. Despite new and refined alternative methods, animal experiments will remain essential in the foreseeable future for biomedical research."
The Declaration makes clear that:
"Biomedical research in particular cannot be separated into 'basic' and 'applied' research; it is a continuum stretching from studies of fundamental physiological processes to an understanding of the principles of disease and the development of therapies."
A Nature report on the meeting and an accompanying editorial highlight the crucial considerations underlying the scientists' call for action, including not only the actions of extremists, but also the broad consequences of failing to build understanding of animal research:
Biomedical scientists in Germany perceive a separate crisis — increasing legislative restrictions that make it more difficult to carry out animal experiments. Hearing little to the contrary from researchers themselves, the public tends to assume that animal experiments are an unnecessary evil, so politicians respond with more restrictions."
That problem was a major motivation for the Basel Declaration — drafted and signed at a meeting in Basel, Switzerland, last week (see page 742). Its signatories pledge to engage in open debate with the public about their work on animal experiments, to stress the high ethical standards to which they adhere and to explain why they have to do it. They intend, for example, to visit local schools or to mention that their research used animals when speaking to the press about new results."
Such efforts have already yielded dividends; the Nature report notes how a determined effort over the past decade by scientists in the United Kingdom to inform the public about the reality of animal research resulted in greatly increased support for it.
Speaking of Research applauds this effort and joins in urging others not only to sign on to the declaration, but also to act on the pledge to continue to increase efforts in outreach, education, and engagement.
In fact, there are many groups and sources for information and conversation to which scientists can turn to for advice on outreach. They include advocacy groups and collaborative networks such as Understanding Animal Research, Americans for Medical Progress, States United for Biomedical Research, and the Foundation for Biomedical Research. They also include scientific societies such as the American Physiological Society, Society for Neuroscience, American Association of Laboratory Animal Science, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Many academic institutions have actively built outreach and education programs that offer good models for others.
Speaking of Research also offers information, tools and support for those who choose to contribute to public discussion of animal research. There are many resources and avenues to support individuals who want to learn more and identify a range of effective ways to contribute to the public discussion of animal research.
Before we finish we'd like to draw your attention to an excellent example of the importance of basic animal research, Christina Agapakis writes on the Oscillator blog about a fascinating study which used gene therapy to restore vision in blind mice. This news comes only a few weeks after scientists in Germany reported that they had used a vision chip containing 1,500 light-sensitive elements to partially restore sight in patients who were blind due to damage to the light-sensitive cells in their eyes. In an open access paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team who carried out this important clinical study highlight the importance of in vivo studies in rats, cats, and pigs, and in vitro studies using isolated chicken retinas, in establishing both the theoretical basis for this study, and subsequently in determining the safety of the implant they developed. These advances in vision research suggest that devices available to help blind people see in the 21st century will soon eclipse those that Star Trek predicted for the 24th century!
This is of course exactly the kind of groundbreaking biomedical research that the Basel declaration seeks to defend.
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Jeff Fix sworn in as county commissioner
Jeff Fix was sworn in Tuesday, replacing the ill Mike Kiger on the Fairfield County Board of Commissioners. Fix's new term begins Jan. 1.
Jeff Fix sworn in as county commissioner Jeff Fix was sworn in Tuesday, replacing the ill Mike Kiger on the Fairfield County Board of Commissioners. Fix's new term begins Jan. 1. Check out this story on lancastereaglegazette.com: https://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/story/news/local/2018/12/11/jeff-fix-sworn-county-commissioner/2274506002/
Spencer Remoquillo, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette Published 3:12 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2018
Jeff Fix, center, shakes hands with Judge Terre Vandervoort Tuesday morning, Dec. 11, 2018, in Lancaster after being sworn in as a Fairfield County Commissioner. Fix will take office in January.(Photo: Matthew Berry/Eagle-Gazette)Buy Photo
LANCASTER — It was an emotional moment for Jeff Fix as he took the oath of office for a seat on the Fairfield County Board of Commissioners — a position he will take over Jan. 1.
Fix, 53, estimated there were 225 people who helped him in his campaign, and about 75 of them were in attendance for his swearing in on Tuesday. One friend, he said, drove two and a half hours to watch the 2-minute ceremony.
While the oath was brief, Fix said the words he spoke meant a lot to him, recalling the years he spent in public service before being elected to the county-wide position in November.
Fix served on numerous campaigns, spent 13 years on Pickerington City Council and about 15 years as an active member of the Fairfield County Republican Party.
"This doesn't happen overnight, it takes a long time to earn your stripes ... It all pointed to this opportunity," he said.
Fix said there are many challenges facing the county, mentioning specifically jobs and opiates.
"We have an opiate epidemic that hits home here that we need to deal with. We have jobs issues. There are, I'm learning, dozens of things that we need to get after, and really dozens of opportunities that we can take advantage of. So I am tremendously excited to be a part of the team that tackles that."
Fix decided to run for office after long-time Commissioner Mike Kiger became ill with pneumonia last year. Kiger has not attended any commissioners meetings since December 2017. Kiger still, however, has remained in his role with County Administrator Carri Brown keeping his up to date on county business over the phone. The county received an opinion from the Attorney General's Office, determining these calls meet the requirement for Kiger to remain in his position despite his physical absence.
Kiger is known as a commissioner who attends many public events and is always accessible to constituents. Fix said he knows Kiger's role and he hopes to meet those needs while also balancing his full-time job and work as chairman of the Fairfield County Republican Party. Fix said he will remain chairman of the party until this spring when his term expires. It's too early to say whether he will pursue the chairman position for another term, he said.
Fix was among four others who were sworn in Tuesday, including Fairfield County Common Pleas judges Richard Berens, Laura Smith, County Auditor Jon Slater and Coroner Dr. Brian Varney. Varney took over as coroner this summer following Dr. Thomas Vajen's retirement.
Commissioner Steve Davis was surprised by the turnout at the swearing-in ceremony and said he's looking forward to the future.
"I've seen some folks come to get involved here with great enthusiasm and skill and talent that they can bring in," Davis said. "I'm a little bit reminded of some time ago when I looked across Fairfield County elected officialdom, if you will, I saw tired and I saw people doing retirement counts and trying to figure out how many more years they needed to serve to hit that number that they need to retire. And I look across now and I see energy and enthusiasm and some folks I'm really excited to work with."
sremoquill@gannett.com
Twitter: @SpencerRemo
Read or Share this story: https://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/story/news/local/2018/12/11/jeff-fix-sworn-county-commissioner/2274506002/
Lancaster Festival debuts new honor this year
Park and income tax levies coming to ballot
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text:
US v. Zolin
MCCS Litigation
Source: http://www.xenu.net/archive/CourtFiles/occf109.html
UNITED STATES of America, Petitioner/Appellee/Cross-Appellant,
Frank S. ZOLIN, Respondent/Appellee,
Church of Scientology of California and Mary Sue Hubbard,
Intervenors/Appellants/Cross-Appellees.
