dementia

Ethics Quiz: The Robot Dog

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Robot seals work too, apparently…

From a recent New York Times story:

When Linda Spangler asked her mother, in a video chat, what she would like as gift for her 92nd birthday, the response came promptly.

“I’d like a dog,” Charlene Spangler said. “Is Wolfgang dead?” Wolfgang, a family dachshund, had indeed died long ago; so had all his successors. Ms. Spangler, who lives in a dementia care facility in Oakland, Calif., has trouble recalling such history.

So Linda, who is a doctor, got her mother a dog.

Well, Mom thought it was a dog, anyway. It was a robot dog. Sensors allow it to pant, woof, wag its tail, nap and awaken, and users can feel a simulated heartbeat.

Hmmm.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Was this ethical?

Continue reading →

“ARRGH!” [Translation: “Here Are Some Oct. 1 Ethics Notes Before I Snap After A Horrible Day!’]

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

And, to make the day perfect, WordPress is forcing me to use its damn new “block” system, which I do not have the time of patience to fool with. In the immortal words of Basil Fawlty,

1. JAMA says that it’s important to help people with dementia vote.

Nearly 6 million people in the US have some form of the condition, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and they represent almost 2.5% of the 253.8 million US residents who are of voting age. The oldest voters, those aged 60 years or older, are more likely to vote than younger age groups, according to the United States Elections Project; the lion’s share of people with dementia fall into that demographic….having dementia doesn’t revoke a person’s fundamental right to cast a ballot.

“Alzheimer’s disease is progressive, and it evolves over many years. A person in the early stages, and even into the more moderate stages, still has the capacity to vote,” Beth Kallmyer, MSW, vice president of care and support for the Alzheimer Association, said in an interview.

They may have the capacity, but it unethical for them to exploit that capacity if their cognitive functions are impaired. Anyone with diagnosed dementia should voluntarily decline to vote. Such individuals are, of course, invitations for voter manipulation and fraud.

It should go without saying that it is also unethical to run for office when one is suffering from dementia,

2. I don’t understand this at all. The Commission on Presidential Debates has chosen Steve Scully, C-SPAN political editor and host of the network’s “Washington Journal” call-in program, to moderate the second presidential debate on October 15 in Miami. The puzzling part: When he was in college, Scully worked as an intern for  Joe Biden in the Senate. Later, he was  as a staff assistant in the late  Sen. Ted Kennedy’s communications office.

The background doesn’t mean Scully is necessarily biased, but how hard can if be to identify a qualified moderator who has no ties at all to either candidate? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Joe Biden, Since We’ve Been Talking About His Deflating Brain…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon man. That’s like saying you, before you got in this program, if you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not, what do you think huh? Are you a junkie?”

Joe Biden, answering CBS News’ Errol Barnett’s question about whether Biden has taken an tests to measure his cognitive ability.

Yikes.

1 Joe said just last month, “I’ve been tested and I’m constantly tested.” Is he lying, or has he forgotten?

2. If Donald Trump asked a black journalist if he was a junkie, what would that be cited as evidence of?

3. Interesting analogy. If Barnett was a junkie, then he wouldn’t want to take a drug test. And Biden doesn’t want to take a cognitive test because….?

Biden’s Brain, Part II: Betrayal And Denial

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

(Part I is here.)

The poll above was offered to her blog’s readers by Ann Althouse this morning.  Those were the early results, but they haven’t changed significantly. The fact that she felt the need to have the poll is significant, as is the fact that only 1% (its doubled, to 2%) would say that Joe Biden definitely didn’t have dementia. This isn’t a right wing rumor or organized slander, like so many of the “resistance” big lies. People have eyes and ears. They notice.

The hypocrisy demonstrated by the Democrats, who have been claiming that Trump is mentally unfit to be President, now apparently determined to nominate a man who is clinically unfit or soon will be is astounding. The only historical analogue that comes close is in 1944, hen the Democrats  went through with nominating Franklin Roosevelt, though he was deathly ill and nobody who saw him or spent any time with him could fail to know it. FDR had already been President for twelve years, though, and there was still a war on. That’s some excuse, though not much.

Today’s Democrats have none. Here’s left-wing cartoonist Ted Rall:

Now Democrats are conspiring to gaslight the American people by engineering the presidential election of a man clearly suffering from dementia, Joe Biden. This is no time to be “polite.” We are talking about the presidency. As always, we need a frank, intelligent discussion and debate about the issues and the candidates….Contrary to current ridiculous Democratic talking points, it is not ageist to point this out. One out of seven Americans over the age of 70 suffers from dementia. (Biden is 77.) If it’s ageist to talk about dementia among the elderly, it’s ageist to talk about immaturity among the young.  It is neither necessary nor possible to scientifically determine whether the former vice president has dementia. On the other hand, you don’t need an astronomer to know that the sun rises in the east. If you have encountered dementia, you know Joe Biden has it.

