title: God in Islam

text: Ash'aris and Maturidis are in agreement that God's attributes are eternal and are to be held to be metaphorically. References to anthropomorphic attributes can probably not be understood correctly by humans. Although God's existence is considered to be possibly known by reason, human mind can not fully understand God's attributes. Ash'ari and Maturidi scholars have two positions regarding the Mutashabihat texts (ambiguous passages in the Qur'an and Hadith) related to God's attributes: Tafwid (affirming the attributes of God, but consigning/entrusting both their meaning and modality to God, or in other words, leaving the interpretation of anthropomorphic expressions to God) and Ta'wil (metaphorical interpretation). The two positions disregard the literal meaning of the texts due to the definitive evidences denoting the transcendence of God above the attributes of his created beings as per his words: and For example, when believers in paradise see God, they do not see God in the way humans are able to see on Earth. Ash'aris and Maturidis asserts, since God is the creator of everything that exists and creation neither affects nor alters God, the Throne of God is not a dwelling place for God.


title: God in Islam

text: Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi (d. 429/1037) in his "al-Farq bayn al-Firaq" (The Difference between the Sects) reports that 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph, said: "Allah created the Throne as an indication of His power, not for taking it as a place for Himself." Accordingly, expressions such as "God's istiwa' on the Throne" means by ta'wil or figurative interpretation, exercise of his power upon the universe, this denotes his assumption of authority of his created world, the throne being a symbol of authority and dominion, while in tafwid, they just say: "Allahu A'lam" (God knows best), together with their understanding of Tanzih (God's incomparability and transcendence), which means that his istiwa' upon the throne, in the manner which he himself has described, and in that same sense which he himself means, which is far removed from any notion of contact, or resting upon, or local situation. It is impermissible to say that he established himself with a contact or a meeting with it. Because God is not subject to change, substitution, nor limits, whether before or after the creation of the throne.


title: God in Islam

text: Ash'aris and Maturidis are in general agreement that God is free from all imperfections and flaws. He has Divine attributes. Divine attributes are characteristics or qualities that God alone possesses. The Divine attributes are classified into: negative and positive. By the “Negative Attribute” they mean the negation of the negative, i.e. negation of imperfection. Among the most important are the following:


title: God in Islam

text: The Ash'ari and Maturidi scholars emphasise that the Qur'an expresses that God does not need any of his creation as he is perfect. He is immutable (does not change), self-subsisting and self-sufficient, without figure, form, colour or parts. His existence has neither beginning nor end. He is not a body composed of substances or elements. He is not an accident inherent in a body or dwelling in a place. He is unique, unlike anything in his creation. He is ineffable, beyond human understanding, comprehension and therefore human description, as per his words:


title: God in Islam

text: He is omnitemporal in the way that he is omnipresent, as per his words: He is everywhere by his knowledge and power, and nowhere, without being in a place, direction or location, because He existed eternally before all the creations (including time and space) and is clear from change. He is always in the present, yet transcends time. God is not within time; time is one of his creations and doesn't affect him, so for him there is no past, present and future.


title: God in Islam

text: The Hanafi-Maturidi scholar, 'Ali al-Qari (d. 1014/1606) in his "Sharh al-Fiqh al-Akbar" states: "Allah the Exalted is not in any place or space, nor is He subject to time, because both time and space are amongst His creations. He the Exalted was present in pre-existence and there was nothing of the creation with Him".


title: God in Islam

text: Thus, according to Maturidis and Ash'aris, God is beyond time and space, and is transcendent, infinite (not limited) and eternal, without beginning or end, as per his words: A hadith mentioned in Sahih Muslim explains this part of the verse as follows:


title: God in Islam

text: At the same time, he is near to everything that has being; nay, he is nearer to men than their jugular veins (this is alluded to in the verse 50:16), and is witness to everything —though his nearness is not like the nearness of bodies, as neither is his essence like the essence of bodies. Neither does he exist in anything or does anything exist in him; but he is beyond space and time; for he is the creator of space and time, and was before space and time were created, and is now after the same manner as He always was (i.e., without place nor time).


title: God in Islam

text: He is also distinct from the creatures in his attributes, neither is there anything besides himself in his essence, nor is his essence in any other besides him. He is too holy to be subject to change or any local motion; neither do any accidents dwell in him, nor any contingencies before him; but he abides with his glorious attributes, free from all danger of dissolution. As to the attribute of perfection, he wants no addition. As to being, he is known to exist by the apprehension of the understanding; and he is seen as he is by immediate intuition, which will be vouchsafed out of his mercy and grace to the believers in the paradise, completing their joy by the vision of his glorious presence.


title: God in Islam

text: The possibility of seeing God in the afterlife became a pillar of the Ash'ari and the Maturidi schools. Al-Ash'ari holds that God will be seen in the next world by sight. Al-Maturidi also accepts the visibility of God, however his explanation is qualified: people will see God in way that it is incomprehensible to humans in this life and is not like the normal sight that we use to sense light and distance. Al-Ghazali promised that people would enjoy the pleasure of looking on God's noble face.


title: God in Islam

text: Ash'aris and Maturidis insisted on the reality of that vision even if they admitted their inability to fully explain how it will happen. According to them, God can be seen even if he cannot be perceived through vision. Al-Ghazali in his "al-Iqtisad fi al-I'tiqad" (Moderation in Belief) explains the Ash'ari position that God will be seen in the afterlife despite the fact that he has no physical body, nor any location or direction.


title: God in Islam

text: Mu'tazilis and Shi'is deny that God can be seen for the simple reason that visibility, as man understands it requires the object of vision to be in place and this is inconceivable in reference to God. Ash'aris and Maturidis agree with this proposition, but only if they are talking of vision here on Earth and within the physical laws applicable here. However, if it is going to happen somewhere else and under a different set of laws, visibility is possible, for whatever exists can be seen under proper conditions.


title: God in Islam

text: Ash'aris and Maturidis unanimously agree that it is only in the Hereafter that God will be seen. Among the evidences that have been used by them in establishing the permissibility of seeing God are the following:


title: God in Islam

text: Goodness (or ihsan, husna) is to act in accordance with the wise commandments of God. Muhammad defined it as being a servant to God as though one saw him. The greatest good shall be for them (i.e., Paradise), and also "even more"; the delight of gazing upon the ineffable and blessed Countenance of God.


title: God in Islam

text: Muhammad said also in an authentic hadith mentioned in Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Sunan Abi Dawud, and Sunan ibn Majah: "Certainly, you will see your Rubb (on the Day of Resurrection) as you see this (full) moon, and you will have no difficulty (or trouble) in seeing Him."


title: God in Islam

text: The majority of Sufis adhere to the same beliefs and practices of orthodox theology of Sunni Islam, both the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools, the essential difference in theology being that Sufis believe "Ma'iyyat Allah" (God's presence, togetherness, companionship) – derived from the Qur'anic verse 4 in Surat al-Hadid which states: – is not only by knowledge, comprehension and power, but also by nature and essence, which is God himself, being everywhere by presence. According to Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba (d. 1224/1809) in his "al-Bahr al-Madid": "Ahl al-Batin" (people of the inner knowledge who follow the esoteric interpretation, i.e., the Sufis) have a consensus on that God is everywhere by presence and essence (in all places at once with his entire being despite his spacelessness), but without "Hulul" (God's indwelling, fusion/infusion, incarnation in creation) and without "Ittihad" (God's identification, unification, union with creation), unlike "Ahl al-Zahir" (people of the outward observance; the uninitiated), who are unanimously agreed that God is omnipresent only by knowledge and power.


title: God in Islam

text: Among the verses that Sufis rely on to prove God's omnipresence are: 2:115; 2:255 (Ayat al-Kursi); 6:3; 43:84; 57:4; and 58:7. Based on these Qur'anic verses, God's omnipresence is not limited to certain areas, but is present everywhere, all-pervasive, and all-knowing.


title: God in Islam

text: According to Muhammad Metwalli al-Sha'rawi (d. 1419/1998) in his interpretation (better known as ) of the Qur'anic verses , which are mentioned in Surat al-Waqi'ah: "83. Why then (are you helpless) when it (i.e., the soul of a dying person at the moment of death) reaches the throat, 84. While you are looking on, 85. And We (i.e., God and/or His angels) are nearer/closer to him (the dying human) than you are, but you do not see."


title: God in Islam

text: Al-Sha'rawi stated that God's statement in verse 56:85 "but you do not see" proves clearly and unequivocally that "Ma'iyyatullah" (meaning 'companionship of God', literally: 'togetherness with God') is true/real with his essence (dhat), which is not like the essence of created beings, and his companionship is not only with knowledge, if so, then God wouldn't say "but you do not see".


title: God in Islam

text: Since God in Islam is transcendental and sovereign but also immanent and omnipresent, the Sufi view holds that in reality, only God exists. Thus everything in creation is reflecting an attribute of God's names. Yet these forms are not God themselves. The Sufi Saint Ibn Arabi stated: "There is nothing but God". This statement was mistakenly equalized to Pantheism by critics; however, Ibn Arabi always made a clear distinction between the creation and the creator. Since God is the "Absolute Reality",


title: God in Islam

text: the created worlds and their inhabitants are merely illusions. They just exist because of God's command "Kun", but everything that would be, was already known by God.


title: God in Islam

text: Both beliefs Hulul (incarnation) and Ittihad (unification) had been severely denounced by moderate Sunni Sufis, such as 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (d. 1143/1731), which he described as heresies.