Nos. 85-6065, 85-6105.
Ninth Circuit.
In connection with tax investigation, the United States brought action to
compel state court clerk to produce sealed documents. Church and taxpayer's
wife intervened. The United States District Court for the Central District of
California, Harry L. Hupp, J., ordered production of some, but not all,
documents. Intervenors appealed, and United States cross-appealed. The Court
of Appeals, 809 F.2d 1411, affirmed. En banc review was initially granted.
Subsequently, the Court of Appeals held that there was no conflict in circuit
concerning fact that Government must first establish prima facie case of fraud,
independent of attorney-client communications, before privileged status of
communications would be lifted.
Order vacated.
Beezer, Circuit Judge, dissented and filed an opinion in which J.
Blaine Anderson and David R. Thompson, Circuit Judges, joined.
Government must make prima facie showing that attorney-client communications
were in furtherance of an intended or present illegality, independent of
attorney-client communications, before privileged status of those
communications can be lifted.
*1136 Before BROWNING, Chief Judge, ANDERSON, TANG, PREGERSON, ALARCON,
NORRIS, REINHARDT, BEEZER, BRUNETTI, THOMPSON and LEAVY, Circuit Judges.
En banc review was ordered in this matter under the mistaken assumption
that United States v. Shewfelt, 455 F.2d 836 (9th Cir.1972) and United
States v. Friedman, 445 F.2d 1076 (9th Cir.1971) were in conflict on the
question whether "the government must first establish a prima facie case of
fraud independently of the said [attorney-client] communications," Shewfelt,
455 F.2d at 840, before "the privileged status of these communications can be
lifted." Id. There is no conflict. In United States v. Friedman, we
did not discuss the showing that the government must make before the trial
court can examine attorney-client communications to determine whether "the
thrust of these ... conversations was to effectuate a plan of fraud."
Shewfelt, 455 F.2d at 840. In Shewfelt we did, and concluded that the
government must make a prima facie showing, independent of the communications
involved, that the attorney-client communications were in furtherance of an
intended or present illegality. Id. Shewfelt is the law of the circuit.
The dictum in United States v. King, 536 F.Supp. 253 (C.D.Cal.1982)
suggesting that Shewfelt "does not now appear to be the law in the Ninth
Circuit," id. at 262, is disapproved. That portion of the three-judge panel
opinion in United States v. Zolin, 809 F.2d 1411 (9th Cir.1987), beginning
with the first full paragraph on page 1418 to and including the last full
paragraph in the second column on the same page, is ordered withdrawn. The
opinion of the three-judge panel will stand in all other respects.
The order dated November 6, 1987, that this matter be reheard en banc, is
vacated as improvidently granted.
BEEZER, Circuit Judge, with whom ANDERSON and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges, join,
dissenting:
The order that this matter be reheard en banc was not improvidently granted.
I dissent.
According to Ninth Circuit Rule 35-1, our order to rehear the matter en
banc was entirely appropriate. [FN1] The independent evidence requirement is a
procedure for invoking the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client
privilege. We adopted this procedure, in a conclusory way, in United States
v. Shewfelt, 455 F.2d 836, 840 (9th Cir.1972). This procedure has not been
endorsed by any other circuit court of appeals. The order filed today thus
perpetuates a maverick version of the attorney-client privilege--a rule of
national application. In addition, the attorney-client privilege, as a rule of
evidence for the federal courts, has an overriding need for national
uniformity. Considering that this circuit's position clashes with that of a
majority of other circuits, our order that we rehear this matter en banc was
most providently granted.
FN1. Ninth Circuit Rule 35-1 states, "When the opinion of a panel
directly conflicts with an existing opinion by another court of appeals and
substantially affects a rule of national application in which there is an
overriding need for national uniformity, the existence of such conflict is
an appropriate ground for suggesting a rehearing en banc."
The crime-fraud exception defeats the attorney-client privilege. To invoke
the exception, *1137 the government must make a prima facie showing that an
otherwise privileged communication is in furtherance of fraud or crime. In
this circuit the government has had to make the prima facie showing by the use
of independent evidence--evidence other than the suspect communication itself.
Elsewhere the government has been able to make the prima facie showing by the
court's in camera inspection of the suspect communication. The substantive
issue in this en banc case is: should we overrule Shewfelt, eliminate the
independent evidence requirement, and allow in camera inspection of suspect
communications? We should.
Every circuit to face the situation this case presents has allowed in camera
inspection. In reverse chronological order, they are the Sixth, Second, D.C.,
Eighth, Third, and Fourth Circuits. [FN2] Following is a sample of the cases.
FN2. The Church of Scientology fails to distinguish these cases in any
principled way. The Church does point out, correctly, that one of the D.C.
cases only represents the views of one member of that court. See In Re
Sealed Case, 676 F.2d 793, 815 (D.C.Cir.1982) (J. Skelly Wright).
Sixth: In Re Antitrust Grand Jury, 805 F.2d 155, 168-169 (6th
Cir.1986).
Second: In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum, 798 F.2d 32 (2d
Cir.1986); In Re John Doe Corp., 675 F.2d 482, 486 and 490 (2d Cir.1982).
D.C.: In Re Sealed Case, 754 F.2d 395, 399-401 (D.C.Cir.1985) (IRS case
closely resembling case now before us); In Re Sealed Case, 676 F.2d 793,
815 (D.C.Cir.1982).
Eighth: Pritchard-Keang Nam Corp. v. Jaworski, 751 F.2d 277, 280 (8th
Cir.1984); In Re Berkley & Co., 629 F.2d 548, 553 (8th Cir.1980); In Re
Murphy, 560 F.2d 326, 331 and 338 n. 23 (8th Cir.1977); Pfizer Inc. v.
Lord, 456 F.2d 545, 551 (8th Cir.1972) (per curiam).
Third: In Re Grand Jury Proceedings (FMC Corp.), 604 F.2d 798, 800 (3d
Fourth: Union Camp Corp. v. Lewis, 385 F.2d 143, 144 (4th Cir.1967).
Other circuits have not always addressed the underlying policy question in
allowing in camera review for purposes of the crime-fraud exception. As an en
banc panel establishing the law of this circuit, however, we are obligated to
address the policy question.
