Health and Medicine

Fat Ethics and Kevin Smith

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Cult film director Kevin Smith was ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight last week for being fat. The talented  director (and sometime actor: he plays the character of “Silent Bob” in several of his own films) of “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma,” and the Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan comedy “Cop Out” was deemed too obese to fly, although he passed the supposedly definitive armrest test: he could lower both. Smith says this has never happened to him before, perhaps because he is in the habit of buying two seats—not because he needs them, but because he says he “hates people.” Although the airline apologized to him, Smith still hates Southwest, and is inclined not to let the matter drop.

Apparently a lot of people hate him too, just because of his weight.  Continue reading →

“For Our Own Good”: the U.S. Government’s Prohibition Poisoning Policy

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Slate has posted a shocking story by historian Deborah Blum, exposing long-forgotten efforts by the U.S. government to poison the alcohol supply during Prohibition for the express purpose of frightening would-be consumers of bootleg liquor into abstaining. She estimates that the government’s poisoning program killed more than 10,000 Americans before the “noble experiment” of Prohibition was abandoned in 1933.

The horrific episode is an abject lesson in the dangers of extreme Utilitarianism, in which unambiguous wrongs are deemed acceptable because of the great benefits they will create, or the greater wrongs they will prevent. It tells us that we should never trust those in power too much, because even good intentions and idealism can mutate into sinister and deadly forms. And it tells us that while we should be wary of conspiracy theories and our seemingly-paranoid fellow citizens who see malice and collusion in every misfortune, we must not dismiss them out of hand. Sometimes the conspiracies are real. Sometimes the paranoids are right.

Blum’s Slate piece is a sobering and frightening account that also raises questions about the holes in our historical record. There are surely other dark episodes in our nation’s history that we need to know about, understand, and learn from. In the meantime, we owe a debt of thanks to Deborah Blum.

By all means, read her article.

Of Presidents Day, Atticus, a Congressman’s Dilemma and Serial Moms

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Short Alarms:

  • With increasing numbers of young Americans knowing embarrassingly little about our nation’s past, the wrong-headedness of President’s Day rankles worse than ever. Rather then designate the February birthdays of our two greatest presidents—Washington, the “indispensable man” who made the United States a reality, and Lincoln, the brilliant leader/philosopher who kept it from tearing apart—as yearly commemorations of their remarkable lives and our debt to them, Congress lumped them into a generic “Presidents Day,” thereby demonstrating that it deemed a three-day weekend and consumer merchandise sales more important than our heritage. Worst of all for ethics fans, George, who “wouldn’t tell a lie,” and Honest Abe are the only U.S. Presidents remembered for their truthfulness. Yet here they are, forced to share their “day” with the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Harding, J.F.K, L.B.J., Tricky Dick and Bill Clinton. The right thing to do would be to go back to celebrating February 12 and 22. Washington and Lincoln deserve it, and so do the values they stood for.
  • Speaking of ethics icons, one of my wife’s favorites,”To Kill A Mockingbird’s” Atticus Finch, has been under attack in some quarters for being passively acquiescent in the Jim Crow morality that convicts his black client despite overwhelming evidence that he is innocent. Continue reading →

Stats, Polar Bears, and “Truth by Repetition”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

When I did marketing for a company that created annuities for the recipients of large court damages, I was armed with alarming statistics I had gleaned from the annuity industry’s publications.  Half of the recipients of large lump sum settlements or damages from personal injury and medical negligence lawsuits had dissipated all of the funds (usually calculated to last a lifetime) within two years or less. More than 75% had blown through all the cash, often millions of dollars, within five years. These figures were accepted as fact everywhere,  and we used them profitably to persuade plaintiffs, lawyers and courts to approve annuity arrangements that would parcel out the funds over the years, keeping the money safe from needy relatives and spending sprees. Then, one day, I decided to track down the studies that were the sources of the statistics I was using.

There weren’t any. I discovered a circular trail, with various sources quoting each other. Continue reading →

Ethics Trainwreck in Kermit, Texas

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the tiny west Texas town of Kermit, just north of Mexico, an ethics train wreck is underway that may have long-term consequences far beyond the Lone Star State.

Anne Mitchell, a nurse with an impeccable record, became disturbed at the conduct of a physician at the Winkler County hospital where she worked. After unsuccessfully attempting to get hospital administrators to deal with what she believed was a matter of patient endangerment, she sent an anonymous complaint to the Texas Medical Board. This was a classic whistle-blower situation, protected by law and encouraged by the ethics code governing nurses. Unless she trumped up her accusations for a personal vendetta, she did exactly what the medical profession says she has an obligation to do, a responsible act of medical system self-policing that all too few nurses are willing to follow. Continue reading →

Beware of Ethicist Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On Ethics Alarms, as with its progenitor, The Ethics Scoreboard, commenters frequently accuse me of manipulating ethical arguments to endorse or support a political agenda. I often find such comments unfair, intellectually lazy and wrong, but please, keep making them. Avoiding a political or ideological slant is one of the most challenging tasks in rendering ethical analysis, and it is so easy (and tempting) to fall into the trap of letting bias rule reason that it helps to be regularly smacked upside the head.