This may be the only time I have agreed with Ted Rall about anything.

Rall also makes the point, which I have made elsewhere, that Democrats have been trapped into supporting Biden because they believe defeating Trump is so important that they are willing to use a disabled man on the verge of incoherence to do it. That–I would say “if true” except that its truth seems undeniable—is so wrong and irresponsible that it almost defies belief. The party’s duty, any party’s duty, is to give the American people a candidate who will, in their view, be an effective President. Choosing Biden, in contrast, is like the Moors mounting the corpse of El Cid on his horse to “lead” the army during the siege of Valencia.

If the party was preparing to open the convention and take extraordinary measures to stop Bernie Sanders from leading the party to defeat on a platform of socialism, a responsible party should deem it equally urgent to block the nomination of candidate in Biden’s condition. That the party, and so many of its Trump-Deranged members and supporters, can’t or won’t see that is yet another indication of how completely hatred and anger over the 2016 election has corrupted it.

Much of the February 19 Ethics Alarms post about how hatred had driven Democrats into the hypocritical position of embracing Michael Bloomberg is applicable to the resurgence of Biden with just the substitution of names. This paragraph, however, needs no changes: Continue reading →

Biden’s Brain, Part I: The Awful Truth

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Let’s begin this topic with a stipulation: if your point is that Joe Biden’s evident dementia (or whatever it is) and the phony claim that Donald Trump is “disabled” within the very specific meaning of the 25th Amendment (this is Resistance Impeachment/Removal Plan E on the Ethics Alarms list) are equivalent issues, then you don’t want to be taken seriously in this discussion.

I yield to  few in the strength of my conviction that someone with the character, abilities and proclivities of Donald John Trump should never be elected President because such a person is a risk to the office and the nation as well as my blood pressure. However, the determination of whether such a person should be President is not mine to make alone, but the public, in what we call an election. President Trump was elected by an electorate with eyes wide open, indeed, there have been very few men, perhaps none, elected President in American history whose personalities and weaknesses were as well known to as many for as long as Trump’s. Anyone who claims that this man  has shown himself more “unfit” to hold office in any substantive way than he was when he was elected, or ten or 20 years before he was elected, is, to be blunt, lying through his or her teeth.

The 25th Amendment is about the onset of genuine disability—Lincoln as he lingered between life and death, Garfield as doctors tortured him for weeks trying to find Charles Guiteau’s bullet, Woodrow Wilson after his crippling stroke, Ike immediately following his stroke and heart attack, Reagan following his assassination attempt, not inbred inadequacy of longstanding, not Donald Trump acting like the impulsive, chaotic, intellectually sloppy asshole he has been all or most of his life. Continue reading →

Addendum: To “The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study,” Hypothetical And Poll

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study, this morning’s post, has attracted a wider range of opinion than I expected. I considered attaching a poll to the original post; now I’m going to go a step farther, and base that poll on a hypothetical of the kind that I use in my legal ethics seminars.

Speaking of those, on Tuesday, September 17, in Richmond, VA, and Wednesday, September 18, in Fairfax, VA, I’ll be presenting  “The Greatest Legal Ethics Seminar Ever Taught!” for three hours of legal ethics CLE credit to Virginia lawyers and others. The title reflects, other than my own warped sense of humor (“The Greatest Story Ever Told” is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen), the fact that the legal ethics hypotheticals being discussed cover what I have found to be many of the most contentious, fascinating legal ethics issues extant over 20 years of doing these things. Moreover, I am being joined by my friend and colleague, John May, who approached these issues from the perspective of a practical litigator as well as one who often defends lawyers accused of ethical improprieties. He’s also one combative and clever pain in the ass who loves disagreeing with me, so I recommend bringing popcorn. The details are here.

Now here’s your hypothetical:

Continue reading →

The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 72 Comments

Dr. Kevorkian was happy to help you kill yourself…

As health care costs rise and the public as a whole becomes more financially responsible for the care of individuals; as the population ages and the massive increase in health care costs in the final years and months of life becomes an increasing burden on society, and as legal abortion stays front and center as the most brutal form of utilitarianism, where a weaker and “lesser” life is deemed expendable for the well-being of others, I expect the United States culture to be drawn closer and closer to the seductive policy of legal euthanasia.  It is now legal in Washington, D.C.,  California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, Maine (as of next year), New Jersey, Hawaii, and Washington. You may note what these states all have in common….not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I believe that permitting an individual to kill another with the victim’s consent is so ripe for abuse—Dr. Kevorkian comes to mind—that it crosses an ethical line that should be thick, black, and forbidding.  The alleged consent can too easily be coerced or manufactured for the convenience of others. A recent case in the Netherlands confirms my strong reservations.