title: God in Islam

text: The Mu'tazilis reject the anthropomorphic attributes of God because an eternal being "must be unique" and attributes would make God comparable. The descriptions of God in the Quran are considered to be allegories. Nevertheless, the Muʿtazilites thought God contains oneness (tawhid) and justice. Other characteristics like knowledge are not attributed to God; rather they describe his essence. Otherwise eternal attributes of God would give rise to a multiplicity entities existing eternal besides God.


title: God in Islam

text: The Shi'is agreed with the Mu'tazilis and deny that God will be seen with the physical eyes either in this world or in the next.


title: God in Islam

text: According to Isma'ilism, God is absolutely transcendent and unknowable; beyond matter, energy, space, time, change, imaginings, intellect, positive as well as negative qualities. All attributes of God named in rituals, scriptures or prayers refers not to qualities God possesses, but to qualities emanated from God, thus these are the attributes God gave as the source of all qualities, but God does not consist on one of these qualities. One philosophical definition of the world Allah is " The Being Who concentrates in Himself all the attributes of perfection " or " the Person Who is the Essential Being, and Who encompasses all the attributes of perfection". Since God is beyond all wordings, Isma'ilism also denies the concept of God as the first cause.


title: God in Islam

text: In Ismailism, assigning attributes to God as well as negating any attributes from God ("via negativa") both qualify as anthropomorphism and are rejected, as God cannot be understood by either assigning attributes to him or taking attributes away from him. The 10th-century Ismaili philosopher Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani suggested the method of double negation; for example: “God is not existent” followed by “God is not non-existent”. This glorifies God from any understanding or human comprehension.


title: God in Islam

text: The Twelver Shi'is believe that God has no shape, no physical hand, no physical leg, no physical body, no physical face. They believe God has no visible appearance. God does not change in time, nor does he occupy a physical place. Under no circumstances, the Shi'is argues, does God change. There is also no time frame regarding God. As support for their view, Shi'i scholars often point to the Qur'anic verse 6:103 which states: "Eyes comprehend Him not, but He comprehends all eyes. He is the All-Subtle (penetrating everything no matter how small), the All-Aware." Thus one fundamental difference between Sunnis and Shi'is that the former believes that followers will “see” their Lord on the Day of Resurrection, while the latter holds that God cannot be seen because he is beyond space and time.


title: God in Islam

text: The term "wahdat al-wujud" which literally means ""the unity of being"" or ""the oneness of existence"" is a controversial mystical notion mostly spoken of in connection with Ibn 'Arabi (d. 638/1240), even though he did not employ it in his writings. It seems to have been ascribed to him for the first time in the polemics of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328).


title: God in Islam

text: Although the phrase refers to a subjective state or direct, inward experience attained by Sufis, it has also been understood and discussed as a philosophical concept and, as such, interpreted in different ways. According to William Chittick, there are at least as many as seven possible ways of understanding it, depending on whether the person who uses it is pro or anti-Ibn 'Arabi. Some suggest that the idea of wahdat al-wujud can be understood in an ecological or environmental context. In this sense it would mean the feeling of wholeness and holyness of the universe as the creation of God, which means that all men are the creatures of one God — they are all equal.


title: God in Islam

text: Ibn 'Arabi, however, has always been a highly controversial figure for Muslims, as many have accused him of holding pantheist or monist views incompatible with Islam's pure monotheism. However, according to a number of scholars including al-Sha'rani (d. 573/1565) and 'Abd al-Ra'uf al-Munawi (d. 1031/1621), the books of Ibn 'Arabi have been altered and distorted by some anonymous apostates and heretics, and therefore many sayings and beliefs were attributed to him, which are not true to what he actually wrote.


title: God in Islam

text: Proponents of waḥdat al-wujūd such as 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, 'Abd al-Ra'uf b. 'Ali al-Fansuri, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Titus Burckhardt disagree that waḥdat al-wujūd is identified with pantheism. Nasr, for example, considers that the term pantheism and monism cannot be used to equate with waḥdat al-wujūd. Ideas similar to pantheism existed since the early stages of Islam. Jahm writes that God is "in heaven, on earth and in every place; there is no place where He i not (...)" and "He is in everything, neither contaguous nor separated.", a position attacked by Ahmad ibn Hanbal.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: The sexuality of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has long been a matter of historical and scholarly debate, as well as speculation and rumour. There is evidence that he had relationships with a number of women during his lifetime, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence of homosexual encounters. His name has been linked to a number of possible female lovers, two of whom committed suicide. A third died of complications eight years after a suicide attempt, and a fourth also attempted suicide.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Adolf Hitler created a public image of a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the governance of Nazi Germany. His relationship with Eva Braun, which lasted nearly 14 years, was hidden from the public and all but his inner circle. Braun biographer Heike Görtemaker notes that the couple enjoyed a normal sex life. Hitler and Braun married in late April 1945, less than 40 hours before committing suicide together.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Two wartime reports by the Allies attempted to analyse Hitler psychologically. A 1943 report by Walter C. Langer for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) describes Hitler as having repressed homosexual tendencies and opined that he was an impotent coprophile. Psychologist Henry Murray wrote a separate psychoanalytical report for the OSS in 1943 that drew similar conclusions. Otto Strasser, one of Hitler's opponents in the Nazi Party, also told his post-war interrogators a similar story. British historian Sir Ian Kershaw describes Strasser's statement as "anti-Hitler propaganda".


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: In research following Hitler's death, a variety of claims have been made about Hitler's sexual orientation: that he was gay, bisexual, or asexual. Conclusive evidence is lacking, but most historians believe he was heterosexual. There is at least one claim that Hitler had an illegitimate child (named Jean-Marie Loret) with one of his lovers. Mainstream historians, such as Kershaw, dismiss this as unlikely or impossible.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler's sex life has long been the subject of speculation and rumours, many of which were invented or "spiced up" by his political enemies. While the sexual preferences of many members of Hitler's inner circle are known, conclusive evidence of Hitler's sexuality is lacking. The evidence that exists about Hitler's private life is largely from people in his inner circle, such as his adjutants, his secretaries, Albert Speer, the Wagner family, and others. There is evidence that he had infatuations with several women, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence that he engaged in homosexual behaviour. British historian Sir Ian Kershaw describes him as being repelled by personal contact and sexual activity, including homosexuality and prostitution, especially as a young man in Vienna. He was afraid of contracting a sexually transmitted infection.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Kershaw notes that as a soldier during the First World War, Hitler did not take part in discussions of sex with his comrades. When teased about his celibacy during this period, Hitler responded by saying "I'd die of shame looking for sex with a French girl," and "Have you no German sense of honour left at all?" When asked by a comrade if he had ever loved a girl, Hitler replied "I've never had time for anything like that, and I'll never get round to it."


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler created a public image of a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission. He considered himself to be attractive to women, partly because of his position of power. Speer recalled him stating a preference for unintelligent women who would not challenge him about his work or prevent him from relaxing in his leisure time. Kershaw speculates that Hitler preferred younger women who were easy to dominate and mould. He notes that at least three of Hitler's close female associates (Eva Braun, Geli Raubal, and Maria Reiter) were far younger than himself: Braun was 23 years younger, Raubal was 19 years younger, and Reiter was 21 years his junior.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Ernst Hanfstaengl, one of the members of Hitler's inner circle in the early years in Munich, wrote that "I felt Hitler was a case of a man who was neither fish, flesh nor fowl, neither fully homosexual nor fully heterosexual ... I had formed the firm conviction that he was impotent, the repressed, masturbating type." Nevertheless, Hanfstaengl was convinced enough of Hitler's heterosexuality that he unsuccessfully tried to encourage a romantic relationship between Hitler and Martha Dodd, daughter of the American ambassador. According to Hanfstaengl, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl tried to begin a relationship with Hitler early on, but he turned her down. Magda Goebbels invited Hitler to parties to encourage him to meet women, but he showed no interest. When pro-Nazi foreign women like Unity Mitford visited, Hitler usually lectured them about politics.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler was deeply attached to his half-niece Geli Raubal, 19 years his junior. She began living at his residence after her mother became Hitler's housekeeper in 1925. Although the exact nature and extent of their relationship is unknown, Kershaw describes it as a latent "sexual dependence". It was rumoured among contemporaries that they were in a romantic relationship. Geli committed suicide with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment in September 1931. Her death was a source of deep, lasting pain for Hitler.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler's relationship with Braun, which lasted nearly 14 years, was hidden from the public and all but his inner circle. Within that circle (most of whom survived the war), he was open about Braun, and they lived together at Berchtesgaden as a couple. Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, stated in his memoirs that Hitler and Braun had two bedrooms and two bathrooms with interconnecting doors at the Berghof, and Hitler would end most evenings alone with her in his study before they retired to bed. She would wear a "dressing gown or house-coat" and drink wine; Hitler would have tea. Braun biographer Heike Görtemaker notes that the couple enjoyed a normal sex life. Braun's friends and relatives described her giggling over a 1938 photograph of Neville Chamberlain sitting on a sofa in Hitler's Munich flat with the remark: "If only he knew what goings-on that sofa has seen."