Even with repeated smacks, true objectivity is nearly impossible in ethics, because of the central role played by ethical conflicts—not the ethical problem of conflicts of interest, but the philosophical problem of designating priorities among competing ethical values. Ethical conflicts require choosing which ethical value yields to another: a doctor knows a patient is dying and that nothing can be done. Is the ethical course to be honest, or to be kind? In public policy, ethical conflicts abound, and often involve deciding between two different versions of the same ethical value. Which version of “fair” is fairer, for example: allowing a talented, hard-working individual to keep the money she earns for her and her family, or for her to have to share some of that money with others, perhaps less talented and hard working, but also perhaps less fortunate, who do not have enough to survive? Ethical problems pit compassion against accountability, responsibility against forgiveness, autonomy against fairness, equity against justice. Continue reading →

After the Tebow Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother that caused so much angst and controversy before it aired turned out to be mild, understated and forgettable. Now we know why CBS felt it could use the spot to move away from its long-time ban on issue advertising during the NFL’s big game. We also know that the actual ad made the argument by abortion rights groups that the ad would be inappropriately “divisive” for an American sports ritual designed to bring us together seem even more ridiculous than it was—no mean trick.

In the ad, Quarterback Tebow and his mother never did tell the story of his birth after Pam Tebow had been counseled to terminate her pregnancy. You had to go to a website to read about it. Indeed, had the various advocacy groups that opposed the ad just kept their collective rage to themselves, few viewers would know about the pro-life aspects of the Tebow story. All of the ad’s work was done before it ran, thank to the pre-Super Bowl sputtering of NARAL, NOW, and their colleagues. Continue reading →

More Tebow Ad Ethics: Allred’s Complaint

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The much-anticipated Super Bowl ad telling the story of how quarterback Tim Tebow was born because his mother rejected a doctor’s advice to have him aborted for medical reasons is spinning off ethical issues at a dizzying rate.

Some are easily settled, as Ethics Alarms has already noted. There is nothing wrong with a Super Bowl ad raising substantive issues in the middle of beer commercials and tackles, as some have (incredibly) argued. There is nothing unethical about CBS changing its policy regarding issue-oriented commercials.  The fact that the network rejected such ads in the past does not make it hypocritical now. CBS, having ended a blanket prohibition, must now be fair and reasonable in deciding which issue ads to accept. Let’s see how it goes before we cry foul.

And there is nothing “anti-choice” about a woman’s story of how she chose not to abort her son, and is glad she did. It is not even an anti-abortion ad, unless the pro-abortion movement literally believes that it is wrong not to have an abortion. She had a choice, and she made it. The message of the ad does encourage thought about the consequences of having the procedure, which is unequivocally good.

Now, however, Hollywood lawyer and woman’s rights advocate Gloria Allred has suggested that Tebow and his mother are spinning a tale that is inspiring, powerful, and full of baloney, and she has sent CBS a letter of protest. Continue reading →

Ethics Notes on a Busy Week

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
  • Sen. John McCain, who had well-earned credibility on military matters,  released a statement after the State of the Union address saying that “it would be a mistake” to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as President Obama pledged, and added…

“This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.”

John, John, John. You have, in other interviews, stated that you served with many gay soldiers who performed their duties with distinction, so the current policy continues a form of bias and discrimination without any  justification. The fact that it may be “successful” is not sufficient reason to continue a practice that is unethical, unfair, and a violation of the principles of civil rights. Success is no excuse for violating core ethical principles; one of the primary justifications for the U.S. allowing torture, an outright violation of the Declaration of Independence, was that it was “successful,” an argument you properly rejected. Continue reading →

Dr. Tiller’s Executioner: Martyr, Monster or Ethical Murderer?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Scott Roeder was guilty of first degree murder by any legal definition. He decided that Dr. George R. Tiller had to die. He bought a gun and practiced shooting it. He studied his target, learned his habits, knew where he lived and where he went to church. It was inside that church where he finally killed Dr. Tiller after a full year of planning, shooting him in the forehead last May 31. He admitted all of this to the jury, and said he was not sorry. Short of jury nullification, a “not guilty” verdict was impossible, and there was no nullification. Roeder broke the law and was found guilty. He will probably be sentenced to life imprisonment.

I have no objections to this result. Society cannot have citizens performing executions or carrying out their own brand of vigilante justice. Scott Roeder, however, while not denying that he performed an illegal act, maintains that his act was an ethical one.

He has a point. Continue reading →