In particular, we are charged with evaluating the tradeoff between maintaining
confidentiality and prosecuting crimes. In addressing this policy question,
the Second Circuit considered an additional factor, grand jury secrecy. Grand
jury secrecy would rest on the scale alongside maintaining confidentiality,
weighing against in camera inspection; still the Second Circuit found that the
balance tipped in favor of in camera inspection. In Re John Doe Corp., 675
F.2d at 490.
The need to prosecute crimes strongly supports in camera inspection. The
attorney-client privilege was not designed to protect communications in
furtherance of fraud or crime. When a communication, otherwise within the
privilege, itself furthers fraud or crime, independent evidence of that fact
rarely will be available. In such cases the independent evidence requirement
would simply insulate dishonest parties from prosecution. See United States
v. King, 536 F.Supp. 253, 262 (C.D.Cal.1982) (declining to follow Shewfelt '
s independent evidence requirement).
Church of Scientology suggests that in camera inspection would undermine
several important policies. First, inspection would allow the crime-fraud
exception to eviscerate the attorney-client privilege. According to the
Church, the possibility of inspection could "chill open attorney-client
discussions." The fact that the inspections take place in camera, however,
mitigates any chilling effect. A judge is not a prosecutor and will not expose
discussions that are unrelated to the fraud or crime alleged.
Second, according to the Church, inspection would force courts to review "any
and *1138 all attorney-client communications upon the mere allegation by a
party ... that the crime-fraud exception applies." The fear of disclosure of
even innocent communications could give prosecutors an unfair litigation
advantage, and courts would incur the intolerable burden of reviewing file
after file of communications.
In fact, the fear of disclosure of innocent communications would be reduced if
the Ninth Circuit eliminated the independent evidence rule. In camera
inspection would allow a district court more precisely to determine which
communications further crime or fraud and which do not. Compare In Re
Antitrust Grand Jury, 805 F.2d 155, 168 (6th Cir.1986).
In any case, the predicate for the Church's conclusions is incorrect:
in camera inspection need not force courts to review any and all documents
alleged to fall within the crime-fraud exception. I would set out a rule that
gives district courts discretion. Besides helping to prevent prosecutorial
fishing expeditions, a rule affording discretion to district courts would allow
those courts to regulate their burden of in camera review.
A district court, faced with an argument that the crime-fraud exception
applies, would decide for itself whether a given case warrants in camera
review. A district court would exercise its discretion to conduct in camera
review according to the circumstances--including the presence or absence of
circumstantial and other independent evidence. In a proper case, a district
court might reject the crime-fraud exception without in camera review: without
inspecting all documents alleged to evidence crime or fraud, or even without
inspecting any documents--without hearing all conversations alleged to evidence
crime or fraud, or even without hearing any conversations.
For additional protection of privileged documents--to avoid disclosure of
innocent documents--I would also set out a rule that requires district courts
to allow the crime-fraud exception only in relation to communications that the
court individually has inspected in camera. This approach would be in line
with the Sixth Circuit's position. In In Re Antitrust Grand Jury, 805 F.2d
155, 168 (6th Cir.1986), the Sixth Circuit required the district court to
review documents in camera before ordering them produced:
Not only do we believe in camera review is mandated to determine the scope of
the order, in camera review of the documents could have assisted the court in
determining whether a prima facie violation had been made.
Church of Scientology hints that inspection would undermine another policy,
that of supporting adversarial argument. In endorsing in camera review, the
Second Circuit decided that limitations on adversarial argument are outweighed
by the need to resolve an evidentiary question while preserving
confidentiality. 675 F.2d at 490. In any case, the independent evidence
rule itself does not support adversarial argument insofar as the subject of the
argument--the communication alleged to be in furtherance of crime or fraud-- is
available to one party and not the other. At best a distorted form of
adversarial argument can occur.
Finally, according to the Church, Federal Rule of Evidence 104(a) and
Bourjaily v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 2775, 97 L.Ed.2d
144 (1987), indicate that a court making preliminary inquiries about a
privilege must abide by preexisting evidence rules such as the independent
evidence requirement. Rule 104(a), however, is not on point. The rule
deals with questions about the existence of a privilege, not about an exception
to a privilege:
Preliminary questions concerning the qualification of a person to be a
witness, the existence of a privilege, or the admissibility of evidence shall
be determined by the court, subject to the provisions of subdivision (b). In
making its determination it is not bound by the rules of evidence except those
with respect to privileges.
Church of Scientology gains no support for the independent evidence
requirement by analogy to Rule 104(a). In the Ninth Circuit the rules of
evidence with respect to *1139 privileges do allow for in camera review: a
court undertakes in camera review of documents to decide whether the attorney-
client privilege even exists with respect to those documents. In Re Grand
Jury Witness, 695 F.2d 359, 362 (9th Cir.1982).
Church of Scientology garners no support from Bourjaily. In that case the
Supreme Court held that a showing to admit a co-conspirator's statement under
Rule 801(d)(2) need not rely on independent evidence, but may rely on the
statement itself. If anything Bourjaily suggests that a court may indeed
examine suspect communications when considering the crime-fraud exception.
Compare 107 S.Ct. at 2780.
Accordingly, I would overrule Shewfelt, eliminate the independent evidence
requirement, and allow in camera inspection of suspect communications. The way
I would formulate the rule, however, would dictate that we affirm the district
court in this case.
The government argues that the district court abused its discretion by
rejecting the crime-fraud exception without inspecting all the tape recorded
communications known to the government. According to the rule I have
described, a district court would be within its discretion to reject the
exception without inspecting all suspect communications or even any
communications. In this case the government submitted only a partial
transcript of material to the district court. When the government submitted
that partial transcript, the government was aware of the entire contents of the
tapes. See Government's Brief at 12 (discussing Xanthos Declaration submitted
to district court on motion for reconsideration). The district court was
entitled to rely on the government to highlight, to the best of its ability,
those parts of the tapes that might fall within the crime-fraud exception.
On appeal the government asks us to order the district court to inspect those
parts of the tapes that were not within the partial transcript. In the
district court, however, the government did not indicate that a partial
transcript was an inadequate basis for a ruling on the crime-fraud exception.
See Denial of Motion for Reconsideration, Government's Supplemental Excerpt of
Record at Tab 80. The government never explained why it had failed to include
the other parts of the tapes in the partial transcript in the first place.
Id. The district court was well within its discretion to consider only the
partial transcript, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in
rejecting the crime-fraud exception.
