58 The New York Review
possessing 0.14 grams of meth, stealing a
pizza, and stealing $2.50 worth of socks.
To make progress, we must throw out the
idea that criminal law is an instrument of
truth: it’s about feeding public opinion and
making deals that are expedient for prose-
cutors. Our law enforcement system, from
local police to judges, fails to prevent, even
contributes to, an ongoing cycle of violence.
Indeed, one reason retaliatory violence is
endemic to this system is that low-income
communities, including many communities
of color, tend to distrust police, for reasons
the Black Lives Matter protests have made
evident. People in physical danger who do
not believe the police can help them will try
to solve problems on their own.
Fitzgerald worries that defendants may
retaliate if victims don’t agree to restorative
justice. But Sered’s program suggests oth-
erwise. Some victims, she shows, choose re-
storative justice to end a cycle of violence:
in her sessions, they have asked defendants
to pledge to tell their friends to back off.
Victims may fear retaliation if they opt
out, but they already fear retaliation if they
choose to prosecute the traditional way.
The question of how restorative justice
could re-traumatize victims is important,
especially in cases when defendants are
not remorseful or mentally able to explain
the reasons for their actions. But research-
ers find that restorative justice is more ef-
fective in addressing trauma than court.
This is in part because the legal process is
not designed to be therapeutic. It can re-
traumatize victims by subjecting them to
hostile cross-examination, exposing them
to public scrutiny, and leading them to feel
disbelieved or blamed during the investiga-
tive process. A process that takes seriously
all parties’ emotions and proceeds from the
defendant’s acceptance of guilt has proven
comparatively more successful than crim-
inal prosecution in reducing PTSD symp-
toms caused by the crime.
Still, it’s true that restorative justice sub-
verts the aims of Law as it stands. Where
traditional justice would assign fault, re-
storative justice wants to discover how peo-
ple can heal. It is fair to ask whether heal-
ing is what our system is for. But we can’t
answer that question truthfully without also
articulating the ultimate purpose of our
courts and jails, and asking whether they
are achieving their aims.
FAIRER COVID TRIALS
To the Editors:
While I sincerely appreciate Marcia An-
gell’s and Carl Elliott’s concern for the
well- being of potential Covid-19 challenge
trial participants [Letters, NYR, August
20], their opposition to challenge trials di-
minishes the agency of volunteers like my-
self, who acknowledge the uncertain and
significant risks involved and still want to
participate.
Over 35,000 people have expressed in-
terest in participating in a challenge study
with 1Day Sooner (where I serve as com-
munications director). Writing about this
organization, Elliott states that the “num-
ber of people willing to volunteer without
being told about the fine print” is a “recipe
for exploitation.” This claim is inaccurate
and misleading. Our survey makes clear
that there will be several rounds of pre-
qualification before volunteers could for-
mally consent to a challenge trial. 1Day
Sooner exists to prevent the very exploita-
tion that Elliott brings up: we are the only
organization comprised of challenge trial
volunteers that is actively working to in-
clude such volunteers in challenge trial de-
sign. We do not want to risk our lives for
a fruitless trial, and we have no interest in
dodging the fine print.
We are also not mere means to an end,
as both Angell and Elliott argue. Since our
motivation is to reduce the misery caused
by Covid-19, volunteering for a challenge
trial that could help scientists fight the
pandemic is entirely harmonious with our
rights, dignity, and interests. There may be
hidden, long-term impacts of Covid-19 that
we do not know when the trial begins, but
it is safer for young, healthy volunteers to
incur those risks in the context of a closely
monitored study, rather than vulnerable
populations without access to health care.
There is a long history of pathologizing al-
truism in medical contexts. Altruistic living
kidney donations were forbidden until the
1960s because researchers thought that po-
tential donors must be uninformed, irratio-
nal, or deranged. Now, we realize that this
is not the case. In the context of a potential
Covid-19 human challenge trial, we should
avoid repeating mistakes of the past.
That means ensuring a robust informed
consent process and free, high-quality
health care for trial participants, but it
also means not paternalistically dismissing
volunteers’ altruism as opportunities for
exploitation.
