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torture is inevitable. "We can't just close our eyes and pretend we live in a pure world," he says.

"People will say anything under torture,"

torture is inevitable.

But just for the sake of discussion, let’s bring the whole issue closer to home. Suppose your son or your daughter is, for some reason, the target of kidnappers and that they’ve put your child in a hidden location with a bomb scheduled to go off if you don’t pay them a million dollars. Now, suppose you have one of the kidnappers in custody. What would you be willing to do, assuming you couldn’t get the money, to find out where your child was being held and get him or her away from the bomb? Whoops, you can’t slap the kidnapper! That would be torture! You can’t even threaten to shoot him if he doesn’t tell you what you need to know! Again, that would be torture! Do you think you might be inclined to take whatever action necessary to save your child? Or would you let your child die to avoid torture? The world is, and always has been, a vicious place and its fine and grand and noble to talk about never using torture or the threat of torture – in the abstract. I would contend, however, that if the life of your child or your spouse or your best friend was on the line, you might not look on a slap as the unlawful infliction of severe physical pain in quite the same light. In the abstract, we can call it torture. When the lives of loved ones are at stake, I submit that being slapped around seems relatively mild – but I could be wrong.

The Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, firewalls for our collective humanity, expressly forbid it. It is prohibited without qualification in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - a document signed by people from every corner and culture of the Earth who had survived the suffering of both world wars, the horrors of fascism, and the evil of the Holocaust. They understood well that global humanitarian norms and a rules-based world order are in all our interests

Aucune circonstance exceptionnelle, quelle qu'elle soit, qu'il s'agisse de l'état de guerre ou de menace de guerre, d'instabilité politique intérieure ou de tout autre état d'exception, ne peut être invoquée pour justifier la torture.

Torture is an ineffective interrogation tool It may well produce false information because under torture a prisoner will eventually say anything to stop the pain - regardless of whether it is true

In the ultimate hypothetical case, if a terrorist with hard intelligence about an impending large-scale terrorist strike could be broken by torture, shouldn't it be used?

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response:

he Geneva Conventions do not apply to interrogation of terrorists and suspected terrorists held by U.S. soldiers because they are not prisoners of war. They are illegal, enemy combatants, not subject to such protection.

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery--by automatons in human form--it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

but also animal lives are saved because of animal testing.

Many of the medications and procedures that we currently use today wouldn’t exist

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.