Today is World AIDS Day, a international day to recognize the global AIDS epidemic. While strides have been made both in prevention of transmission and in helping those living with the disease survive longer, there are still currently, 33 million people worldwide suffer from HIV. In honor of the day, our latest Transparency is a look at the countries that have reduced their number of HIV positive populations the most, and those that have seen the largest rise. A note of caution: it’s possible that these numbers-both positive and negative-could come from differences in reporting, not necessarily in actual numbers of HIV patients. That said, some of these countries have made real strides and should be celebrated.For more on what you can do to help literacy, consider checking out our old friends at Youth Aids.A collaboration between GOOD and Naz ?ahin and ?erifcan Özcan.
People who work from home with a cat nearby tend to recognize this moment well. The instant a laptop opens and a document appears on the screen, a cat arrives within seconds, claiming ownership of the keyboard.
It can feel like an unwelcome interruption, yet veterinarians and animal behavior specialists have identified a common pattern among domestic cats. Cats often choose to sit on objects their owners are engaged with, particularly when those things are central to human attention or activity.
A cat with a little attitude on the computer. Photo credit: Canva
Cats aren’t trying to be a nuisance
The first, and probably most familiar, reason a cat jumps on you and the computer when you’re working is attention. Animal behavior experts at vet-reviewed sources like Catster explain that cats repeat behaviors that reliably get responses from their owners. Why work when you can play and look at me?
Another commonly cited explanation is simple comfort. Laptops, keyboards, and similar devices radiate heat. Cats seek out these warm surfaces for napping. Daily Paws notes that warmth is one of the practical reasons cats may choose electronics over other available spaces in the home.
And let’s face it, cats are naturally curious. They are highly responsive to human activity and tend to investigate objects their owners are focused on. The laptop, papers, and even a phone being scrolled at home become sources of fascination.
A white cat relaxes on a laptop. Photo credit: Canva
The science behind cats lying on laptops
Research suggests there is more behind this behavior than basic attention-seeking and curiosity. Physical contact with objects can shape how cats interact with their environment, especially with items frequently handled by humans. For cats, scent helps create and strengthen connections with their owners.
“Cats are very possessive individuals,” Dr. David Sands, an expert in animal psychology, told BBC Science Focus. “For them, the more they can brush past you and deposit your scent, the better!”
The laptop is not just a warm surface but also a shared space that already carries a lot of its owner’s presence.
Research from the Tokyo University of Agriculture found that cats can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar humans using smell alone. In everyday settings, this may explain why cats often spend time on items like clothing, beds, or computers that carry their owner’s scent. These objects are strongly associated with a favorite human.
These explanations point in a similar direction. What may seem like a deliberate effort to interrupt work is more likely the result of several well-intentioned feline behaviors. The family mouser is probably not plotting against your productivity.
From seeking warmth and comfort to investigating the objects that hold our attention to interacting with surfaces carrying our familiar scents, cats have plenty of reasons to gravitate toward a laptop. These soft and cuddly family members adapt to the people and environments around them, even if that process occasionally lands them squarely on our keyboards.
George Washington knew his forces could not win the American Revolutionary War without some measure of sea power. “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day,” he later wrote in a letter, “that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it everything honorable and glorious.”
The problem was that the American commander did not have a navy.
As a professor of early American history, I have taught courses on the American Revolution for more than 20 years and have written two books on its maritime dimensions. Washington’s solution wouldn’t come from a French shipyard or a congressional committee. It would come from a group of angry, out-of-work New England fishermen.
Supplying the army from the sea
In 1775, American ground forces managed to lay siege to the British army in Boston, but Washington needed provisions and military stores to sustain pressure on this key commercial hub. Looking out across the Atlantic Ocean, he noticed supply ships arriving in droves from Great Britain – unescorted – to supply the British army in Boston with guns and ammunition.
Unbeknownst to them, the British had already handed the American commander the ships and mariners he needed to capture those resources.
The Sons of Liberty, a network of political activists, had angered the British government by resisting taxes and commercial regulations – from the 1765 Stamp Act, which taxed printed documents, to the 1773 Tea Act, which controlled what tea leaves made their way into North American cupboards.