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler's letters provide evidence that he was fond of her, and worried when she participated in sports or was late returning for tea. His secretary Traudl Junge stated that during the war, Hitler telephoned Braun every day. He was concerned for her safety when she was staying in the Munich home he had bought her. Junge further asked Hitler once why he never married. Hitler replied, "...I wouldn't have been able to give enough time to my wife". Hitler told her that he didn't want children, as they would have had "...a very hard time, because they're expected to possess the same gifts as their famous parents and they can't be forgiven for being mediocre." In the end, Hitler and Braun married in the Berlin "Führerbunker" in late April 1945, less than 40 hours before committing suicide together.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Ernst Röhm was Hitler's closest friend—the only person who called him "Adolf". Hitler continued to support him during the Röhm scandal of 1931–1932 in which the "Münchener Post" disclosed Röhm's homosexuality, but historian Laurie Marhoefer argues that this is not evidence of Hitler's homosexuality. Historian Andrew Wackerfuss argues that Hitler had no personal discomfort with homosexuality, but that he found it convenient politically to instrumentalize homophobia to justify the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. Despite the fact that Hitler had previously tolerated the homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders, the charges of immorality were effective in gaining the support of the German population for the political murders. In August 1941, Hitler declared that "homosexuality is actually as infectious and as dangerous as the plague", and supported SS leader Heinrich Himmler's efforts to remove gay men from the military and the SS. Homosexuality was not one of Hitler's priorities, compared to the Jewish question. The Nazi Party held anti-homosexual views, declaring in 1928 that "anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy." Hitler's regime persecuted homosexuals, sending an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 to concentration camps; some 2,500 to 7,500 of these died.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Hermann Rauschning claimed to have seen in Hitler's First World War military record an item concerning a court martial that found Hitler guilty of pederastic practices with an officer. Rauschning also claimed that in Munich, Hitler was found guilty of a violation of Paragraph 175, which dealt with pederasty. No evidence of either of these two charges has been found.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: In 1943, the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) received "A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend" by Walter C. Langer, commissioned to help the Allies understand the dictator. The report, later expanded into book form as "The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report" (1972), describes Hitler as having repressed homosexual tendencies and states that he was an impotent coprophile. Psychologist Henry Murray wrote a separate psychoanalytical report for OSS also in 1943, entitled "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender". He also dealt with Hitler's alleged coprophilia, but overall diagnosed Hitler a schizophrenic. One of Hitler's opponents in the Nazi Party, Otto Strasser, told OSS interrogators that the Nazi dictator forced Geli Raubal to urinate and defecate on him. Kershaw contends that stories circulated by Strasser as to alleged "sexual deviant practices ought to be viewed as ... anti-Hitler propaganda."


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: In research following his death, a variety of claims have been made about Hitler's sexuality: that he was gay, bisexual, or asexual, or may have engaged in sexual activity with his half-niece, Geli Raubal.


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Jack Nusan Porter of the University of Massachusetts Lowell wrote in 1998: "Did Hitler despise homosexuals? Was he ashamed of his own homosexual identity? These are areas of psychohistory that are beyond known knowledge. My own feelings are that Hitler was asexual in the traditional sense and had bizarre sexual fetishes."


title: Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

text: Historian Lothar Machtan argues in "The Hidden Hitler" (2001) that Hitler was homosexual. The book speculates about Hitler's experiences in Vienna with young friends, his adult relationships with (among others) Röhm, Hanfstaengl, and Emil Maurice, and includes a study of the "Mend Protocol", a series of allegations made to the Munich Police in the early 1920s by Hans Mend, who served with Hitler during World War I. The American journalist Ron Rosenbaum is highly critical of Machtan's work, saying his "evidence falls short of being conclusive and often falls far short of being evidence at all." Most scholars dismiss Machtan's claims, and believe Hitler was heterosexual. In 2004, HBO produced a documentary film based on Machtan's theory, titled "".


title: Hospice

text: Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering. Hospice care provides an alternative to therapies focused on life-prolonging measures that may be arduous, likely to cause more symptoms, or are not aligned with a person's goals.


title: Hospice

text: Hospice care in the United States is largely defined by the practices of the Medicare system and other health insurance providers, which cover inpatient or at-home hospice care for patients with terminal diseases who are estimated to live six months or less. Hospice care under the Medicare Hospice Benefit requires documentation from two physicians estimating a person has less than six months to live if the disease follows its usual course. Hospice benefits include access to a multidisciplinary treatment team specialized in end-of-life care and can be accessed in the home, long-term care facility or the hospital.


title: Hospice

text: Outside the United States, the term tends to be primarily associated with the particular buildings or institutions that specialize in such care. Such institutions may similarly provide care mostly in an end-of-life setting, but they may also be available for patients with other palliative care needs. Hospice care includes assistance for patients' families to help them cope with what is happening and provide care and support to keep the patient at home.


title: Hospice

text: The goal of hospice care is to prioritize comfort, quality of life and individual wishes. How comfort is defined is up to each individual or, if the patient is incapacitated, the patient's family. This can include addressing physical, emotional, spiritual and/or social needs. In hospice care, patient-directed goals are integral and interwoven throughout the care. Hospices typically do not perform treatments that are meant to diagnose or cure an illness but also do not include treatments that hasten death. Instead, hospices focus on palliative care to relieve pain and symptoms.


title: Hospice

text: The word "hospice" derives from Latin "hospitum", meaning hospitality or place of rest and protection for the ill and weary. Historians believe the first hospices originated in Malta around 1065, dedicated to caring for the ill and dying en route to and from the Holy Land. The rise of the European Crusading movement in the 1090s placed the incurably ill into places dedicated to treatment. In the early 14th century, the order of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem opened the first hospice in Rhodes. Hospices flourished in the Middle Ages, but languished as religious orders became dispersed. They were revived in the 17th century in France by the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. France continued to see development in the hospice field; the hospice of L'Association des Dames du Calvaire, founded by Jeanne Garnier, opened in 1843. Six other hospices followed before 1900.


title: Hospice

text: Meanwhile, hospices developed in other areas. In the United Kingdom attention was drawn to the needs of the terminally ill in the middle of the 19th century, with "Lancet" and the "British Medical Journal" publishing articles pointing to the need of the impoverished terminally ill for good care and sanitary conditions. Steps were taken to remedy inadequate facilities with the opening of the Friedenheim in London, which by 1892 offered 35 beds to patients dying of tuberculosis. Four more hospices were established in London by 1905, including the Hostel of God on Clapham Common founded in 1891 by Clara Maria Hole, Mother Superior of Sisterhood of St James' (Anglican) and taken over in 1896 by the Society of Saint Margaret of East Grinstead. Australia, too, saw active hospice development, with notable hospices including the Home for Incurables in Adelaide (1879), the Home of Peace (1902) and the Anglican House of Peace for the Dying in Sydney (1907). In 1899 New York City, the Servants for Relief of Incurable Cancer opened St. Rose's Hospice, which soon expanded to six locations in other cities.


title: Hospice

text: The more influential early developers of hospice included the Irish Religious Sisters of Charity, who opened Our Lady's Hospice in Harold's Cross, Dublin, Ireland in 1879. It served many as 20,000 people—primarily with tuberculosis and cancer—dying there between 1845 and 1945. The Sisters of Charity expanded internationally, opening the Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying in Sydney in 1890, with hospices in Melbourne and New South Wales following in the 1930s. In 1905, they opened St Joseph's Hospice in London.


title: Hospice

text: In Western society, the concept of hospice began evolving in Europe in the 11th century. In Roman Catholic tradition, hospices were places of hospitality for the sick, wounded, or dying, as well as for travelers and pilgrims. The modern hospice concept includes palliative care for the incurably ill in institutions as hospitals and nursing homes, along with at-home care. The first modern hospice care was created by Dame Cicely Saunders in 1967. Saunders was a British registered nurse whose chronic health problems forced her to pursue a career in medical social work. The relationship she developed with a dying Polish refugee helped solidify her ideas that terminally ill patients needed compassionate care to help address their fears and concerns as well as palliative comfort for physical symptoms. After the refugee's death, Saunders began volunteering at St Luke's Home for the Dying Poor, where a physician told her that she could best influence the treatment of the terminally ill as a physician. Saunders entered medical school while continuing her volunteer work at St. Joseph's. When she completed her degree in 1957, she took a position there.


title: Hospice

text: Saunders emphasized focusing on the patient rather than the disease and introduced the notion of 'total pain', which included psychological and spiritual as well as physical discomfort. She experimented with opioids for controlling physical pain. She also considered the needs of the patient's family. She developed many foundational principles of modern hospice care at St Joseph's. Over the years these centers became more common and from the 1970s this is where they placed people to live out their final days.


title: Hospice

text: She disseminated her philosophy internationally in a series of tours of the United States that began in 1963. In 1967, Saunders opened St Christopher's Hospice. Florence Wald, the dean of Yale School of Nursing, who had heard Saunders speak in America, spent a month working with Saunders there in 1969 before bringing the principles of modern hospice care back to the United States, establishing Hospice, Inc. in 1971. Another early hospice program in the United States, Alive Hospice, was founded in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 14, 1975. By 1977 the National Hospice Organization had been formed, and by 1979, a president, Ann G. Blues, had been elected and principles of hospice care had been addressed. At about the same time that Saunders was disseminating her theories and developing her hospice, in 1965, Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross began to consider social responses to terminal illness, which she found inadequate at the Chicago hospital where her American physician husband was employed. Her 1969 best-seller, "On Death and Dying", influenced the medical profession's response to the terminally ill. Saunders and other thanatology pioneers helped to focus attention on the types of care available to them.


title: Hospice

text: In 1984, Dr. Josefina Magno, who had been instrumental in forming the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and sat as first executive director of the US National Hospice Organization, founded the International Hospice Institute, which in 1996 became the International Hospice Institute and College and later the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC). The IAHPC follows the philosophy that each country should develop a palliative care model based on its own resources and conditions. IAHPC founding member Dr. Derek Doyle told the "British Medical Journal" in 2003 that Magno had seen "more than 8000 hospice and palliative services established in more than 100 countries." Standards for Palliative and Hospice Care have been developed in countries including Australia, Canada, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.


