Bioethics

Good-bye and Good Riddance to Bush’s Unethical “Conscience Clause”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The Obama Administration has deep-sixed a controversial Bush Administration rule that permitted a wide variety of health care workers to  refuse to administer treatments they found morally repugnant, what the Bush administration termed workers’ “right of conscience.”

Hospitals and clinics faced a loss of federal funds if they failed to uphold the rule, which itself was ethically repugnant. Kudos, thanks and hosannas to President Obama for getting rid of the Federal variety; some states, regrettably, still have them.

The American Medical Association’s position on the matter, embodied in a resolution passed by its membership, is clear and well-reasoned. Its reasoning applies to health care workers though the specific subject of the resolution was pharmacist conscience clauses.

The AMA’s resolution, “Preserving Patients’ Ability To Have Legally Valid Prescriptions Filled,” states: Continue reading →

Abortion Ethics: The Delusions of P.Z.Myers

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Mere “Ethics Dunce”-dom doesn’t suffice for P.Z. Myers, gonzo biologist and professor who writes the intermittently enlightening, frequently infuriating blog, Pharayngula. Writing about the horrific case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist/quack/butcher whose method would make him a likely model for an episode of “Criminal Minds,” Myers wrote this, referring to the charges against him based on the fact that his version of “abortion” consisted, in at least seven cases, of inducing a live birth and murdering the baby afterwards, with a scissors: Continue reading →

Ex-Rep. Steve Driehaus and Sore Loser Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Former U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio), who lost his seat last November to Republican Steve Chabot, is suing an anti-abortion group for making statements that he says misled voters about his stance on abortion, leading to his demise at the polls.

In his defamation lawsuit, Driehaus argues that the Susan B. Anthony List lied about him in public statements and then sued him for trying to stop the group from posting misleading billboards, thereby “depriving him of his livelihood.” Driehaus, who campaigned as an anti-abortion candidate, voted for the controversial national health care law, which many anti-abortion activists maintain supports taxpayer-funded abortion. Driehaus argued and still maintains that the claim was false, and that the law bars any federal funding of abortion.

Driehaus’s suit is unethical and  ridiculous. Continue reading →

Gov. Haley Barbour Shows How To Make Mercy Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour has managed to make a reasonable commutation decision look thoroughly corrupt….which it very well might be. Continue reading →

Ethics and Altzheimer’s Testing: An Easy Call

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Sometimes I think bioethicists spend too much of their time looking for new ethical dilemmas rather than giving thoughtful guidance on the dilemmas we already have. A recent example: the New York Times wrote about a supposed ethical dilemma appearing in the wake of new tests that reveal the likelihood of whether an individual will get Alzheimer’s at some point in the future. As the article put it:

“Since there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s, is it a good thing to tell people, years earlier, that they have this progressive degenerative brain disease or have a good chance of getting it?…It is a quandary that is emblematic of major changes in the practice of medicine, affecting not just Alzheimer’s patients. Modern medicine has produced new diagnostic tools, from scanners to genetic tests, that can find diseases or predict disease risk decades before people would notice any symptoms. At the same time, many of those diseases have no effective treatments. Does it help to know you are likely to get a disease if there is nothing you can do?”

My question is: “What’s the dilemma?” Continue reading →

Unappetizing Spam Of The Day

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Ethics Alarms gets about two times as many spam comments as real ones, most of which I can discard without a second’s thought. Occasionally one brings me up short, however, like this one. If it’s not spam, the blog is being followed by some very strange people. The comment was:

“Thanks for the post. I am always looking for ways to improve my gardening and cooking skills. My family loves eating real food.’

The post it was in response to is… “Unavoidable Bias in the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Controversy.”

Yuck.

Note to John Avlon: Having Itegrity Doesn’t Make Someone a Wingnut

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

John Avlon is a Daily Beast contributer; he also is the author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. Avlon’s definition of “wingnut” often seems to be a politician who doesn’t agree with John Avlon, but his recent list of 15 wingnuts running for office this November would be hard to quibble with, except that 15 is far from enough in this disturbing election.

One aspect of his list is both telling and unfair, however. The policy position Avlon cites most frequently to “prove” that a particular candidate is a wingnut is the candidate’s opposition to abortion “even in cases of rape or incest.” Whatever that position may be, it is not evidence of wing-nuttiness. Continue reading →

Unavoidable Bias in the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In the embryonic stem cell research ethics debate, I come out on the “pro” side. Nonetheless, a New York Times article this morning shows clearly how thoroughly and unavoidably biased scientists and researchers in the field are, leading to the conclusion that the decision whether stem cell research is ethical or not, and whether, or to what extent, it should be permitted, cannot be left to them.

The article, by Amy Harmon, begins,

“Rushing to work at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center one recent morning, Jason Spence, 33, grabbed a moment during breakfast to type “stem cells” into Google and click for the last 24 hours of news. It is a routine he has performed daily in the six weeks since a Federal District Court ruling put the future of his research in jeopardy. “It’s always at the front of my brain when I wake up,” said Dr. Spence, who has spent four years training to turn stem cells derived from human embryos into pancreatic tissue in the hope of helping diabetes patients. “You have this career plan to do all of this research, and the thought that they could just shut it off is pretty nerve-racking.” Continue reading →

The Troubling Ethics of Human Psychological Experimentation

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Thanks to the popularity of Malcolm Gladwell’s airport book store best-sellers and many of those who cashed in on his formula, like behavioral economist Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), psychological experiments are increasingly referenced in the media and the blogosphere, not to mention at the dinner table, more than ever before. Call me an alarmist if you like, but this makes me worry about the reckless, harmful and even diabolical experiments being dreamed up by the next wave of aspiring authors and the researchers who give them their best material. Continue reading →

The Trouble With Auto-Tune

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The British show that launched “American Idol,” X-Factor, admitted that it had used Auto-Tune, an audio processor that corrects a singer’s pitch and tone. An 18-year-old contestant named Gamu Nhengu sang just a little too well in the show’s seventh season premiere, and fans and critics started hinting at conspiracy on the web, especially via the show’s Facebook page. Finally, a spokesman for “X-Factor” confessed that Auto-Tune was used to fix disruptions caused by the many microphones used on stage during the telecast, but that the judge’s decisions were definitely based on the actual, non-Auto-Tuned performances of contestants. The show’s producers, he assured the public, only used the processor to “deliver the most entertaining experience possible for viewers.”

I’m sure that is true. This is exactly the reason TV executives rigged the quiz shows in the 1950’s. It is the reason why TV reality shows are scripted, and why NBA stars get away with game fouls that referees call against lesser players. Any competition’s entertainment value is enhanced by better competitors and more suspenseful action. The problem is that once spectators know or suspect that they are being manipulated, they stop watching at all. The fact that Simon Cowell’s UK hit would use the device immediately roused “American Idol” conspiracy theorists, and  Cowell to immediately announced an Auto-Tune ban. Continue reading →