To punish rebels for their treason, Parliament passed the Restraining Act of 1775, banning New Englanders from fishing on the Atlantic Ocean. Overnight, thousands of skilled mariners – men who spent their lives wrestling 100-pound cod out of the freezing, storm-tossed North Atlantic – were out of a job. They weren’t just unemployed; they were furious. These fishermen left their work tools and ships behind, picked up weapons and joined the siege of Boston alongside American farmers.
Ashley Bowen, who lived and worked in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the principal fishing port in America at the time, recorded in his journal on May 22, 1775, “the fishermen are enlisting quite quick.”
A letter from a French diplomat to the foreign minister in Paris confirmed the news a couple of weeks later: “4,800 sailors seeing they were going to be deprived of their fishing rights, deserted their ships and joined their compatriots under arms.”
Washington, commissioned by Congress as commander in chief of all American armed forces in June 1775, saw an opportunity. He didn’t wait for Congress to build new frigates. Instead, he reached out to John Glover, a fish merchant from Marblehead and a commissioned officer under his command.
Washington’s plan was simple: Take the sturdy, salt-stained schooners used for fishing and turn them into armed, seagoing predators.
The first of these was Glover’s own fishing vessel and trade ship, Hannah. She wasn’t a formidable man-of-war but a 78-ton workhorse that spent summers at the Grand Banks and winters hauling rum and sugar from the Caribbean. Washington armed the trade ship with a few cannons, manned her with fishermen and sent her out to hijack British supply ships to help his army win the siege of Boston.
Just two days after the Hannah was underway, her crew captured the Unity, a sloop loaded with naval stores and lumber, supplies sorely needed by British forces in Boston.
Between August and October 1775, Washington outfitted a fleet of schooners at Congress’ expense to intercept British supply ships off the coast of New England. These vessels and crews, whose wages were paid by the American government, constituted what many historians consider America’s first navy. Washington reminded each captain that they sailed “at the Continental Expense.” These orders from Washington and the payments made by Congress made these ships official American warships, operating under the authority of what would become the federal government.
These recruits didn’t need nautical training; they were seasoned seafarers who had battled rough waters and gale force winds. On Oct. 13, 1775, George Washington wrote to his brother, John Augustine Washington, that the fishermen were “soldiers … who have been bred to the sea.”
In 1776, Washington informed the governor of Connecticut, who had asked to draft seamen from Washington’s regiments for his own naval expedition, that he could not spare any. “I must depend chiefly upon them for a successful opposition to the Enemy,” Washington explained.
Because the British navy was spread too thin, with too few warships available to police the Atlantic coastline, the armed fishing vessels were able to disrupt supply lines and keep the Revolution alive through its infancy. By the time the British realized the threat, the damage was done.
On Feb. 26, 1776, just a few months after Washington launched his fleet, British Admiral Molyneux Shuldham wrote in a report to his superiors that his forces in Boston were low on everything from naval supplies to weapons. What little they could find had to be purchased “at the most extravagant prices.”
The British government had not assigned military convoys to trans-Atlantic shipments at the start of the conflict in 1775. Now, Shuldham recommended arming the supply ships themselves, since valuable stores were being intercepted by rebels in small vessels, “however attentive our Officers to their Duty.”
He concluded the report with an ominous note, explaining that he simply did not have the resources to do everything that was being asked of him – support the army, blockade rebel ports and protect British ships bound for Boston: “I must beg leave to observe to you the very few Ships I am provided with to enable Me to Co-operate with the Army, Cruize off the Ports of the Rebels to prevent their receiving Supplies, or protect those destined to this place from falling into their hands.”
Photo credit: LPETTET/E+/Getty Images –
End-of-life decisions can be complicated, and ethics consultants may help families and care teams navigate them.
A surgeon prepares to amputate a patient’s foot to save his life, but the patient refuses the procedure. His decline in thinking and memory raises doubts about his ability to consent, and he has no family or friends to help with the decision.
A 17-year-old declines a liver transplant, while her mother insists on going forward with the lifesaving surgery.
Siblings stand divided at the bedside of their 85-year-old mother with dementia, one rejecting a feeding tube, the other calling it a basic human necessity.
I am a hospital ethics consultant, and these are the kinds of situations my colleagues and I regularly encounter. Yet many people are unaware that hospital ethics consultants even exist – or that they can ask for one.