We should overrule Shewfelt and eliminate the independent evidence
requirement. An appropriate rule would make in camera review discretionary for
the district court to reject the crime-fraud exception, mandatory for the
district court to allow the exception and order disclosure. In this case the
district court did not abuse its discretion by rejecting the exception without
a complete review.


text:
Boris Kagarlitsky: ''After the revolution, national movements chose the Bolsheviks as the least of the evils''
Soviet dissident and sociologist about German money of the Bolsheviks, ambivalence of nationalists
Photo: Timur Rakhmatullin
25 October (in the Julian calendar) 1917 is considered to be a breaking point in history of Russia and even the planet. In an interview to Realnoe Vremya's reporter, political expert Boris Kagarlitsky, who is famous for his leftist views, told why the October events should not be considered as another revolution. The interlocutor of our online newspaper dispelled the myth about the 'German trace' and told how the Bolsheviks attracted representatives of nationalist movements to their camp.
October revolution is the cap
The Soviet historiography had a clear division into the February Bourgeois Revolution and October Revolution. Now people talk more about two stages of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Which point of view is closer to you?
Actually, it is two stages of one process. And the Soviet division was not as artificial as it was linked with political circumstances. The Soviet power had its own history of the events on 25 October 1917. And this is why these events needed to be pointed out as something separate and independent during the revolutionary process. But it is completely clear that, in fact, it was one of the stages. In addition, the very Bolsheviks perfectly understood it during the revolution and talked about the October coup without hesitation. And the very fight for power of the Unions started much earlier, not in October 1917. As far as we remember, it was in July 1917 when the first attempt of establishing the Soviet power was made without the Bolsheviks' leading role. Then the Bolsheviks were accused of a coup attempt and almost sent to the underground.
In any case, the division of the revolution into several stages was quite logical. So did it happen in France because the concept of the French Revolution appeared with hindsight. They had talked about several revolutions before. And every stage was defined not by a year but as one of the revolutions. For this reason, from a perspective of historical science, the division was not correct. We can probably say that 1917 October revolution was the peak, the culmination of the revolutionary process, but not an event standing aside from the others.
Mr Kagarlitsky, do you believe in the 'German trace' in the 1917 revolution?
The information that the German money was different and did not come from there is well known like the Bolsheviks were accused. Indeed, a company that, in fact, dealt with a legal traffic of German goods to Russia through Sweden was created by Parvus. A group of famous Bolsheviks worked in this company. This company worked completely legally, not only German but also Russian authorities knew about the character of its activity. The paradox was that it was beneficial for both sides. The task was to provide a commodity turnover between Russia and Germany despite the war. Quite big money passed through the company. And many Bolsheviks as top managers were entitled to have very high salaries. People who got high salaries just voluntarily and legally gave a big part of the money to the party's work. The Bolsheviks got this German money. In addition, by consent of Russian authorities. All these details are described in Vladlen Loginov's books Lenin In 1917 and Unknown Lenin.
And the idea of accusing the Bolsheviks of getting German money was born because it was completely open. These things were confirmed by documents and were never hidden. But then additional versions about some symbolic black cash that was given somewhere were made up. Then there were fake documents. It all is a lie, of course. Yes, some money came from Germany, but it came through completely open ways.
''When Yakub Ganetsky, who also worked in this company, received Lenin in Stockholm, they did not have money at all. They spent their last money to buy decent clothes to Vladimir Lenin who wore some Alp boots and old suit, so that he would come to Petrograd with a decent look.'' Photo: mirkultura.ru Ulyanov (Lenin) in the wig and with make-up
But there are also things that people usually try not to mention: other parties also got a lot of money, much more than the Bolsheviks did, through the Triple Entente. But this topic is not considered, whether this money was legal or illegal. A great number of politicians in Russia had foreign money. In this respect, the Bolsheviks were one of the most modest ones. From a financial and political perspective, the provisional government and its politicians got much more help from abroad than the Bolsheviks. The Anarchists were those who did not have any financial possibilities – either external or internal — they acted at their own risk. It explains why they had to steal and grasp valuable things, they just did not have another way of getting money.
It is seen in Loginov's books how little money the Bolsheviks had. When Yakub Ganetsky, who also worked in this company, received Lenin in Stockholm, they did not have money at all. They spent their last money to buy decent clothes to Vladimir Lenin who wore some Alp boots and an old suit, so that he would come to Petrograd with a decent look. He was bought a coat he wore for several years then, a good hat (there was not any cap). And all money was spent on it. After that, they went to ask money from Swedish Social Democrats. There was a very funny story. To just buy tickets for Lenin (they did not have the money even for tickets), they turned to the party administration with some of the Social Democrats. The party was on the side of Social Democrats. Addressing the head of the faction, one of the leftists said: ''Please, help Lenin and his friends reach Petrograd because these people will rule Russia in several months''. That head did not believe but gave the money. There was another curious moment. On the Russian border, Lenin was searched. What is more, not Russian but British officers did it. Englishmen searched him right on the Finland border, which shows the sovereignty level of Russia at that time.
Attractive Bolshevik project for national districts
Why did many national movements supported the Whites first during the civil war but switched to the Reds in the end? It is enough to remember Tatar activists.
Nationalist movements came from the liberal Cadets. And all bourgeois nationalist movements came from the Cadets or were ideologically close to them (like Tatar, for example) or from different people's SR movements, like it was seen for Ukraine and Belarus, or the right wing of Social Democracy (same Petlyur). Historically, all national movements were with either the Cadets or right-wing Socialists. Yes, ideologically, the Bolsheviks supported self-identification of peoples, but they were an uncomfortable party of this kind of forces because they were backed by a completely different social base – industrial working class and sympathising intelligentsia, who were 100% Russian-speaking. Even if they recognised the right to self-identification, they, in turn, were far from this national topic. Small bourgeois organisations cooperated with different nationalist movements more because they shared the social base in national districts. It is clear that all these parties with their ideological allies in Petrograd opposed Bolshevism after the October Revolution. On the other hand, nationalists used the country's crisis during the dissolution of the Russian Empire to create their own state or quasi-state. In this case, the takeover of the power by the Bolsheviks happened during the dissolution that had already begun. Precisely the Bolsheviks were in the centre – in the capital of the country, in place of the state power, and they had to fight for conservation of the central state. Any aspiration to leave the country was real opposition to the capital – the Bolsheviks who were already in this place.
