Toleration of torture and arbitrary detention has been likened to a "cancer of democracy" in a book of the same title by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, which begins to undermine all other aspects of a state's legitimacy. On the 20th anniversary of the coming into force of the United Nations Convention against Torture, Philip Hensher writes "Civilization is at once compromised if, in defense of other freedoms, it decides to regress, to accept the possibility of torture as it is seen in the movies."