The Ad firm Adzookie will make their monthly mortgage payments for people willing to turn their homes into billboards. According to the company’s CEO, it has received over 1,000 applications from people willing to have their houses turned into something like the eye-sore in the photo.
Your Ethics Quiz: Is this unethical conduct by the company, or merely disgusting, provoking our “Ick!” reflex?
For the Unethical side, consider: Continue reading
Good...play dead, and maybe PETA will leave you alone...
I have long believed that PETA, the Norfolk, Virginia-based “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” not only gave ethics a bad name, but also people, and you might as well throw in pita bread while you’re at it. This conviction was partially based on such stunts as PETA’s using Michelle Obama in ads without her permission and offering to pay Octomom money to put a billboard on her lawn comparing herself to an overly fecund pet.
Then there is PETA’s fondness for killing puppies and kittens. Continue reading
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
Ignorance, fear and a lack of inherent respect for living things is a disastrous combination, as demonstrated by a horrible story out of Toombs County, Georgia.
At the end of January, animal rescue personnel were alerted that Alice, a 6-year old dog, was living in a 5’x8′ box, constructed of wooden boards and tin. The only sunlight that the dog could receive came through the slats and the chicken wire that covered the box from above.
Her food–mostly white bread, buns, and the occasional table scrap, was dropped in from above, as was her water. The floor of the box was caked with years of feces and urine.
The owner of the home told the rescuers that the Alice had been placed in this box because she was one of “those mean kind of dogs.” A pit bull. Continue reading
Ahh—perhaps this is how we lose our freedoms: absurdity. It’s damn hard to get indignant when you’re laughing.
Nevada has banned the wearing of chicken suits at polling places, a clear infringement of political speech. Republicans were alarmed because the front-runner in their June primary to decide who will challenge the vulnerable Harry Reid for the U.S. Senate, Sue Lowden, inspired a wave of giant chicken sightings after she opined that perhaps citizens should be able to barter for medical care, paying doctors, for example, with chickens. Now wags in chicken suits are clogging her rallies to mock her, and Democrats have launched a “Chickens for Check-ups” website. Continue reading
“In confronting their summary disposal, we see how cruelty thrives in the guise of compassion. The possibility of such collective social derangement makes intellectually coherent actions that are incompatible with moral integrity.”
——-Colin Dayan in his searing essay for the March-April “Boston Review”, about the disturbing societal implications of pit bull extermination facilitated by the collaboration of law enforcement agencies, animal protection organizations, the media and the courts. Continue reading
Brief ethics notes on a wild week…
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have an important mission. It also is a very difficult mission, because most people try to think about cruelty to animals as little as possible. We like our veal and chicken dishes; we like our pets; we want to find cures for dread diseases, and that may require animal testing. The facts about what animals experience, feel and think are not comforting to these wants and needs, so an organization dedicated to changing our attitudes toward the non-human inhabitants of Earth has to be careful, nuanced, articulate, and most of all, respectable.The duty of respectability comes with accepting such an important mission. We do not trust those we do not respect. If PETA doesn’t command respect, its mission, and the innocent and vulnerable animals it seeks to protect, are at risk. Continue reading
PETA has a new poster out, announcing with approval that Carrie Underwood, Tyra Banks, Oprah Winfrey and the First Lady are “among the most stylish and influential women in America,” and “they all refuse to wear real fur.” Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 