But when the civil war started, it turned out that, on the one hand, some national projects could not be made real (there were not just conditions for a full-fledged national country). The White movement rose at the same time. It, in general, was the enemy of any national rights that the Orthodox great Russian state was against. In this situation, small bourgeois movements chose the Bolsheviks as the least of the evils. Some national rights would, undoubtedly, be respected and some types of national statehood, not necessarily those they had dreamt of first but any types, would be created in the state structure that was established by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks accepted the friendship of these national movements for the same reason because they just needed to win the war and unite the country. They thought (and quite logically) that concessions to national movements were a logical and necessary price that was behind the conservation of one economic space. Such a deal was made, it was rational for both sides. In addition, it was effective. We know that the Soviet Union existed for more than 70 years. In other words, the country was united. And thank God, the Russian Federation still exists. The deal worked. Now talks about the time bomb, which was put under the USSR, too many concessions of the Bolsheviks to national movements or suppression of aspiration for freedom of national districts by the Bolsheviks are words of people who not only did not live then but have a vague idea of those political conditions and game rules that took place in the 1918-1920s.
In the 100th anniversary of the revolution, some people are afraid of a new coup. Has Russia reached this limit?
Not all people can like what I will say. We can say that now a revolution could greatly benefit Russia. But now as far as we see it doesn't begin. Revolution is a change of the development model, it not always means a change of the system. In this respect, there was not any revolution in Ukraine, no development model changed there. The problem is that our development model of modern Russia, which is based on feedstock, oligarchy, periphery, has run its course. It is backed by the use of the resources that left from the Soviet era. A more creating, more economic model of the economy and society needs to be created. It is impossible to do it without a revolution. The current elites are just not interested even if it is the time for changes, and maybe they are not so dangerous for them. In any case, they won't benefit them. Conditions for a revolution obviously ripe in Russia. But the very situation doesn't arise completely because the society did not understand how dramatic, dangerous its own position is.
''If the cultural and national autonomy in our country is held gradually, the status of the Tatar language in Russia will increase because the majority of the Tatar population is inside Tatarstan. And several regions will need to make the Tatar language as second official language, according to these rules.'' Photo: Maksim Platonov
We see that regions are becoming larger. Will the ideas of cancellation of national and territorial division of the country be accomplished?
I don't know what the Kremlin will make up. From a logical perspective, a partial change would be sensible. There is a famous Finnish model when a territorial division doesn't exclude a national autonomy when every region has a cultural and linguistic policy in accordance with the number of the population. When you have 5% of Swedish people in the region, the Swedish language is considered official. If there are more than 50% in the region, it becomes the first language and Finnish – second. If the cultural and national autonomy in our country is held gradually, the status of the Tatar language in Russia will increase because the majority of the Tatar population is inside Tatarstan. And several regions will need to make the Tatar language second official language, according to these rules. If we apply the Finnish system, several regions will need to speak the Tatar language.
By Timur Rakhmatullin


text:
Law & Religion UK
Issues of law and religion in the United Kingdom – with occasional forays further afield
Clergy, the C of E and same-sex marriage: Pemberton v Inwood
Posted on 7 December 2016 by Frank Cranmer
As readers of this blog will know, Canon Jeremy Pemberton married his long-term partner, Laurence Cunnington, and Bishop Inwood – who at the time was Acting Bishop of Southwell & Nottingham – revoked his Permission to Officiate (PTO) and refused to grant him an Extra Parochial Ministry Licence (EPML), which he needed to be able to take up a post as Chaplain in an NHS Trust in the Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham.
In Revd Canon Pemberton v Right Revd Richard Inwood (Sex Discrimination: Marital status) [2016] UKEAT 0072/16/0712 the Employment Appeal Tribunal [HHJ Eady QC, sitting alone] dismissed both the appeal of Canon Pemberton against the ruling of the Employment Tribunal and the Church of England's cross-appeal.
Canon Pemberton had brought a claim in an Employment Tribunal for unlawful direct discrimination because of sexual orientation and/or marital status and unlawful harassment related to sexual orientation, contrary to s 53 Equality Act 2010 – which applies to qualifications bodies as defined by s 54(2) of that Act. Bishop Inwood denied that he was a qualifications body for the purposes of s 54(2) but, in the alternative, contended that any relevant qualifications (defined by section 54(3)) were for employment for the purposes of an organised religion and therefore fell within the exemption allowed by schedule 9 paragraph 2 of the Equality Act 2010. He contended that he had applied the requirement that Canon Pemberton's marriage was incompatible with the doctrine of the Church of England in relation to marriage ("the compliance principle"). The claim of harassment was further denied on its facts.
The ET found that Bishop Inwood's refusal to grant Canon Pemberton an EPML did fall under s 53 Equality Act 2010 and was a "relevant qualification" within the meaning of s 54: that was not the case, however, in respect of the revocation of his PTO. The ET further held, however, that the EPML qualification was for the purposes of employment for the purposes of an organised religion and the compliance principle was engaged; therefore, Bishop Inwood was exempt from liability by reason of paragraph 2, schedule 9 Equality Act 2010. As for the harassment claim, Bishop Inwood's conduct did not amount to harassment. Context was everything: Canon Pemberton would not have experienced that (admittedly, unwanted) conduct had he not defied the doctrine of the Church. Moreover, Bishop Inwood had acted lawfully pursuant to schedule 9; it would be an affront to justice if his conduct was found to constitute harassment.
The ET had correctly held that the EPML was a relevant qualification (and the Bishop therefore was a qualifications body) for the purposes of sections 53 and 54 of the 2010 Act; the cross-appeal against that finding was dismissed. Equally, however, the ET had been entitled to find that the PTO was not a relevant qualification: it would not have "facilitated" the grant of the EPML on the facts of this case; it was Canon Pemberton's lack of "good standing" within the Church of England that underpinned the Bishop's decision in respect of both.
The ET had further reached a permissible conclusion that the qualification was for the purposes of employment for the purposes of an organised religion, notwithstanding that the employer would have been the NHS Trust and not the Church. The Trust required its Chaplain to have an EPML in order to carry out the ministry of the Church of England; that was the purpose of the qualification and the employment. As for the doctrines of the Church, this referred to the teachings and beliefs of the religion and the ET had been entitled to find that these were as stated by Canon B30 ("marriage is … a union … of one man with one woman …"), evidenced, in particular, by the House of Bishops' Pastoral Guidance on Same Sex Marriage. The Bishop had applied a requirement that Canon Pemberton should not be in a same-sex marriage in order to comply with the doctrines of the Church; it was not fatal to the ET's conclusion in that regard that a different Bishop might not have done the same.
