In this article I will argue that torturing a person is never the best way to achieve a much greater good except in extreme emergency situations. I will also argue that the degree of torture should vary in these extreme emergency situations and that the torturer should be able to justify why he tortured the person. I will talk more about torture and why I believe it is never the best way to achieve a greater good, after a brief description of what torture is and under what circumstances people should be tortured. Torture basically involves causing unbearable pain in a person to break their will to obtain certain information. Most commonly torture is used on people who are considered a threat to the nation or who simply defy the patriotic act i.e. engage in some form of terrorism. Law enforcement tortures these people so that they can get as much information as possible within a twenty-four hour period as this is a time limit to keep a person in custody without any evidence. As I said above, I believe that torture is never a better way to accomplish a much greater good, and I said this because I believe that torturing a person is even worse than killing them. By torturing an individual, regardless of whether he is guilty of anything, you are killing the human being inside him, which is worse than killing the person. The tortured victim begins to see the world from a different perspective if he is innocent and develops unconditional hatred for everyone around him. Furthermore, the torturer believes in all cases that the victim who is being tortured knows the answer to all his questions, but what if the victim is framed and is actually innocent. Most of the victims are... middle of paper... as if there are equal rights in a country and no one has the right to exploit them and torture someone who is not in power. To obtain information in non-emergency cases, proper protocol should be followed and the victim or offender should be convicted in court with adequate evidence. Torture would just be a shortcut to solving a situation for many that will lead to bad decisions and harm many lives. The final verdict I would like to give is that torture should never be made permissible, since it can never be justified with regard to the greater good. Whereas, in extreme emergencies, torture should be carried out to some extent without any intention to kill the victim and the torturer should be able to justify why it was permissible to torture the victim in that situation. Works Cited: Henry Shue, “Torture,” in Markie and Cahn's Ethics anthology.