title: Hospice

text: In 2006, the United States-based National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) and the United Kingdom's Help the Hospices jointly commissioned an independent, international study of worldwide palliative care practices. Their survey found that 15% of the world's countries offered widespread palliative care services with integration into major health care institutions, while an additional 35% offered some form of palliative care services, in some cases localized or limited. As of 2009, an estimated 10,000 programs internationally provided palliative care, although the term hospice is not always employed to describe such services.


title: Hospice

text: In hospice care, the main guardians are the family care giver(s) and a hospice nurse/team who make periodic visits. Hospice can be administered in a nursing home, hospice building, or sometimes a hospital; however, it is most commonly practiced in the home. Hospice care targets the terminally ill who are expected to die within six months.


title: Hospice

text: Hospice was the subject of the Netflix 2018 Academy Award-nominated short documentary "End Game", about terminally ill patients in a San Francisco hospital and Zen Hospice Project, featuring the work of palliative care physician BJ Miller and other palliative care clinicians. The film was executive produced by hospice and palliative care activist Shoshana R. Ungerleider.


title: Hospice

text: Hospice faced resistance from professional or cultural taboos against open communication about death among physicians or the wider population, discomfort with unfamiliar medical techniques and professional callousness towards the terminally ill. Nevertheless, the movement has spread throughout the world.


title: Hospice

text: A hospice opened in 1980 in Harare (Salisbury), Zimbabwe, the first in Sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of skepticism in the medical community, the hospice movement spread, and in 1987 the Hospice Palliative Care Association of South Africa formed. In 1990, Nairobi Hospice opened in Nairobi, Kenya. As of 2006, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda were among 35 countries offering widespread, well-integrated palliative care. Programs adopted the United Kingdom model, but emphasise home-based assistance.


title: Hospice

text: Following the foundation of hospice in Kenya in the early 1990s, palliative care spread throughout the country. Representatives of Nairobi Hospice sit on the committee to develop a Health Sector Strategic Plan for the Ministry of Health and work with the Ministry of Health to help develop palliative care guidelines for cervical cancer. The Government of Kenya supported hospice by donating land to Nairobi Hospice and providing funding to several of its nurses.


title: Hospice

text: In South Africa, hospice services are widespread, focusing on diverse communities (including orphans and homeless) and offered in diverse settings (including in-patient, day care and home care). Over half of hospice patients in South Africa in the 2003–2004 year were diagnosed with AIDS, with the majority of the remaining diagnosed with cancer. Palliative care is supported by the Hospice Palliative Care Association of South Africa and by national programmes partly funded by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.


title: Hospice

text: Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU), founded by Anne Merriman, began offering services in 1993 in a two-bedroom house loaned for the purpose by Nsambya Hospital. HAU has since expanded to a base of operations at Makindye, Kampala, with hospice services offered at roadside clinics by Mobile Hospice Mbarara since January 1998. That same year the Little Hospice Hoima opened in June. Hospice care in Uganda is supported by community volunteers and professionals, as Makerere University offers a distance diploma in palliative care. The government of Uganda published a strategic plan for palliative care that permits nurses and clinical officers from HAU to prescribe morphine.


title: Hospice

text: Canadian physician Balfour Mount, who first coined the term "palliative care", was a pioneer in medical research and in the Canadian hospice movement, which focused primarily on palliative care in a hospital setting. Having read Kübler-Ross, Mount studied the experiences of the terminally ill at Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal; the "abysmal inadequacy", as he termed it, that he found prompted him to spend a week with Cicely Saunders at St. Christopher's. Mount decided to adapt Saunders' model for Canada. Given differences in medical funding, he determined that a hospital-based approach would be more affordable, creating a specialized ward at Royal Victoria in January, 1975. Canada's official languages include English and French, leading Mount to propose the term "palliative care ward", as the word "hospice" was already used in France to refer to nursing homes. Hundreds of palliative care programs then followed throughout Canada through the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Hospice

text: However, as of 2004, according to the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association (CHPCA), hospice palliative care was only available to 5-15% of Canadians, with government funding declining. At that time, Canadians were increasingly expressing a desire to die at home, but only two of Canada's ten provinces were provided medication cost coverage for home care. Only four of ten identified palliative care as a core health service. At that time, palliative care was not widely taught at nursing schools or universally certified at medical colleges; only 175 specialized palliative care physicians served all of Canada.


title: Hospice

text: Hospice in the United States has grown from a volunteer-led movement to improve care for people dying alone, isolated, or in hospitals, to a significant part of the health care system. In 2010, an estimated 1.581 million patients received hospice services. Hospice is the only Medicare benefit that includes pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, twenty-four-hour/seven-day-a-week access to care, and support for loved ones following a death. Hospice care is covered by Medicaid and most private insurance plans. Most hospice care is delivered at home. Hospice care is available to people in home-like hospice residences, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, veterans' facilities, hospitals and prisons.


title: Hospice

text: Florence Wald, Dean of the Yale School of Nursing, founded one of the first hospices in the United States in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1974. The first hospital-based palliative care consultation service developed in the US was the Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1985 at Detroit Receiving Hospital. The first US-based palliative medicine and hospice service program was started in 1987 by Declan Walsh at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The program evolved into The Harry R. Horvitz Center for Palliative Medicine, which was designated as a World Health Organization international demonstration project and accredited by the European Society of Medical Oncology as an Integrated Center of Oncology and Palliative Care. Other programs followed; some notable ones are: the Palliative Care Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin (1993); Pain and Palliative Care Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (1996); and The Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (1997).


title: Hospice

text: In 1982, Congress initiated the creation of the Medicare Hospice Benefit, which became permanent in 1986. In 1993, President Clinton installed hospice as a guaranteed benefit and an accepted component of health care provisions. , 1.49 million Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in hospice care for one day or more, which is a 4.5% increase from the previous year. Since 2014, Asian- and Hispanic-identifying beneficiaries of hospice care increased by 32% and 21% respectively.


title: Hospice

text: The first hospice to open in the United Kingdom was the Trinity Hospice in Clapham south London in 1891, on the initiative of the Hoare banking family. More than half a century later, a hospice movement developed after Dame Cicely Saunders opened St Christopher's Hospice in 1967, widely considered the first modern hospice. According to the UK's Help the Hospices, in 2011 UK hospice services consisted of 220 inpatient units for adults with 3,175 beds, 42 inpatient units for children with 334 beds, 288 home care services, 127 hospice at-home services, 272 day care services, and 343 hospital support services. These services together helped over 250,000 patients in 2003 and 2004. Funding varies from 100% funding by the National Health Service to almost 100% funding by charities, but the service is always free to patients. The UK's palliative care has been ranked as the best in the world "due to comprehensive national policies, the extensive integration of palliative care into the National Health Service, a strong hospice movement, and deep community engagement on the issue."


title: Hospice

text: As of 2006, about 4% of all deaths in England and Wales occurred in a hospice setting (about 20,000 patients); a further number of patients spent time in a hospice, or were helped by hospice-based support services, but died elsewhere.


title: Hospice

text: Hospices also provide volunteering opportunities for over 100,000 people in the UK, whose economic value to the hospice movement has been estimated at over £112 million.


title: Hospice

text: According to the "Global Atlas of Palliative Care at the End of Life", 78% of adults and 98% of children in need of palliative care at the end of life live in low and middle-income countries. Nevertheless, hospice and palliative care provision in Egypt is limited and sparsely available relative to the size of the population. Some of the obstacles to the development of these services have included the lack of public awareness, restricted availability of opioids, and the absence of a national hospice and palliative care development plan. Key efforts made in the past 10 years have been initiated by individuals allowing for the emergence of the first non-governmental organisation providing primarily home-based hospice services in 2010, the opening of one palliative medicine unit at Cairo University in 2008 and an inpatient palliative care unit in Alexandria.


title: Hospice

text: Models of both home-based care and stand-alone hospices exist globally, but with the cultural and societal preferences of patients and their families to die at home in Egypt there is an inclination to focus on the development of home-based hospice and palliative care services.


title: Hospice

text: The first hospice unit in Israel opened in 1983. More than two decades later, a 2016 study found that 46% of the general Israeli public had never heard of it, despite the 70% of physicians who reported that they had the skill to treat patients according to palliative principles.


title: Hospice

text: Hospice Care in Australia predated the opening of St Christophers in London by 79 years. The Irish Sisters of Charity opened hospices in Sydney (1889) and in Melbourne (1938). The first hospice in New Zealand opened in 1979. Hospice care entered Poland in the mid-1970s. Japan opened its first hospice in 1981, officially hosting 160 by July 2006. India's first hospice, Shanti Avedna Ashram, opened in Bombay in 1986. The first hospice in the Nordics opened in Tampere, Finland in 1988. The first modern free-standing hospice in China opened in Shanghai in 1988. The first hospice unit in Taiwan, where the term for hospice translates as "peaceful care", opened in 1990. The first free-standing hospice in Hong Kong, where the term for hospice translates as "well-ending service", opened in 1992.


title: Hospice

text: In 2006, the first World Hospice and Palliative Care Day was organised by the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance, a network of hospice and palliative care national and regional organisations that support the development of hospice and palliative care worldwide. The event takes place on the second Saturday of October every year.


title: Hospice

text: Nurses that work in hospice in the home healthcare setting aim to relieve pain and holistically support their patient and the patient's family. Patients can receive hospice care when they have less than six months to live or would like to shift the focus of care from curative to comfort care. The goal of hospice care is to meet the needs of both the patient and family, knowing that a home death is not always the best outcome. Medicare covers all costs of hospice treatment.