As for the harassment claim, the ET had permissibly found that the particular context of the case was highly significant and meant that it was not reasonable for Canon Pemberton's conduct to have the effect required to meet the definition of harassment under s 26 Equality Act 2010. He had been aware that his marriage would mean that he would not be seen as in "good standing" within the Church of England. The Bishop's decision was exempt from liability by reason of schedule 9 and there were no aggravating features arising from his decision or its communication.
HHJ Eady concluded as follows:
"Given the importance of the legal questions involved and the novel issues arising, in particular, in respect of schedule 9, I would consider this matter suitable for permission to be given to appeal to the Court of Appeal, should such an application be made" [126]
This note is based on the summary of the judgment. I hope to post a more detailed analysis next week.
Cite this article as: Frank Cranmer, "Clergy, the C of E and same-sex marriage: Pemberton v Inwood" in Law & Religion UK, 7 December 2016, https://lawandreligionuk.com/2016/12/07/clergy-the-c-of-e-and-same-sex-marriage-pemberton-v-inwood/
This entry was posted in Church of England, employment law, same-sex marriage and tagged Church of England, employment, same-sex marriage by Frank Cranmer. Bookmark the permalink.
5 thoughts on "Clergy, the C of E and same-sex marriage: Pemberton v Inwood"
John on 7 December 2016 at 7:01 pm said:
This is yet another way in which the state – in the form of the NHS – subsidises the Church of England. As noted in the article above, the NHS would have been Mr Pemberton's employer and these posts of chaplain usually pay somewhere in the region of £25,000 per year to people who are usually also employed by the Church of England.
It has to be questioned that religion should have anything to do with the activity of being a chaplain and – in particular – why it should be an Anglican officiate in the position?
These days, Anglicanism is very much a minor belief system in this country, so why do they exercise a virtual monopoly over these types of positions?
If patients wish to see a local vicar, why does not the local vicar carry out such duties as part of their normal parish duties as a local vicar? I imagine priests, rabbis and imams are involved in similar activities but without receiving £25,000 per year state subsidy.
I even question why this essentially welfare position is given to poorly trained clerics to carry out. Properly-trained secular hospital employees would carry out the job far better.
Frank Cranmer on 7 December 2016 at 7:23 pm said:
Fair enough: but that's not really relevant to the facts of the case. (Incidentally, if I were a devout Roman Catholic – which I'm certainly not – I don't think I'd want to make my last confession to a "properly-trained secular hospital employee", however sympathetic.)
As now, it would simply be a matter of calling-in a local priest but without incurring a cost of around £25,000 a year, which would be better used hiring more full-time nurses and support workers.
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Note: James Montgomery, formerly a school drop-out, became a successful newspaper editor, essayist, and hymn writer. Among other worthy hymns, he gave us the Christmas carol Angels from the Realms of Glory. And in one sounding like a personal testimony, he wrote this sublime, though little known, hymn about the believer's eternal future. It should be in every hymn book, but is not.
Shepherd's tune, Terra Beata (meaning Beautiful Earth), is based on a melody he remembered for his childhood. We also use Shepherd's rendering of it for the hymn This Is My Father's World.
There are subjects we often try to avoid in polite company, some because they seem gross or nauseating to us, others because they might offend an individual's feelings. But there is one particular topic that is spoken of with particular discomfort, and often shunned. An experience often anticipated with dread or anxiety, certainly as it seems to be approaching. Death.
In his profane 1939 play, The Iceman Cometh, playwright Eugene O'Neill depicts a number of drunken occupants in a bar, blathering on–for nearly five hours!–about their fanciful dreams and faded hopes. The better days they look for are mostly an alcoholic delusion. In truth, the Iceman (a symbol of death) lurks in their midst, unseen and largely unacknowledged, but an inevitable destiny.
The Saviour died on the cross of Calvary to take the wages of our sin upon Himself, that we, through faith in Him, might receive the gift of eternal life (Rom. 6:23). Having that assurance, for the Christian, death is "to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8). So Paul speaks of his "desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better" (Phil. 1:23).
"We know that when He [Christ] is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (I Jn. 3:2). "As for me," says the psalmist, "I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness" (Ps. 17:15). "In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Ps. 16:11). "And those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful" (Rev. 17:4).
The Lord Jesus declared, "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also (Jn. 14:2-3).
It was for our presence with Him in heaven that Christ petitioned His heavenly Father (Jn. 17:24). "Thus we shall always be with the Lord" (I Thess. 4:17). That thrilling promise fueled Montgomery's wonderful hymn.
CH-1) "Forever with the Lord!" Amen, so let it be!
Life from His death is in that word, 'tis immortality.
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent a day's march nearer home.
At times to faith's foreseeing eye thy golden gates appear!
The bright inheritance of saints, Jerusalem above.
Like Noah's dove, I flit between rough seas and stormy skies.
While sweetly o'er my gladdened heart expands the bow of peace.
The promise of that faithful word, Lord, here in me fulfil.
Uphold me, Lord, and I shall stand, through grace I will prevail.
By death I shall escape from death, and life eternal gain.
"Our Lord Jesus Christ…died for us, that whether we wake or sleep [i.e. die], we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing" (I Thess. 5:9-11).
1) What does the promise that we will be "forever with the Lord" mean to you?
2) What other hymns about heaven do you know and love?


Welcome to our website www.realtek.cz. We appreciate every visit and we would like to provide you with all relevant information about Realtek Semiconductor Corp. products. We would like to inform you that the website is not provided in conjunction with Realtek Semiconductor Corp. and does not provide any technical support. In case of technical difficulties, please contact your supplier directly or consult the Realtek Technical Support site.
Since 2004, our company has been providing unlicensed localized technical support for Realtek network and audio products. It was at a time when the gigabit network cards, as well as 802.11g (2.4GHz) and 802.11a (5GHz) cards, appeared on the market. The first problems have already been solved, especially in localized versions of Microsoft Windows, which have been greatly helped by our suppliers' technicians. Since February 1, 2008, e-mail and telephone technical support has ceased to exist in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In case of problems, we recommend first testing the latest drivers for your operating system from our site and then contacting your vendor.
Realtek Semiconductor Corp., located in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park - Taiwan's "Silicon Valley" - began with a small group of young, devoted engineers in 1987. Over three decades, these young founding engineers built Realtek into one of the world's largest and most successful IC design houses. Realtek's efforts to provide the ultimate in pioneering IC technology - along with its firm commitment to creating unique and innovative designs for a broad range of high-tech applications - have won the company a worldwide reputation and made possible a favorable and consistent growth rate in the years since its establishment. We attribute this achievement to Realtek's tradition of excellence.