The unidentified patient, 74, had asked in writing for doctors to end her life if she had to be admitted to a nursing home, and if she thought the time was right. When she entered a home in 2016, however, though incapacitated, she appeared to have changed her mind, and gave what prosecutors called “mixed signals” about her desire to die. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz, Super Bowl Edition: Justin Timberlake’s Integrity”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

John Billingsley elaborates on the import and implications of the troubling research results regarding the brain disease CTE and participants in contact sports, especially football.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quiz, Super Bowl Edition: Justin Timberlake’s Integrity:

I agree that with 99% of NFL players and 91% of college players showing CTE on autopsy there is no ethical justification for American football and we don’t need it. Do we actually need any contact sports? CTE has been demonstrated in participants in multiple other contact sports including basketball, boxing, ice hockey, rugby, soccer, wrestling, and baseball. Unfortunately, there is not as much information available about the rates of CTE in those sports. There was an autopsy study demonstrating CTE in the brains of 21 of 66 individuals who participated in different contact sports at various levels, but no CTE in the brains of 198 controls who had no history of participating in contact sports. A study looking at high school athletes who participated in various contact sports from 2005 to 2014 found that there were about 300,000 concussions annually. That study found that the sport with the highest rate of concussions adjusted for the rate of participation was girl’s soccer. A concussion does not mean CTE will develop but repeated head injury is the etiology of CTE. Continue reading →

Your Ethics Alarms Super Bowl Guilt Trip

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

You know that by watching the Super Bowl, you’re helping to kill and cripple young men, right?

Sure you do.

You and people like you watch the Super Bowl, maybe hold parties around it, allowing the NFL to make millions of dollars selling ads and merchandise off of the most watched sporting event of the year. And, of course, the popularity of the Super Bowl makes it the year’s #1 promotion for the billion dollar mega-industry that is the National Football League, and down the line, for billion dollar corrupt big time college football, and in places like Texas and other regions warped by the “Friday Night Lights” mentality, high school football, and further down the line, youth football, where kids a young as 8 begin getting the blows to the head that will help make them confused and dysfunctional in their fifties or earlier if they play long enough…and maybe even if the don’t.

Hey, these are great nachos! Is this a microbrew? Look at that funny ad!

The film above, “Concussion Protocol,” was released this month, and shows a compilation of every reported concussion this season. Directed by Josh Begley and produced by Laura Poitras,  it is believed to be a nearly complete compilation of the NFL’s reported 281 concussions this season, the most since 2012. The NFL, which is affirmatively evil, is spinning this as a good thing, pointing out that it means that players are self-reporting their head injuries more often.

Sure. That must be it. Bravo! Problem solved. DE-Fence!
Continue reading →

Unethical TV Ad Of The Month: Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Treats

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I would call this ad “brain dead,” but that would, perhaps, be in bad taste.  Still, the wilful disregard by the NFL and its sponsors—and the public, of course—of the increasingly undeniable evidence that football kills brains is an ethics black hole.

Did Kellogg’s not read this (and similar reports)…?

From the New York Times:

Athletes who began playing tackle football before the age of 12 had more behavioral and cognitive problems later in life than those who started playing after they turned 12, a new study released on Tuesday showed. The findings, from a long-term study conducted by researchers at Boston University, are likely to add to the debate over when, or even if, children should be allowed to begin playing tackle football.

The results of the study by researchers at Boston University, published in the journal Nature’s Translational Psychiatry, was based on a sample of 214 former players, with an average age of 51. Of those, 43 played through high school, 103 played through college and the remaining 68 played in the N.F.L.

In phone interviews and online surveys, the researchers found that players in all three groups who participated in youth football before the age of 12 had a twofold “risk of problems with behavioral regulation, apathy and executive function” and a threefold risk of “clinically elevated depression scores.”

Oh, never mind, spoilsports!  This NFL play-off time! De-FENCE! De-FENCE! Let’s give support to those irresponsible parents who send their kids out to scramble their gray matter and get that CTE started! Let’s encourage those potential NFL dementia victims with a heart warming vignette about a Dad urging his young son to “Give it your best!’ prompting the lad to run roaring into combat, perhaps even to cripple someone else.

Is this Kellogg’s reasoning? Apparently so.

Brain dead. Also dead ethics alarms.