title: Hospice

text: The hospice home health nurse must be skilled in both physical care and psychosocial care. Most nurses will work with a team that includes a physician, social worker and possibly a spiritual care counselor. Some of the nurse's duties will include reassuring family members, and ensuring adequate pain control. The nurse will need to explain to the patient and family that a pain-free death is possible, and scheduled opioid pain medications are appropriate in this case. The nurse will need to work closely with the medical provider to ensure that dosing is appropriate, and in the case of tolerance, the dose is raised. The nurse should be aware of cultural differences and needs and should aim to meet them. The nurse will also support the family after death and connect the family to bereavement services.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonics (from "kryos" meaning 'cold') is the low-temperature freezing (usually at ) and storage of human remains, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism within the mainstream scientific community. It is generally viewed as a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonics procedures can begin only after the "patients" are clinically and legally dead. Cryonics procedures may begin within minutes of death, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation. It is, however, not possible for a corpse to be reanimated after undergoing vitrification, as this causes damage to the brain including its neural circuits. The first corpse to be frozen was that of James Bedford in 1967. As of 2014, about 250 dead bodies had been cryopreserved in the United States, and 1,500 people had made arrangements for cryopreservation of their corpses.


title: Cryonics

text: Critics argue that economic reality means it is highly improbable that any cryonics corporation could continue in business long enough to take advantage of the claimed long-term benefits offered. Early attempts of cryonic preservations were performed in the 1960s and early 1970s which ended in failure with all but one of the companies going out of business, and their stored corpses thawed and disposed of.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonicists argue that as long as brain structure remains intact, there is no fundamental barrier, given our current understanding of physical law, to recovering its information content. Cryonics proponents go further than the mainstream consensus in saying that the brain does not have to be continuously active to survive or retain memory. Cryonics controversially states that a human survives even within an inactive brain that has been badly damaged, provided that original encoding of memory and personality can, in theory, be adequately inferred and reconstituted from what structure remains.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonics uses temperatures below −130 °C, called cryopreservation, in an attempt to preserve enough brain information to permit the future revival of the cryopreserved person. Cryopreservation may be accomplished by freezing, freezing with cryoprotectant to reduce ice damage, or by vitrification to avoid ice damage. Even using the best methods, cryopreservation of whole bodies or brains is very damaging and irreversible with current technology.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonics advocates hold that in the future the use of some kind of presently-nonexistent nanotechnology may be able to help bring the dead back to life and treat the diseases which killed them. Mind uploading has also been proposed.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonics can be expensive. , the cost of preparing and storing corpses using cryonics ranged from US$28,000 to $200,000.


title: Cryonics

text: When used at high concentrations, cryoprotectants can stop ice formation completely. Cooling and solidification without crystal formation is called vitrification. The first cryoprotectant solutions able to vitrify at very slow cooling rates while still being compatible with whole organ survival were developed in the late 1990s by cryobiologists Gregory Fahy and Brian Wowk for the purpose of banking transplantable organs. This has allowed animal brains to be vitrified, warmed back up, and examined for ice damage using light and electron microscopy. No ice crystal damage was found; cellular damage was due to dehydration and toxicity of the cryoprotectant solutions.


title: Cryonics

text: Costs can include payment for medical personnel to be on call for death, vitrification, transportation in dry ice to a preservation facility, and payment into a trust fund intended to cover indefinite storage in liquid nitrogen and future revival costs. As of 2011, U.S. cryopreservation costs can range from $28,000 to $200,000, and are often financed via life insurance. KrioRus, which stores bodies communally in large dewars, charges $12,000 to $36,000 for the procedure. Some customers opt to have only their brain cryopreserved ("neuropreservation"), rather than their whole body.


title: Cryonics

text: As of 2014, about 250 corpses have been cryogenically preserved in the U.S., and around 1,500 people have signed up to have their remains preserved. As of 2016, four facilities exist in the world to retain cryopreserved bodies: three in the U.S. and one in Russia.


title: Cryonics

text: Considering the lifecycle of corporations, it is extremely unlikely that any cryonics company could continue to exist for sufficient time to take advantage even of the supposed benefits offered: historically, even the most robust corporations have only a one-in-a-thousand chance of surviving even one hundred years. Many cryonics companies have failed; , all but one of the pre-1973 batch had gone out of business, and their stored corpses have been defrosted and disposed of.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryopreservation has long been used by medical laboratories to maintain animal cells, human embryos, and even some organized tissues, for periods as long as three decades. Recovering large animals and organs from a frozen state is however not considered possible at the current level of scientific knowledge Large vitrified organs tend to develop fractures during cooling, a problem worsened by the large tissue masses and very low temperatures of cryonics. Without cryoprotectants, cell shrinkage and high salt concentrations during freezing usually prevent frozen cells from functioning again after thawing. Ice crystals can also disrupt connections between cells that are necessary for organs to function.


title: Cryonics

text: In 2016, Robert L. McIntyre and Gregory Fahy at the cryobiology research company 21st Century Medicine, Inc. won the Small Animal Brain Preservation Prize of the Brain Preservation Foundation by demonstrating to the satisfaction of neuroscientist judges that a particular implementation of fixation and vitrification called "aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation" could preserve a rabbit brain in "near perfect" condition at −135 °C, with the cell membranes, synapses, and intracellular structures intact in electron micrographs. Brain Preservation Foundation President, Ken Hayworth, said, "This result directly answers a main skeptical and scientific criticism against cryonics—that it does not provably preserve the delicate synaptic circuitry of the brain." However, the price paid for perfect preservation, as seen by microscopy, was tying up all protein molecules with chemical crosslinks, eliminating biological viability.


title: Cryonics

text: Actual cryonics organizations use vitrification without a chemical fixation step, sacrificing some structural preservation quality for less damage at the molecular level. Some scientists, like Joao Pedro Magalhaes, have questioned whether using a deadly chemical for fixation eliminates the possibility of biological revival, making chemical fixation unsuitable for cryonics.


title: Cryonics

text: Outside of cryonics firms and cryonics-linked interest groups, many scientists show strong skepticism toward cryonics methods. Cryobiologist Dayong Gao states that "we simply don't know if (subjects have) been damaged to the point where they've 'died' during vitrification because the subjects are now inside liquid nitrogen canisters." Biochemist Ken Storey argues (based on experience with organ transplants), that "even if you only wanted to preserve the brain, it has dozens of different areas, which would need to be cryopreserved using different protocols."


title: Cryonics

text: Revival would require repairing damage from lack of oxygen, cryoprotectant toxicity, thermal stress (fracturing) and freezing in tissues that do not successfully vitrify, finally followed by reversing the cause of death. In many cases, extensive tissue regeneration would be necessary. This revival technology remains speculative and does not currently exist.


title: Cryonics

text: Historically, a person had little control regarding how their body was treated after death as religion held jurisdiction over the ultimate fate of their body. However, secular courts began to exercise jurisdiction over the body and use discretion in carrying out of the wishes of the deceased person. Most countries legally treat preserved individuals as deceased persons because of laws that forbid vitrifying someone who is medically alive. In France, cryonics is not considered a legal mode of body disposal; only burial, cremation, and formal donation to science are allowed. However, bodies may legally be shipped to other countries for cryonic freezing. As of 2015, the Canadian province of British Columbia prohibits the sale of arrangements for body preservation based on cryonics. In Russia, cryonics falls outside both the medical industry and the funeral services industry, making it easier in Russia than in the U.S. to get hospitals and morgues to release cryonics candidates.


title: Cryonics

text: In London in 2016, the English High Court ruled in favor of a mother's right to seek cryopreservation of her terminally ill 14-year-old daughter, as the girl wanted, contrary to the father's wishes. The decision was made on the basis that the case represented a conventional dispute over the disposal of the girl's body, although the judge urged ministers to seek "proper regulation" for the future of cryonic preservation following concerns raised by the hospital about the competence and professionalism of the team that conducted the preservation procedures. In "Alcor Life Extension Foundation v. Richardson", the Iowa Court of Appeals ordered for the disinterment of Richardson, who was buried against his wishes for cryopreservation.


title: Cryonics

text: A detailed legal examination by Jochen Taupitz concludes that cryonic storage is legal in Germany for an indefinite period of time.


title: Cryonics

text: In 2009, writing in "Bioethics", David Shaw examines the ethical status of cryonics. The arguments against it include changing the concept of death, the expense of preservation and revival, lack of scientific advancement to permit revival, temptation to use premature euthanasia, and failure due to catastrophe. Arguments in favor of cryonics include the potential benefit to society, the prospect of immortality, and the benefits associated with avoiding death. Shaw explores the expense and the potential payoff, and applies an adapted version of Pascal's Wager to the question.


title: Cryonics

text: In 2016, Charles Tandy wrote in favor of cryonics, arguing that honoring someone's last wishes is seen as a benevolent duty in American and many other cultures.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryopreservation was applied to human cells beginning in 1954 with frozen sperm, which was thawed and used to inseminate three women. The freezing of humans was first scientifically proposed by Michigan professor Robert Ettinger when he wrote "The Prospect of Immortality" (1962). In April 1966, the first human body was frozen—though it had been embalmed for two months—by being placed in liquid nitrogen and stored at just above freezing. The middle-aged woman from Los Angeles, whose name is unknown, was soon thawed out and buried by relatives.


title: Cryonics

text: The first body to be cryopreserved and then frozen with the hope of future revival was that of James Bedford, claimed by Alcor's Mike Darwin to have occurred within around two hours of his death from cardiorespiratory arrest (secondary to metastasized kidney cancer) on January 12, 1967. Bedford's corpse is the only one frozen before 1974 still preserved today. In 1976, Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute; his corpse was cryopreserved in 2011. Robert Nelson, "a former TV repairman with no scientific background" who led the Cryonics Society of California, was sued in 1981 for allowing nine bodies to thaw and decompose in the 1970s; in his defense, he claimed that the Cryonics Society had run out of money. This led to the lowered reputation of cryonics in the U.S.