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Q: Create Local SQL Server database I've used SQL Server Management Studio before, but only when the server is already up and running.
I need to start from the beginning and create my own instance on the local computer.
The instructions I'm getting, is just put "." on the server name and use Windows Authentication. But that gives me a "server not found" error.
Can someone please help? I'm using SQL Server 2012 Management Studio.
I really thought it would be just like Access, create my tables and start creating queries.

A: You need to install a so-called Instance of MSSQL server on your computer. That is, installing all the needed files and services and database files. By default, there should be no MSSQL Server installed on your machine, assuming that you use a desktop Windows (7,8,10...).
You can start off with Microsoft SQL Server Express, which is a 10GB-limited, free version of MSSQL. It also lacks some other features (Server Agents, AFAIR), but it's good for some experiments.
Download it from the Microsoft Website and go through the installer process by choosing New SQL Server stand-alone installation .. after running the installer.
Click through the steps. For your scenario (it sounds like you mainly want to test some stuff), the default options should suffice.
Just give attention to the step Instance Configuration. There you will set the name of your MSSQL Server Instance. Call it something unique/descriptive like MY_TEST_INSTANCE or the like. Also, choose wisely the Instance root directory. In it, the database files will be placed, so it should be on a drive that has enough space.
Click further through the wizard, and when it's finished, your MSSQL instance will be up and running. It will also run at every boot if you have chosen the default settings for the services.
As soon as it's running in the background, you can connect to it with Management Studio by connecting to .\MY_TEST_INSTANCE, given that that's the name you chose for the instance.

A: After installation you need to connect to Server Name : localhost to start using the local instance of SQL Server.
Once you are connected to the local instance, right click on Databases and create a new database.

A: For anyone still looking to do this in 2022. So long as you are purely using it for development purposes you can download a full featured version of SQL Server directly from Microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads.

A: You need SQL Server Configuration Manager and then enable TCP/IP pipes. Can be installed with SQL Server Express.

A: Your best bet over here to install XAMPP..Follow the link download it , it has an instruction file as well. You can setup your own MY SQL database and then connect to on your local machine.
https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The Quiet Death of the Mayor's $1 Million Challenge in San Diego
By Lina Chankar.
A hallmark of Mayor Kevin Faulconer's State of the City addresses is enlisting outside groups to tackle major city challenges. A year ago, he convened a task force to create a Chargers stadium solution; this year he declared San Diego scientists would cure Alzheimer's.
Likewise, in his 2015 State of the City address Faulconer announced a challenge called Innovate San Diego. It would generate big ideas that would change the city. The person or group whose idea did the most to improve housing, infrastructure or entrepreneurship in San Diego would win $1 million.
"I'm proud to announce the 'Innovate San Diego Challenge,' a collaboration with U-T San Diego and HeroX. This year, I will ask San Diego residents to join me in embracing our biggest challenges and opportunities," Faulconer said during his speech.
But the $1 million never materialized and the challenge never happened.
The Union-Tribune had initially approached the mayor with the idea to collaborate on the challenge, said Faulconer spokesman Charles Chamberlayne.
The mayor's role would be to "solicit ideas, promote, raise profile – help improve the city," Chamberlayne said.
The $1 million in prize money was supposed to be raised from sponsors.
The plan was for the city to partner with the San Diego Union-Tribune and a group called HeroX, a company that sponsors similar challenges around the country. HeroX works like Kickstarter in reverse: Where Kickstarter raises money for a person with a specific solution in mind, HeroX dangles a cash incentive, and a project organizer gives it to the person who comes up with the best solution.
Things started off OK: For a while after the mayor's announcement, two staffers from Faulconer's office and three Union-Tribune staffers joined two HeroX officials on weekly conference calls for about four months.
Chamberlayne said they discussed fundraising ideas and dates.
The challenge was announced on social media by several entities, including HeroX.
But when Tribune Publishing purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune in mid-2015, the challenge died before it really got started. The new ownership didn't have any interest in the project, said Chamberlayne.
The Union-Tribune and the mayor's office both said the project never made it through the fundraising stage, and the $1 million was never raised, because the challenge was shut down after the Tribune purchase.
The Union-Tribune had put up $50,000 to cover operating expenses while the team pulled together logistics and raised the prize money. HeroX returned most of the funds once the challenge was shut down.
The mayor's office did not look for another partner for the project after the Union-Tribune pulled out, said Faulconer's deputy chief of staff, Matt Awbrey. It quietly let the challenge die, and never issued a press release or announcement to let the public know the opportunity it had promoted as part of the mayor's priorities for 2015 was null and void.
Awbrey said there was no need to publicly cancel the project because the challenge was still just in the planning stage.
"The Union-Tribune and city mutually agreed not to move beyond the planning stage, and HeroX was informed accordingly," Awbrey said.
"The challenge was never launched, and so no one applied," said Nidhi Chaudhary, HeroX's vice president of challenge success.
But two teams appear to have pre-registered for the challenge on its website. Chaudhary did not respond to an email requesting clarification.
An invitation to pre-register for, or sponsor, the challenge is still active on HeroX's website. The company confirmed the project is defunct.
Originally posted at Voice of San Diego.


text:
Company recycles old Mack Trucks plant in Allentown, using it to divert construction debris from landfills
By Jon Harris
Things are bustling in this old Mack Trucks plant in Allentown.
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Truck after truck swings by to dump piles of construction and manufacturing debris, filling the plant with the noise of back-up alarms and creating a dusty cloudiness visible near the lights along the 30-foot-high ceilings. Nearby, an orange excavator springs to life, stretching its arm and then clenching its claw around a fistful of the pile, spewing it out into a smaller line on the floor. Next, workers — dressed in neon yellow vests and hardhats, along with white dust masks strapped around their faces — jump in, sorting through the materials and throwing metals, wood and rubble into the corresponding bin.
Those bins are then dumped into a larger pile of the same materials, a mountain containing familiar and interesting items — a ladder in one of the metal piles; a plastic turtle sandbox in with the plastics; and a piece of wood labeled the "Griswold Residence." Lastly, these towering piles are baled or chipped into more accessible sizes, so they can be sold to another company to make something new, extending the material's life.
"It's definitely an ordered chaos now," said Shane Clark, on the special projects team of Revolution Recovery, the company behind the Allentown operation that competes in the challenging recycling industry.