Abie Rohrig
Communications Director
1Day Sooner
New York, New York
Carl Elliott replies:
My criticism was not aimed at research
subjects. We all depend on the altruism
of people willing to volunteer for medical
research. But research studies must be de-
signed in ways that do not exploit that al-
truism. It is wrong to ask research subjects
to pay for their own medical care if they are
injured in a study; it is wrong to deny them
compensation for pain, suffering, and the
inability to work; it is wrong for sponsors
to rig research studies and bury or spin the
results; and it is wrong to deny poor peo-
ple access to necessary drugs, vaccines, or
medical devices, especially when they are
produced by research studies for which
those people have volunteered. I have not
seen any mention of these serious problems
by those advocating for challenge studies.
If it is paternalistic to insist that the prob-
lems be fixed, then I plead guilty to the
charge.
LIMITED NUCLEAR WAR?
To the Editors:
In her review of recent books on nuclear
forces and those who think about them, Jes-
sica Mathews [“The New Nuclear Threat,”
NYR, August 20] proceeds from the cold
war–era conceptualization involving use by
great powers of selected portions of their
arsenals in a way that can be “clearly sig-
naled...accurately interpreted by the other
side, and responded to not in rage or fear
but with calm reasonableness.” She doubts
this is possible, for good reason.
An alternative take on “limited” nuclear
war would be to consider the point of view
of the post–cold war class of smaller nuclear
powers. Their strategic focus is not lashed
to the larger global competition of the great
powers Dr. Mathews focuses on (as was that
of nuclear-armed UK, France, and China
during the cold war). Their use of nuclear
weapons would be limited by the relatively
few they have at their disposal. It is not
clear that, say, India and Pakistan accept
the cold war–era redline on use of these
weapons created by “effective deterrence,
fear of their destructiveness, and a...taboo
against their use” even though they doubt-
less are well aware of the horrors the use of
such weapons would involve. In a conflict
involving this dyad or, someday, the one
enmeshing Israel and Iran, the combatants
might well decide they are willing to treat
their limited numbers of nuclear weapons
as precious, vulnerable, potentially decisive
assets best used in a first strike once fight-
ing has begun. In particular, Pakistan has
suffered from India’s numerical superiority
in previous conventional wars and may well
not be willing to replay this script.
Rather than thinking in terms of deter-
rence and taboos, smaller nuclear powers
might use nuclear weapons like any other
weapons. During the heat of the opening
rounds of a new war they might coldly cal-
culate the counterforce and countervalue
options permitted or precluded by the size
and range of their arsenals, their estimates
of their enemy’s capabilities and intentions,
and their overall strategy for whatever they
think constitutes victory. Chances are that
pressures on them to conform to cold war–
era shibboleths regarding nuclear use from
the inaptly termed “international commu-
nity” might no longer be enough to hold
them back.
In addition, of course, we should think
about North Korea...
David B. Kanin
Adjunct Professor of European Studies
School of Advanced International Studies
Johns Hopkins University
Washington, D.C.
Jessica T. Mathews replies:
Professor Kanin is of course correct that
the new nuclear powers—India, Pakistan,
Israel, and North Korea—may think differ-
ently about the use of these weapons than
do the original five. Importantly, they also
think very differently from one another.
India and Pakistan, for example, are gener-
ally considered the world’s most likely nu-
clear flashpoint. Over the years Islamabad,
which is rapidly enlarging its nuclear arse-
nal, has explicitly threatened to use nuclear
weapons in a war facing India’s overwhelm-
ing conventional superiority: a policy of
“nuclear first use in the last resort.” These
threats are Islamabad’s primary way of de-
terring such a war. India’s nuclear forces
and doctrine, by contrast, are designed for
retaliation after a prior nuclear attack. It
is certainly possible that one or another of
these four countries might face conditions
in which it felt it had no option other than
to go nuclear. However, I doubt that any of
them—even North Korea—would not feel
the enormous weight of the taboo against
nuclear use and fear the international
consequences of crossing the nuclear
threshold.
QUERY
To the Editors:
For a biography of the Austro-American
mathematician Olga Taussky-Todd (1906-
1995), the first woman to receive a formal
teaching position at the California Institute
of Technology, I would be glad and pleased
to hear from any of her former students,
colleagues, or friends, or anyone with rem-
iniscences or with whom she corresponded.
Judith Goodstein
430 South Parkwood Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91107
626-793-4821
CORRECTION
In Simon Callow’s “Charm Defensive”
[NYR, September 24], the revival of David
Rabe’s Hurlyburly was directed by Scott
Elliott, not by Rabe himself.
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