title: Cryonics

text: In 2018, a Y-Combinator startup called Nectome was recognized for developing a method of preserving brains with chemicals rather than by freezing. The method is fatal, performed as euthanasia under general anesthesia, but the hope is that future technology would allow the brain to be physically scanned into a computer simulation, neuron by neuron.


title: Cryonics

text: According to "The New York Times", cryonicists are predominantly non-religious white males, outnumbering women by about three to one. According to "The Guardian", as of 2008, while most cryonicists used to be young, male, and "geeky", recent demographics have shifted slightly towards whole families.


title: Cryonics

text: In 2015, Du Hong, a 61-year-old female writer of children's literature, became the first known Chinese national to have her head cryopreserved.


title: Cryonics

text: Cryonics is generally regarded as a fringe pseudoscience. The Society for Cryobiology rejected members who practiced cryonics, and issued a public statement saying that cryonics is "not science", and that it is a "personal choice" how people want to have their dead bodies disposed of.


title: Cryonics

text: Russian company KrioRus is the first non-US vendor of cryonics services. Yevgeny Alexandrov, chair of the Russian Academy of Sciences commission against pseudoscience, said there was "no scientific basis" for cryonics, and that the company's offering was based on "unfounded speculation".


title: Cryonics

text: Scientists have expressed skepticism about cryonics in media sources, and the Norwegian philosopher Ole Martin Moen has written that the topic receives a "minuscule" amount of attention from academia.


title: Cryonics

text: While some neuroscientists contend that all the subtleties of a human mind are contained in its anatomical structure, few neuroscientists will comment directly upon the topic of cryonics due to its speculative nature. Individuals who intend to be frozen are often "looked at as a bunch of kooks". Cryobiologist Kenneth B. Storey said in 2004 that cryonics is impossible and will never be possible, as cryonics proponents are proposing to "over-turn the laws of physics, chemistry, and molecular science". Neurobiologist Michael Hendricks has said that "Reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the 'cryonics' industry".


title: Cryonics

text: William T. Jarvis has written that "Cryonics might be a suitable subject for scientific research, but marketing an unproven method to the public is quackery".


title: Cryonics

text: According to cryonicist Aschwin de Wolf and others, cryonics can often produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists. James Hughes, the executive director of the pro-life-extension Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, chooses not to personally sign up for cryonics, calling it a worthy experiment but stating laconically that "I value my relationship with my wife."


title: Cryonics

text: Cryobiologist Dayong Gao states that "People can always have hope that things will change in the future, but there is no scientific foundation supporting cryonics at this time." While it is universally agreed that "personal identity" is uninterrupted when brain activity temporarily ceases during incidents of accidental drowning (where people have been restored to normal functioning after being completely submerged in cold water for up to 66 minutes), one argument against cryonics is that a centuries-long absence from life might interrupt the conception of personal identity, such that the revived person would "not be themself".


title: Cryonics

text: Maastricht University bioethicist David Shaw raises the argument that there would be no point in being revived in the far future if one's friends and families are dead, leaving them all alone; he notes, however, that family and friends can also be frozen, that there is "nothing to prevent the thawed-out freezee from making new friends", and that a lonely existence may be preferable to no existence at all for the revived.


title: Cryonics

text: Suspended animation is a popular subject in science fiction and fantasy settings. It is often the means by which a character is transported into the future.


title: Cryonics

text: A survey in Germany found that about half of the respondents were familiar with cryonics, and about half of those familiar with cryonics had learned of the subject from films or television.


title: Cryonics

text: The town of Nederland, Colorado, hosts an annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival to commemorate a substandard attempt at cryopreservation.


title: Cryonics

text: Corpses subjected to the cryonics process include those of baseball players Ted Williams and son John Henry Williams (in 2002 and 2004, respectively), engineer and doctor L. Stephen Coles (in 2014), economist and entrepreneur Phil Salin, and software engineer Hal Finney (in 2014).


title: Cryonics

text: People known to have arranged for cryonics upon death include PayPal founders Luke Nosek and Peter Thiel, Oxford transhumanists Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg, and transhumanist philosopher David Pearce. Larry King previously arranged for cryonics, but according to Inside Edition, later changed his mind.


title: Cryonics

text: Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wanted to have his head and penis frozen after death so that he could "seed the human race with his DNA."


title: Cryonics

text: The corpses of some are mistakenly believed to have undergone cryonics – for instance, the urban legend suggesting Walt Disney's corpse was cryopreserved is false; it was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote enthusiastically of the concept in "The Door into Summer" (serialized in 1956), was cremated and had his ashes distributed over the Pacific Ocean. Timothy Leary was a long-time cryonics advocate and signed up with a major cryonics provider, but he changed his mind shortly before his death and was not cryopreserved.


title: Seraph of the End

text: An anime adaptation by Wit Studio was broadcast in two cours. The first cour aired from April to June 2015. The second cour aired from October to December 2015. A series of light novels focused on Yu's superior, Guren Ichinose, has been written by Kagami and illustrated by Yamamoto. In North America, Viz Media licensed the series for an English language release, and it ran in "Weekly Shonen Jump". The anime series was licensed by Funimation. It was later broadcast in the United Kingdom on Viceland in February 2018.


title: Seraph of the End

text: In 2012, the world allegedly comes to an end at the hands of a "man-made" virus, ravaging the global populace and leaving only children under the age of thirteen untouched. At the same time, the vampires emerge from the recesses of the earth, likely followed by age-old horrors of the dark thought only to be myth. They sweep the earth and claim it in a single violent stroke, subjugating the remnants of humanity and leading them beneath the surface to safety. This "protection" comes at the price of "donating" blood to their captors, not knowing that they are vampires. At the age of twelve, Yūichirō and his friend and fellow orphan Mikaela plotted to escape along with the children in Hyakuya Orphanage. However, this resulted in their deaths and Mikaela sacrifices himself in order for Yūichirō to escape and be saved by members of the Moon Demon Company, an extermination unit of the Japanese Imperial Demon Army. Four years later, Yūichirō dedicates his life to destroy vampires and seek revenge against them for killing his "family." At the same time, it is revealed that Mikaela survived and plans to find Yūichirō.


title: Seraph of the End

text: "Seraph of the End" is written by Takaya Kagami and illustrated by Yamato Yamamoto. It has been serialized by Shueisha's monthly magazine "Jump Square" since September 4, 2012. A voice comic (vomic) was also produced and published by Shueisha, and its first episode was featured by "Sakiyomi Jum-Bang!" on February 1, 2013. Shueisha has compiled its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was released on January 4, 2013. As of October 4, 2022, twenty-eight volumes have been published. The manga is licensed in North America by Viz Media, who added it to its "Weekly Shonen Jump" digital magazine lineup.


title: Seraph of the End

text: A spin-off gag manga to commemorate the anime adaptation, titled , was serialized in the 17th and 18th issues of "Jump SQ.19" from December 19, 2014, to February 19, 2015, and later serialized in "Jump Square" from April 4 to December 4, 2015. It also has been published on the "Seraph of the End" official website.


title: Seraph of the End

text: A manga adapting the Guren Ichinose light novel series was serialized in Kodansha's "Monthly Shōnen Magazine" from June 6, 2017 to February 4, 2022. It will end in its twelfth volume, which will be released on March 4, 2022. At Anime Expo 2022, Kodansha USA announced that they licensed the series for English publication.


title: Seraph of the End

text: is a prequel focusing on Guren Ichinose as the main protagonist, detailing the series of events that occurred eight years before the start of the manga. Written by Takaya Kagami and illustrated by Yamato Yamamoto, it consists of seven volumes and was published by Kodansha from January 2013 to December 2016. On February 15, 2015, Vertical announced that it has licensed the light novels for a North American release and will be releasing it in an omnibus with two volumes per omnibus in January 2016. The novels have also been translated into other languages, such as German and French by Kazé. A drama CD was released on October 30, 2015, bundled with volume 6 of the light novel and is written by Takaya Kagami.


title: Seraph of the End

text: A new light novel series about Mikaela's story and the origin of vampires titled began publication by Shueisha on December 4, 2015. The story is written by Takaya Kagami and illustrated by Yamato Yamamoto.


title: Seraph of the End

text: On October 20, 2017, it was announced on Kodansha's light novel blog that a second spin-off series about Guren, titled would be released in December. It is written by Takaya Kagami and illustrated by Yo Asami. On March 11, 2019, Vertical announced that it has licensed the novels for a northern American release, saluted for December 2019.


title: Seraph of the End

text: An anime adaptation was announced on August 28, 2014, and aired on April 4, 2015. The series has 24 episodes. It is produced by Wit Studio, directed by Daisuke Tokudo, and written by Hiroshi Seko. Additionally, the original manga's writer, Takaya Kagami, personally drafted the original story for episodes with material not yet serialized in the manga and supervised the scripts until the anime's final episode. On December 12, 2014, it was announced the series would be "split" into two parts (quarters of the year). The first half (12 episodes) aired in 2015 from April to June and the second half (12 episodes) from October to December. The series premiered on Tokyo MX, MBS, TV Aichi, and BS11 at their respective time slots. NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan released the first 12 episodes on Blu-ray and DVD formats in Japan starting on June 24, 2015, across four volumes. A six-minute omake anime special adapted from the omake featured in the original manga, was included in each Blu-ray/DVD volume titled .


title: Seraph of the End

text: On March 31, 2015, it was announced that Funimation has licensed the series for streaming and its home video release in North America. Hulu also streamed the series. On May 13, Funimation announced that the English broadcast dub will stream every Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. EDT on its "Dubble Talk" streaming block. In the United Kingdom, the English dub was broadcast on Viceland, beginning February 15, 2018.


