Jennifer Aniston is promoting her upcoming comedy “The Switch,” about a single woman who becomes a mother through artificial insemination. In one interview. Aniston commented that “Women are realizing more and more that you don’t have to settle, they don’t have to fiddle with a man to have that child.” This rankled Fox News’ star blowhard Bill O’Reilly, who regarded Aniston’s remark as an endorsement of unwed and under-age motherhood, and told his cable audience that Aniston was “throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that, ‘Hey! You don’t need a guy, you don’t need a dad!” His verdict: “That’s destructive to our society!…Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad, okay?” Continue reading
Bioethics
Ethics, Ethics, Everywhere…
Stories with ethical implications are popping up everywhere, in many fields. I’m running hard to keep up; if you want to join the race, here are some recent developments and notes:
- A prominent Harvard professor and respected researcher just retracted a major paper and has been put on leave, as an investigation showed irregularities in his methods and results. “This retraction creates a quandary for those of us in the field about whether other results are to be trusted as well, especially since there are other papers currently being reconsidered by other journals as well,’’ wrote one scientist. “If scientists can’t trust published papers, the whole process breaks down.’’
- A Wisconsin lawyer bought a farm from his own client in a bankruptcy matter, a classic conflict of interest. The lawyer’s defense was amusing: since his license had been suspended, he no longer had a fiduciary duty to his now former client. The court canceled the sale. The story is on the Legal Profession Blog.
- The excellent Sunlight Foundation has strong commentary regarding the lack of genuine ethics oversight at the White House. Continue reading
Ethics and the Killer’s Liver
Johnny Concepcion, a 42-year-old man accused of stabbing his wife to death, received a liver transplant at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York, raising the natural question, “WHAT?!!”
Or to be more precise: Wouldn’t it be more ethical to withhold a life-saving liver transplant from such a man, and give the liver instead to someone who isn’t a blight on society and likely to spend the rest of his life in prison?
No.
“Genetic Surveillance” and Law Enforcement Ethics
The “Grim Sleeper” serial killer was caught because California authorities found a partial DNA match with an individual in its database. That meant that the killer was probably related to the owner of that DNA, and indeed he was. We see this approach on the various “C.S.I” shows, but in real life using family DNA to identify a criminal is relatively rare, because only two states, Colorado and California, permit a “familial search,” the use of DNA samples taken from convicted criminals to track down relatives who may themselves have committed a crime.
Why only two? The science is reliable, and a familial search can narrow the pool of suspects to the point where solving a crime becomes inevitable. Nevertheless, civil libertarians argue that the technique raises privacy concerns. Michael Risher, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, told the New York Times there was the possibility of innocent people being harassed in the pursuit of a crime. “It has the potential to invade the privacy of a lot of people,” he said. Continue reading
The Slippery Slopes of Religious Freedom and Female Genital Mutilation
The American Academy of Pediatrics slipped on the slipperiest of ethical slopes when earlier this year it attempted to balance multi-culturalism with pragmatism and traditional medical ethics. The topic was the genital mutilation of young girls in a form of (so-called) “female circumcision” practiced by some Muslims, in which the clitoris is cut and mutilated in order to make future sexual activity less enjoyable, thus ensuring a female’s “virtue.” The AAP argued that its members could ethically agree to inflict a lesser “nick”—a ritual drawing of blood— to fulfill a patient’s parents’ request for the ritual cutting, because to do otherwise might lead to greater harm to a girl’s genitalia if the parents sought a full-fledged mutilation abroad or elsewhere.
This policy effectively repealed the ancient ethical standard of “First, do no harm” by employing the versatile rationalization, “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” Predictably, women’s rights advocates were horrified. Equality Now proclaimed in May… Continue reading
San Jose State, Blood, and Misguided Ethical Absolutism
The Food and Drug Administration will not permit you to donate blood if you have engaged in certain high risk activities associated with a greater likelihood of contracting the HIV virus. This includes same-sex intimate relations between men. “FDA’s policies on donor deferral for history of male sex with males date back to 1983, when the risk of AIDS from transfusion was first recognized,” says the agency’s website. “A history of male-to-male sex is associated with an increased risk for the presence of and transmission of certain infectious diseases, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.”
Officials at San Jose State University regard this as invidious discrimination against gays. For that reason, the University has banned blood drives at the school in protest of the F.D.A. policy since 2008, and has announced that the ban will continue. The school’s logic is simple, or perhaps simple-minded. Banning men who have sex with men from donating blood constitutes discrimination, and discrimination is always bad. Thus San Jose State, a good school that abhors discrimination, will maintain its virtue by refusing to participate in a discriminatory practice. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Florida House Rep. Janet Long
Once again, an elected official is advocating the Bizarro World ethics principle that those with the greatest conflict of interest in a matter are the only ones who have standing to decide it. Conflicts of interest create bias and interfere with objectivity. They are to be avoided whenever possible. How then does someone like Florida House of Representatives Member Janet Long, a Democrat from Pinellas County, while debating the controversial Florida law requiring women seeking an abortion to first have an ultrasound procedure, justify demanding that male legislators “stand down if you don’t have ovaries”? Continue reading
Is Immortality Unethical?
When a writer posits an intriguing theory and then fails to support it credibly, there are only a few alternate conclusions the reader can reach. One is that it is a viable theory, but the advocate didn’t have the skills to explain it. Another is that it is a mistaken theory, and the advocate is wrong. A third is that the failure of the writer to make a case for his theory shows how wrong it is.
A recent article in The Guardian is in the last category, I suspect. It is an argument so inadequate and dominated by flaccid rationalizations that it nearly disproves the proposition it is supposedly defending. The thesis: “Immortality isn’t unethical.” Continue reading
Mad Scientist Ethics
It is comforting to know that all mad scientists aren’t hell-bent on world domination. Apparently some Japanese mad scientists are dedicated instead to world vaccination, because, as reported in the April issue of “Insect Molecular Biology”, they have figured out how to make mosquitoes into itty-bitty flying syringes full of vaccine. Continue reading
Self-Destruction Ethics Alarms: A Woman’s Unethical Quest For Fat
Yesterday, the world heard about Donna Simpson, a New Jersey woman who weighs in at about 500 pounds. She sasy she wants to be the fattest woman alive, and is managing her diet and exercise to achieve that lofty goal. Of course, all those Twinkies and pork rinds cost a lot of money—her weekly grocery bill averages more than $800—so she earns extra cash by putting herself on Gluttoncam, or whatever she calls it, where freakophiles can watch her gorge herself online for a reasonable fee. Her partner, the news reports say, is completely supportive. “I think he’d like it if I was bigger,” giggles Donna. “He’s a real belly man and completely supports me.”
Okaaaaay….
Obviously this situation is unusual…at least, I hope it is. Still, it raises many difficult ethics questions, some with broad implications:
- We are told that it is cruel, greedy and heartless for insurance companies to withhold coverage for “pre-existing conditions,” and should be compelled to insure everyone without regard to special risks. Does this apply to Donna Simpson? Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 