"Bill! They're putting me in foster care! How will you make THAT funny?"

Several recent ethics issues have raised the slippery slope question, which is itself a slippery slope. The rationale for any reasonable principle or act can usually be ratcheted forward in degrees until it becomes malevolent, dangerous or repugnant, including freedom, trust, loyalty, charity and honesty. Thus the easiest argument, at least for the mentally dexterous, that anything is unethical is the dreaded slippery slope.

The simple rebuttal to this is usually “let’s wait and see.” To claim that conduct is unethical for what it might lead to rather than for what it actually does is often, perhaps even usually, based on an unwarranted assumption, or a worst case scenario specifically concocted to foil otherwise unobjectionable conduct. When it is not based on an unwarranted assumption, however, is when proposed conduct or a new policy permitting it shatters a social norm or cultural standard that had previously been considered sacrosanct. In these cases, the slope isn’t merely slippery—which suggests “Be careful where you step next!”—but greased, meaning there is no longer any traction at all to stop a rapid slide to the bottom. A better cliché to use in such cases is “opening the floodgates.” Or perhaps “off a cliff.”

The recent post about the Dartmouth researchers who suggested that all manipulations of graphic images of celebrities be labeled as such is, I would argue, more floodgates than slippery slope. There is no obvious delineation point to stop the principle behind this oppressive constraint on illusion from spreading far beyond its origin. Similarly, the argument being made by the family of the mother with Stage 4 cancer that US Air is ethically obligated to refund the non-refundable tickets they could not use because of her terminal illness has no clear limits or coherent application. Are the refunds required because the mother is terminal? If she goes into remission, would the family be obligated to give the money back? What if she was only paralyzed? If the whole family was squashed by a boulder, would the airline be obligated to refund the money to their next of kin? What if the mother wounded herself terminally in a suicide attempt—would that change US Air’s supposed obligation of compassion? If so, would that mean that if the mother’s Stage 4 breast cancer occurred because she neglected to follow a physician’s recommended treatment, US Air could then refuse to refund the money without being pilloried for it? Sometimes that greased slope carries us into a swamp.

Now from Cleveland comes the story of the 200 lbs. + 8-year-old Cleveland Heights boy who has been taken from his family and placed in foster care because county case workers decided that his mother wasn’t doing enough to control his weight.  Continue reading →