title: Seraph of the End

text: An OAD bundled with volume 11 of the original manga titled was released on May 2, 2016. It was first screened at the Jump Special Anime Festa 2015 event in November 2015.


title: Seraph of the End

text: Hiroyuki Sawano produced and co-composed the music, as well as the opening and ending themes, "X.U." and "scaPEGoat", respectively, with Takafumi Wada, Asami Tachibana, and Megumi Shiraishi. As part of Sawano's vocal song project "SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]", for the first 12 episodes, the opening song is performed by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:Gemie, while the ending song is performed by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:Yosh. Both themes were released in Japan on a CD on May 20, 2015.


title: Seraph of the End

text: A PlayStation Vita strategy game, titled , was released by Bandai Namco Entertainment and Activision on December 17, 2015.


title: Seraph of the End

text: Volume 1 reached the 24th place on the Japanese weekly manga chart, and, as of 13 January 2013, has sold 62,434 copies. It also reached the 3rd place on the "New York Times" manga bestseller chart. Volume 2 reached the 15th place on the weekly manga chart, and, as of 12 May 2013, has sold 91,095 copies. Volume 3 reached the 9th place and, as of September 15, 2013, has sold 121,235 copies. Volume 4 also reached the 9th place on the chart, and, as of January 19, 2014, has sold 160,444 copies. Volume 5 also reached the 9th place, and has sold, as of May 11, 2014, 155,139 copies. In 2015, the manga sold 2.8 million copies. As of May 2017, the manga had 7 million copies in print, and as of April 4, 2018, the manga had 8.5 million copies in print. In March 2019, the manga had 9 million copies in print. On August 15, 2019, the manga had 10 million copies in print. As of June 4, 2021, the manga has 12 million copies in print. As of October 2021, the manga has 13 million copies in print.


title: Seraph of the End

text: The "Guren Ichinose: Catastrophe at Sixteen" light novels reached 21st place as one of the Top-Selling light novels in Japan, with 128,690 copies sold in May 2015, and it additionally reached 29th place in 2016, with 100,077 more copies sold. "The Story of Vampire Mikaela" novels also reached 21st place, having sold 127,373 copies in May 2016. Its manga adaptation second volume reached 25th place on the Japanese's weekly manga chart, with 30,147 copies in print.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: James Byrd Jr. (May 2, 1949 – June 7, 1998) was a black American man who was murdered by three white men, two of whom were avowed white supremacists, in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged him for behind a pickup truck along an asphalt road. Byrd, who remained conscious for much of his ordeal, was killed about halfway through the dragging when his body hit the edge of a culvert, severing his right arm and head. The murderers drove on for another before dumping his torso in front of a black church.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Brewer and King were the first white men to be sentenced to death for killing a black person in the history of modern Texas. In 2001, Byrd's lynching-by-dragging led the state of Texas to pass a hate crimes law, which later led the Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, in 2009. Brewer was executed by lethal injection for his part in the murder on September 21, 2011. King was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, on April 24, 2019. Berry was sentenced to life imprisonment and will be eligible for parole in 2038.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: James Byrd Jr. was born on May 2, 1949, in Jasper County, Texas, the third of nine children, to Stella Mae Sharp (1925–2010) and James Byrd Sr. (1925–2020). His mother was a Sunday School teacher and his father was a deacon at the Greater New Bethel Church. Byrd graduated from Jasper Rowe High School in 1967, the last segregated class. After graduating from high school, he married and had three children: Renee, Ross, and Jamie. He worked as a vacuum salesman. James Byrd Jr. was a cousin of Dennetta Lyles King who was Rodney King's first wife and mother to his daughter Lora King.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Ross Byrd, the only son of James Byrd Jr., has been involved with "Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation", an organization that opposes capital punishment. He campaigned to spare the lives of those who murdered his father and appeared briefly in the documentary "Deadline".


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: On June 7, 1998, Byrd, age 49, accepted a ride from Shawn Berry (age 23), Lawrence Brewer (age 31), and John King (age 23). Berry, who was driving, was acquainted with Byrd from around town. Instead of taking Byrd home, the three men took Byrd to a remote county road out of town, beat him severely, spray-painted his face, urinated and defecated on him, and chained him by his ankles to their pickup truck before dragging him for about on Huff Creek Road (County Road 278). Brewer later claimed that Byrd's throat had been slashed by Berry before he was dragged. However, forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had been attempting to keep his head up while being dragged, and an autopsy suggested that Byrd was alive during much of the dragging. Byrd died about halfway along the route of his dragging, when his right arm and head were severed as his body hit a culvert. While almost all of Byrd's ribs were fractured, his brain and skull were found intact, further suggesting that he maintained consciousness while he was being dragged.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Berry, Brewer, and King dumped the mutilated remains of Byrd's body in front of an African-American church on Huff Creek Road, then drove off to a barbecue. A motorist found Byrd's decapitated remains the following morning. Along the area where Byrd was dragged, police found a wrench with "Berry" written on it. They also found a lighter that was inscribed with "Possum", which was King's prison nickname. The police found 81 places that included portions of Byrd's remains. Since Brewer and King were well-known white supremacists, it was determined by state law enforcement officials that the murder was a hate crime. They called upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation less than 24 hours after the discovery of Byrd's remains. The special agent in charge of the FBI's Houston office said that they were assisting because of the case's "extreme circumstances".


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: King had several racist tattoos: a black man hanging from a tree, Nazi symbols, the words "Aryan Pride", and the patch for a gang of white supremacist inmates known as the Confederate Knights of America. In a jailhouse letter to Brewer that was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the crime and said that he realized while committing the murder that he might have to die. "Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before dishonor. "Sieg Heil"!" King wrote. An officer investigating the case also testified that witnesses said that King had referenced "The Turner Diaries" after beating Byrd.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Berry, Brewer, and King were tried and convicted for Byrd's murder. Brewer and King received the death penalty, while Berry was sentenced to life in prison. Brewer was executed by lethal injection on September 21, 2011, and King was executed on April 24, 2019.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: During the trial of Shawn Allen Berry (born February 12, 1975), the prosecution conceded that he was not a white supremacist, but they argued that he was just as responsible for Byrd's murder as the other men and suggested that he might have been a thrill killer. Berry's attorneys had three Black men who knew him testify that he wasn't a racist. Berry claimed that Brewer and King were almost entirely responsible for the crime. He said he tried to stop them from attacking Byrd until Brewer threatened to do the same to him. Brewer, however, testified that Berry had cut Byrd's throat before he was tied to the truck. The jury decided that minimal evidence supported this claim. Berry was also the only one of the three to show any degree of remorse. As a result, Berry was spared execution and instead sentenced to life in prison. , Berry was living in protective custody at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Ramsey Unit, and will be first eligible for parole when he is 63 years old in June 2038. He spends 23 hours per day in an cell, with one hour for exercise. Berry married Christie Marcontell by proxy.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Lawrence Russell Brewer (March 13, 1967 – September 21, 2011) was a white supremacist, who prior to Byrd's murder had served a prison sentence for drug possession and burglary. He was paroled in 1991. After violating his parole conditions in 1994, Brewer was returned to prison. According to his court testimony, he joined a white supremacist prison gang with King in order to safeguard himself from other inmates. Brewer and King became friends in the Beto Unit prison. A psychiatrist testified that Brewer did not appear repentant for his crimes. During the trial, the prosecution labeled him a racist psychopath. Brewer was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death. Brewer, TDCJ#999327, was on death row at the Polunsky Unit, but he was executed in the Huntsville Unit on September 21, 2011. The day before his execution, Brewer expressed no remorse for his crime, as he told KHOU 11 News in Houston: "As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I'd do it all over again, to tell you the truth."


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Before his execution, Brewer ordered a last meal that prompted the end of last meal requests in Texas. The meal included two chicken fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fully loaded fajitas; a meat-lover's pizza; one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts on top; and three root beers. When the meal was presented, he told officials that he was not hungry and as a result he did not eat any of it. The meal was discarded, prompting State Senator John Whitmire to ask Texas prison officials to end the 87-year-old tradition of giving last meals to condemned inmates. The prison agency's executive director responded by stating that the practice had been terminated effective immediately.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: John William "Bill" King (November 3, 1974 – April 24, 2019) was Berry's longtime friend. He was accused of beating Byrd with a bat and then dragging him behind a pickup truck until he died. King, who prior to the murder had recently been released from a Texas prison, said that he had been repeatedly gang raped in prison by black inmates. He was found guilty and sentenced to death for his role in Byrd's kidnapping and murder, and was on death row at the Polunsky Unit.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: On December 21, 2018, King's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for April 24, 2019. On April 22, 2019, his appeals to both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles were denied. He was executed at the Huntsville Unit on April 24, 2019.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Numerous aspects of the Byrd murder echo lynching traditions that were common in the post-Civil War south. These include mutilation or decapitation and revelry, such as a barbecue or a picnic, either during or after a lynching. Byrd's murder was strongly condemned by Jesse Jackson and the Martin Luther King Center as an act of vicious racism, and it also focused national attention on the prevalence of white supremacist prison gangs.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Three sisters of James Byrd are Jehovah's Witnesses, and in a joint statement said: "Having a loved one tortured and lynched produced an unimaginable sense of loss and pain. How does one respond to such a brutal act? Retaliation, hateful speech, or promotion of hate-ridden propaganda never entered our mind. We thought: 'What would Jesus have done? How would he have responded?' The answer was crystal clear. His message would have been one of peace and hope."