Who are hospital ethics consultants?
Healthcare ethics consultants are trained to help patients, families and clinicians navigate difficult medical decisions.
They could be called in situations where healthcare staff struggles with providing procedures such as cardiac resuscitation that are unlikely to benefit the patient and might even cause more pain and suffering. They could also be called when it is unclear who has authority to consent for a patient’s care, or when end-of-life decisions are complicated and resources are limited – such as ICU beds and ventilators during COVID-19.
Ethics consultants come from a range of disciplines: physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, lawyers and philosophers who have specialized training and experience in clinical ethics. Since 2018, ethics consultants are increasingly pursuing formal certification through the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
What is their origin?
The modern field of bioethics emerged from the 1947 Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, where Nazi physicians were prosecuted for conducting brutal medical experiments on imprisoned people.
This led to the 1947 framework outlining ethically acceptable human research called the Nuremberg Code, written by a panel of American judges. The 1979 Ethical Principles and Guidelines for Protections of Human Subjects of Research, called the Belmont Report, followed the Nuremberg Code. The Belmont Report turned the ethical ideals of respect for persons, beneficence – to do good – and justice into a regulatory framework to protect vulnerable and marginalized medical research participants in the U.S.
In the 1980s, many of these ethics protections moved from the research lab to the patient bedside. During this time, lifesaving technologies such as the ventilator, dialysis machine and organ transplantation created new, difficult ethical questions: When should life support end? Who decides? And what happens when there aren’t enough resources?
A series of court cases and laws expanded patients’ rights, with the Patient Self-Determination Act, a 1990 law which upheld patient rights to refuse or accept medical treatment, marking the key turning point.
Lifesaving technologies have revolutionized medicine, but they also raise ethical questions about who receives care when resources are scarce. Jackyenjoyphotography/Moment via Getty Images
High-profile court cases exposed the ethical dilemmas around end-of-life care and patient self-determination. The 1976 case, In re Quinlan, involved Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman in a persistent vegetative state whose family sought permission from the court to withdraw her ventilator.
Following In re Quinlan was the 1990 case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, which affirmed that adults have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment.
Both cases became touchstones for how ethics consultants and care teams navigate the life‑and‑death decisions that have become routine in an era of life‑sustaining technology.
A member of the healthcare team usually requests an ethics consult when they face conflict or uncertainty about the care of a patient. Patients and families can also request an ethics consultation, but in reality, few know this option exists or feel empowered to use it.
The ethics consultant’s first task is to gather as much information as possible from everyone involved to understand the full context of the case. Importantly, ethics consultants do not make treatment decisions; they assist the people who do.
Imagine a loved one with advanced dementia who is in the intensive care unit with respiratory failure and is on a ventilator. The physician believes further treatment will prolong suffering; the family is not willing to let him go.
An ethics consultant would be called by the family or healthcare team to slow things down, provide space to reflect, and help navigate the situation. The ethics consultant will often meet with everyone involved to ensure that all voices are heard and that the patient’s wishes remain central to the discussion.
As part of the ethics review, the ethics consultant would draw on their knowledge of policies, laws and ethical precedent about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment to provide some guardrails for the situation. In this case, a legal guardrail might be that the physician cannot remove the ventilator without the family’s consent.
Rather than making a decision, the ethics consultant would then outline the ethical options available from which the patient, family, and healthcare team can choose.
Why are ethics consultants a valuable resource?
Ethics consultants are trained to help people work through not just the medical facts, but the deeply human questions beneath them: What counts as an acceptable quality of life? How do we weigh hope against suffering? How can we know what a patient would want if they cannot speak for themselves?
In these moments, decisions can feel urgent and heavy, and communication can easily break down. Ethics consultants don’t take decisions away from patients or families, and they don’t replace the role of clinicians. Instead, they help ensure that everyone understands the situation, that different perspectives are heard and that the conversation stays grounded in the values and goals of the patient.
They also bring something that families often don’t realize they need until tensions rise: a calm, measured presence. By clarifying misunderstandings, naming sources of conflict and guiding difficult conversations, they help families and care teams find a way forward together.
The choices may still be painful – and there may be no perfect answer – but with the right support, those decisions can feel more thoughtful, more shared and more aligned with what matters most.