Revolution Recovery opened the plant — its third overall, joining facilities in Philadelphia and New Castle, Del. — last year as an alternative to landfills in the area. The company bought the 11.5-acre, century-old property at 644 S. 10th St. in December 2017 for $4 million, lured to the recycling opportunity created by the Lehigh Valley's development boom. The region's strength was reaffirmed this week when the area was dubbed one of the fastest-growing regions in the Northeast by Site Selection magazine.
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Right now, Revolution Recovery's operations occupy 80,000-100,000 square feet of the 265,000-square-foot building. While the company plans to rent out some of the space, the additional square footage gives it space for expansion and storage as its customer base grows. As it is now, the facility processes about 200 tons of waste per day, which is eventually expected to be closer to the 500 tons the company's other two facilities handle.
The site's employment also is expected to grow. The facility employs just under 20 people, but that number could easily hit 30 by the end of the year, said Brian Gordon, the facility's manager. Later this year, he expects to make more use of automation in the plant, becoming more efficient with a sort line that uses conveyor belts. Right now, the most automated activity is a cardboard baler that spits out 1,500-pound bundles.
The company says it's able to recover about 75 percent of all the construction and manufacturing material that comes in, which translates to diverting hundreds of thousands of pounds daily from landfills. Now, as the company enters its first construction season as a fully operational plant, Revolution Recovery hopes to catch the attention of more property owners, contractors and manufacturers across the area.
The company counts Nick Ressler, owner of Nick's Enterprises in Allentown, as a customer. Ressler, a one-man operation offering container service to contractors and homeowners, said he believes he was Revolution Recovery's fifth customer during its soft opening in May.
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"Once I heard they were coming to the area, I just kept calling them every week asking, 'When are you opening?'" Ressler said.
Revolution Recovery is near much of his business, allowing Ressler to save time, fuel costs and vehicle wear and tear. While he'll still go to a transfer station or landfill if he's in Northampton County, Ressler said he typically goes to Revolution Recovery daily during the week, a place he knows will take the time to pick out whatever can be saved from a pile.
But the recycling industry isn't easy. It's a business that presents economic challenges and educational ones, with many people stuck in the same traditional methods of disposal and unfamiliar with what can and can't be recycled. At Revolution Recovery, which aims to keep materials out of landfills, the materials it can't save — about 25 percent of what comes in — are destined for a landfill, representing the company's biggest expense and cutting into its ability to make money.
"The venture is very much a startup," company co-founder Jon Wybar said. "Whatever little profit we can grind out goes right back into fixing the massive property [in Allentown]."
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The company also has to compete with landfills on price and service. While Gordon noted the company sometimes charges more than landfills, he said the facility has been able to win customers via its location and turnaround time, allowing trucks to get in and out in as little as 15 minutes.
Revolution Recovery also believes it has an advantage in its ability to control quality, with a labor-intensive sorting process. Compare that with municipal or curbside recycling, which is grappling with contamination when residents place nonrecyclables in their bins. In addition, many municipal recycling programs are struggling after an overseas trading partner, China, decided to no longer import what the country called "foreign garbage."
Would you buy a poisoned Superfund site? This man just did
By Frank Krummer
Revolution Recovery sends materials mostly to outlets in the United States. But still, there are challenges, such as the price of oil, which is used to make many products. If oil prices are low, it may be more profitable for a manufacturer to get oil and make product with all new materials, rather than to produce an item from recycled materials.
"Right now, because of subsidies and also where we're choosing to extract oil, we've got pretty low oil prices," Clark said. "That means recycling is not as profitable, which means we see people either paying us less or charging us to take our material to recycle it. That's our biggest challenge."
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While Revolution Recovery is betting on stronger markets soon, the company also is aided by the diversity of products it accepts. The operation takes wood, metal, drywall, cardboard, carpet, ceiling tile, plastic, and rubble such as brick and concrete. While some uses are obvious, such as wood being taken to mulch processors, others are not. For example, drywall is taken to a processor, where it is ground and screened — the paper is screened off and used for animal bedding, while the gypsum is processed into a soil amendment, fertilizer and conditioner.
The company's expertise also allows it to help develop plans and track construction waste for a project, an important offering for buildings trying to gain LEED certification. That's how Arif Fazil, president of D'Huy Engineering in Bethlehem, became acquainted with Revolution Recovery.
With the project to build Broughal Middle School in Bethlehem, Fazil said, the firm was looking for a company that could help meet the LEED Gold level certification requirement of diverting construction waste from landfills. Fazil found Wybar, who helped by redirecting more than 80 percent of the construction debris from landfills by the time the project was complete around 2009.
"They're a good outfit," said Fazil, who has worked with the company several times since. "They know what they're doing."
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That's true at the Allentown plant, which even finds a use for some of the materials it would prefer not to receive. For example, a dust-stained mattress on the floor of the Allentown facility is used to sweep, Gordon explained. The plant also has several pallets of bottled water in its storage area, which it received following a truck rollover on a highway not too long ago. The facility's workers have benefited, one bottle at a time.
It's an adventure in itself just seeing which items arrive in each pile, the ultimate example of one man's trash being another man's treasure, Gordon said.
"I've yet to see money," he joked. "I just want to find one bag."
More interesting items will continue to arrive, especially as the Allentown facility goes from about 60 truck trips a day now to an expected 100 or so this summer.
Appropriately enough, many of those trucks have a bulldog fastened to the hood.


A 27-year-old male employee was fatally injured when he was crushed between the railing of a scissor lift and a mezzanine outer support beam while installing insulation on duct work. On the day of the incident, the victim was working alone installing insulation around duct work using a Dyna-Mite Work Platform scissor lift.
The duct work could only be accessed through a small opening approximately eighteen inches high by thirty-one inches wide under the mezzanine deck between the vertical beams, an electrical junction box, and piping. In efforts to reach the area, the victim positioned himself leaning backwards out of the scissor lift with his back resting across the lift upper guard rails.
At some point while installing the insulation the victim became pinned between the scissor lift upper guard rail and the bottom of the mezzanine outer support beam. During the investigation, it was determined that the control console on the scissor lift was missing the guard that prevents the inadvertent activation of the lowering and rising of the work platform.
The control console was found hanging on the opposite side of the lift from the victim's work position. The most likely scenario is that the victim contacted the unguarded control console with his foot while trying to position himself leaning backwards out of the lift.
Had the guard been in place on the control panel and the victim not been working alone, it is likely this incident would have had a much different outcome. However, during the inspection it also was found the lower controls on the lift were not functioning, so it's possible that even if someone else was present they may not have been able to move the lift and free the victim in time.
This incident also highlights the importance of preventative maintenance and removing damaged or defective equipment from service until they are repaired or replaced.