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: The victim's family created the James Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing after his death. Basketball star Dennis Rodman paid their funeral expenses and gave Byrd's family $25,000. Fight promoter Don King gave Byrd's children $100,000 to be put towards their educational expenses.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: On October 7, 1998, an episode of "" titled "DWB" (driving while black) referenced the murder within the plot. Instead of three white supremacists, however, the killers were three white New York City police officers. As the plot goes, the officers stop and arrest a black man for no reason, and then proceed to drag him to his death, after tying him to the car.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: In 1999, the documentary "Journey to a Hate Free Millennium" was created, showcasing three United States hate crimes, including the shootings at Columbine High School; the death of a gay student, Matthew Shepard; and the execution of James Byrd Jr. The documentary won over 100 film and educational awards and has been used in schools all over the world as a means to stop hate.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: In 2003, a movie about the crime, titled "Jasper, Texas", was produced and aired on Showtime. The same year, a documentary titled "Two Towns of Jasper", made by filmmakers Marco Williams and Whitney Dow, premiered on PBS's "P.O.V." series.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: While employed as a radio DJ at station WARW in Washington, DC, Doug Tracht (also known as the "Greaseman") made a derogatory comment referring to James Byrd after playing Lauryn Hill's song "Doo Wop (That Thing)". The February 1999 incident proved catastrophic to Tracht's radio career, igniting protests from black and white listeners alike. He was quickly fired from WARW and lost his position as a volunteer deputy sheriff in Falls Church, Virginia.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: In May 2004, two white teens, Joshua Lee Talley and John Matthew Fowler, were arrested and charged with criminal mischief for desecrating James Byrd Jr.'s grave with racial slurs and profanities.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Some advocacy groups, such as the NAACP National Voter Fund, made an issue of this case during George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2000. They accused Bush of implicit racism, since as governor of Texas, he opposed hate-crime legislation. Also, citing a prior commitment, Bush did not appear at Byrd's funeral. Because two of the three murderers were sentenced to death and the third murderer was sentenced to life in prison (all three of them were charged with and convicted of capital murder, the highest felony level in Texas), Governor Bush maintained, "we don't need "tougher" laws". The 77th Texas Legislature passed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act. With the signature of Governor Rick Perry, who inherited the balance of Bush's unexpired term, the act became Texas state law in 2001. In 2009, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes which are motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: On the 2001 album "Pieces of Me" by singer-songwriter Lori McKenna, the song "Pink Sweater" is dedicated to Byrd; it condemns his murderers and references their death-penalty convictions with the raucous refrain, "I'll be the one in the pink sweater, dancing around when you're gone." In 2010, Alabama musician Matthew Mayfield wrote, recorded, and released a song in Byrd's honor. The tune, titled "Still Alive", is the fourth track on Mayfield's EP "You're Not Home". "Still Alive" clearly related a stark bitterness towards racism and equated such hate crimes with genocide. "Tell Me Why", featuring Mary J. Blige, mentions Byrd on Will Smith's fourth album, "Lost and Found". Byrd's son Ross recorded the rap album "Undeniable Resurrection" and dedicated it to his father.


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: "Jasper", by Confrontation Camp, is the fifth track on the album "Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear" (2000). "Guitar Drag" by sound artist Christian Marclay is a video- and sound-installation about the murder of James Byrd (2000). "I Heard 'Em Say" by Ryan Bingham is about Byrd's murder and the racially charged climate around Jasper following the crime (2012).


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Byrd's murder is the subject of Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton's piece "jasper texas 1998" as well as Jeffrey Thomson's piece "Achilles in Jasper, Texas".


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: The tale of Byrd's murder, and that of Matthew Shepard, are told in a verse of the song "Trouble the Waters" by Big Country on their album "Driving to Damascus" (named "John Wayne's Dream" in its US release).


title: Murder of James Byrd Jr.

text: Byrd's murder is depicted in Nia DaCosta's 2021 film "Candyman", featuring him resurrected as one of the souls trapped in the Candyman "hive": in his Candyman form, with his skull exposed, Byrd uses the hook and cables involved in his murder to kill his murderers, ascending into legend. Depicted in the film's mid-credits scene in the form of shadow puppetry, Byrd's murder was previously featured in DaCosta's 2020 promotional short film of the same name.


title: Pint

text: The pint (, ; symbol pt, sometimes abbreviated as "p") is a unit of volume or capacity in both the imperial and United States customary measurement systems. In both of those systems it is traditionally one eighth of a gallon. The British imperial pint is about 20% larger than the American pint because the two systems are defined differently. Almost all other countries have standardized on the metric system, so although some of them still also have traditional units called pints (such as for beverages), the volume varies by regional custom.


title: Pint

text: The imperial pint (≈) is used in the United Kingdom and Ireland and to a limited extent in Commonwealth nations. In the United States, two kinds of pint are used: a liquid pint (≈) and a less-common dry pint (≈). Other former British colonies, such as Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, converted to the metric system in the 1960s and 1970s; so while the term may still be in common use in these countries, it may no longer refer to the British imperial pint once used throughout the British Empire.


title: Pint

text: Since the majority of countries in the world no longer use American or British imperial units, and most are non-English speaking, a "pint of beer" served in a tavern outside the United Kingdom and the United States may be measured by other standards. In Commonwealth countries it may be a British imperial pint of 568 mL, in countries serving large numbers of American tourists it might be a US liquid pint of 473 mL, in many metric countries it is a half-litre of 500 mL, in some places it is another measure reflecting national and local laws and customs.


title: Pint

text: "Pint" comes from the Old French word and perhaps ultimately from Vulgar Latin meaning "painted", for marks painted on the side of a container to show capacity. It is linguistically related, though greatly diverging in meaning, to Pinto – an Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese name for a person with a speckled or dark complexion, often used as a surname in these languages.


title: Pint

text: In the United States, the liquid pint is legally defined as one eighth of a liquid gallon of precisely 231 cubic inches.


title: Pint

text: The United States dry pint is equal to one eighth of a United States dry gallon. It is used in the United States, but is not as common as the liquid pint.


title: Pint

text: A now-obsolete unit of measurement in Scotland, known as the "Scottish pint", or "joug", is equal to 1696 mL (2 pints 19.69 imp fl oz). It remained in use until the 19th century, surviving significantly longer than most of the old Scottish measurements.


title: Pint

text: The word "pint" is one of numerous false friends between English and French. They are not the same unit although they have the same linguistic origin. The French word "pinte" is etymologically related, but historically described a larger unit. The Royal pint ("pinte du roi") was 48 French cubic inches (952.1 mL), but regional pints varied in size depending on locality and on commodity (usually wine or olive oil) varying from 0.95 L to over 2 L.


title: Pint

text: In Canada, the Weights and Measures Act (R.S. 1985) defines a pint in English as 1/8 of a gallon, but defines a pinte in French as 1/4 of a gallon. Thus, if you speak English and order "a pint of beer", servers are legally required to serve you an imperial pint (568 mL) of beer, but if you speak French and order ""une pinte de bière"", they are legally required to serve an imperial quart ("une pinte"), which is 1136 mL, or twice as much. To order an imperial pint when speaking French in Canada, one must instead order "une chopine de bière".


title: Pint

text: In Flanders, the word "pintje", meaning 'little pint', refers only to a 250 mL glass of lager. Some West- and East-Flemish dialects use it as a word for beaker. The equivalent word in German, "Pintchen", refers to a glass of a third of a litre in Cologne and the Rhineland.


title: Pint

text: In South Australia, ordering "a pint of beer" results in 425 mL (15 fl oz) being served. Customers must specifically request "an Imperial pint of beer" to get 570 mL (20 fl oz). Australians from other states often contest the size of their beers in Adelaide.


title: Pint

text: One US liquid pint of water weighs , which gives rise to a popular saying: "A pint's a pound, the world around".


title: Pint

text: However, the statement does not hold around the world because the British imperial pint, which was also the standard measure in Australia, India, Malaya, New Zealand, South Africa and other former British colonies, weighs , giving rise to the origin of a popular saying used in Commonwealth countries: "a pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter".


title: Pint

text: The pint is traditionally one eighth of a gallon. In the Latin of the apothecaries' system, the symbol "O" ( or ; plural or – reflecting the "eighth" concept in its syllable) was used for the pint. Because of the variety of definitions of a gallon, there have been equally many versions of the pint.


title: Pint

text: Britain's North American colonies adopted the British wine gallon, defined in 1707 as 231 cubic inches exactly (3 in × 7 in × 11 in) as their basic liquid measure, from which the US wet pint is derived; and the British corn gallon ( of a standard "Winchester" bushel of corn, or 268.8 cubic inches) as its dry measure, from which the US dry pint is derived.


title: Pint

text: In 1824, the British parliament replaced all the various gallons with a new imperial gallon based on ten pounds of distilled water at (277.42 cubic inches), from which the current UK pint is derived.


title: Pint

text: The various Canadian provinces continued to use the Queen Anne Winchester wine gallon as a basis for their pint until 1873, well after Britain adopted the imperial system in 1824. This made the Canadian pint compatible with the American pint, but after 1824 it was incompatible with the British pint. The traditional French used in Lower Canada (Quebec) was twice the size of the traditional English "pint" used in Upper Canada (Ontario). After four of the British provinces united in the Canadian Confederation in 1867, Canada legally adopted the British imperial system of measure in 1873, making Canadian liquid units incompatible with American ones from that year forward. In 1873, the French Canadian was defined as being one imperial quart or two imperial pints, while the imperial pint was legally called a in French Canada. Canadian imperial units of liquid measure remain incompatible with American traditional units to this day, and although the Canadian pint, quart, and gallon are still legal units of measure in Canada, they are still 20% larger than the American ones.