The "Last" Blog

Source: pr-square.com

            A few months ago, I wrote a post as a sort-of “halfway” point that discussed my own difficulties in writing this blog given that my personality is so straightforward and that my blog topic is so ambiguous. Now, approaching the end of my year-long blogging project, I feel that it’s time to discuss what I have learned from dealing with that struggle, and what relevance this topic will have for my life going forward.

I’ve already reflected on the obstacles I’ve encountered in writing about a topic which by nature never leads to a practical conclusion. However, although I’ve identified my own struggle with writing about ethical dilemmas, I have been torn as to whether or not this struggle is actually of any value. Overcoming personal obstacles is a noble cause, but a part of me wondered there is any additional, practical value in analyzing topics that consistently conclude in ambiguous, almost philosophical endings. Throughout this entire year, there is not a single ethical dilemma that I have discussed where I believe I could resolve the conflict. In this respect, I have reaped none of the fruits of my own labor, and arguably no fruits were even produced in the first place.

However, I've been able to reconcile my own practical beliefs with the ambiguity in this blog, and here’s why—it’s realistic.

The most important lesson I have learned from this blog is that the most serious problems in the real world are the ones most likely to have inconclusive answers. Furthermore, real people have to act on these conclusions and make important decisions based on them.

I want people reading my blog, especially the realist ones like me, to understand that ambiguous answers are not useless answers I want people to be able to use these seemingly-inconclusive conclusions to their advantage even in the most practical of applications, and draw a lesson from this experiment that the worth of an effort does not lie entirely in its result. I want people to be able to utilize the pro-con analysis structure that I have used to make informed decisions on the kinds of difficult dilemmas we are all bound to face. It’s important to be able to do this in a very real, very practical way, because there are no simple, black-and-white solutions to the critical, real-world problems that demand to be addressed today.

The Ethics of Chicago Fire

Source: nbc.com

I have a favorite show, and anyone who knows me in person knows what it is. NBC’s Chicago Fire is a drama that follows the lives of the firemen and paramedics of fictional firehouse fifty-one in Chicago. Although the show is fictional, many of the stories and themes explored in the episodes are based on real stories. Having watched every episode of the show multiple times, I’ve seen many of the very real ethical dilemmas that the show decides to retell, and this week I’ve decided to examine one of them.

On the fourth episode of the first season, the firemen are called to attend to a massive warehouse fire. They enter the warehouse and fight through the flames to rescue several homeless people and carry them to safety. The fire chief, who is in charge of the rescue operation, sees that the fire is about to flare up, and orders the firemen to exit the warehouse immediately. However, the last man to leave, Peter Mills, notices a body in the far corner of the warehouse. He follows orders and escapes the warehouse seconds before the fire flares and fills the whole building, but the unconscious homeless man dies in the explosion.

This episode highlighted the difficult position that fire chiefs are often put in: having to decide between saving more victims and putting his men at extreme risk.

This is a great ethical dilemma to examine, because its premised on the fact that fire fighters are already performing a noble deed by trying to rescue people and put out fires. In this case, it is not good vs. evil, but rather which decision yields the most positive result. 

The Ethics of Pollution

Source: thehindu.com

One of the most critical issues of the 21st century has been (and will continue to be) environmental awareness and resource conservation, and one of the most critical areas to address these issues will be in the developing world. There is an extremely controversial argument raging between developed and developing nations regarding international pollution rights. Historically, developing countries have no done so in an environmentally friendly way. The United States is a poster child for this, especially considering the environmental impacts of the Industrial Revolution. Now, as new countries begin to expand and develop themselves, they feel restricted by outside parties which argue that they cannot afford to be as environmentally careless as past development arcs have been.

From an ethical standpoint, it seems extremely unethical to hold currently-developing countries to a different standard than already-developed nations--its almost like class-warfare on an international scale. Industrializing while also maintaining environmental diligence may not be impossible but it is certainly more difficult and expensive. Developing nations argue that they are wasting resources on trying to be environmentally friendly, which by default slows their economic growth. Therefore, many people in developing nations believe that they should be able to pollute just as much as past developed nations already have and should not be held to a stricter international standard for pollution.

However, many also claim that newly-developing nations simply cannot afford to be as environmentally careless as past nations, and that the greater good would be to preserve the environment of the world which we all live in. Also, developing nations may have external incentives to be environmentally-friendly in their development, as it will help them to thrive in a world which is almost certainly heading in a sustainable direction.

Hopefully, these two groups will be able to come to an agreement that will allow for individual nation growth and the conservation of the environment, because such an agreement is the only viable, sustainable solution going forward.

The Ethics of Prositution

Prostitution. Few other words have such a heavy, negative stigma attached to them. The concept of offering sexual services in exchange for money seems extremely unsavory to say the least, but is it truly unethical?

In theory, prostitution does not immediately run into major ethical obstacles. The idea of two consenting adults exchanging money for a service is the basis for many other legal enterprises such as eyebrow waxing and theater performances. In this case, the service being exchanged is sex, which is also not unethical in itself. Therefore, arguably, putting these two together should not immediately cause any ethical complications. In fact, prostitution is legal in several countries including Germany and Hungary.

However, prostitution in practice creates several issues that are unarguably unethical, such as the sex trade, where people are unwillingly kidnapped from their homes and families and forced to prostitute themselves to the financial benefit of an employer who exploits them. Even in places where prostitution is illegal, underground sex trade markets exist and are creating huge problems for law enforcement authorities who are trying to shut them down. In many places, especially where prostitution is underground and unregulated, it is nearly impossible to ensure the fair and equitable treatment of the prostitutes, which leads to unfair and sometimes dangerous conditions for employees. All of these unethical phenomenon are tried-and-true consequences of the current prostitution environment, and many argue that the only way to eliminate these serious concerns is to eliminate prostitution itself.

However, Many argue that many of the problems of prostitution, including the underground sex trade, could be eliminated or significantly reduced through legalization which would allow for regulation of the practice. Therefore, the legalization issue of prostitution remains a highly relevant and extremely concerning ethical dilemma.

Shakespeare's Hamlet as an Ethical Dilemma

            As of late, I’ve had the pleasure of reading Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark in my English class. This play has prompted me to consider an ethical dilemma of a different nature than I normally think about, namely, about the ethical and unethical qualities of the main character of the play, Hamlet.

           Hamlet is clearly established to be the “good guy” in this play. For those of you rusty or unfamiliar with the plot of Hamlet, it basically follows the plot Hamlet carries out to revenge the death of his father, King Hamlet, who was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. In the play, Hamlet’s quest for revenge can certainly be seen as a noble act against an unethical character. However, certain aspects and consequences of Hamlet’s elaborate scheme also lend themselves to a more unethical interpretation.

            For the Hamlet-as-ethical argument, there is the perspective that Hamlet is doing a very honorable thing for his father to his own detriment. The picture of a Hamlet as a restorer-of-justice is a valid one in that he seeks to punish a man who has done something unethical by poisoning his own brother. Hamlet could just as easily have ignored his ghost-father’s plea for vengeance with no harm to himself. In fact, it can certainly be argued that without the vengeance plot and the consequential madness, Claudius would never have arranged for Hamlet’s death. However, to do so would be choosing to essentially ignore a highly unethical act (murder) as well as the final wish of his father. In this way, he has punished the unethical treatment of another character and avoided the unethical treatment of his own father at the consequence of losing his own life. Perhaps one of the best examples is Hamlet’s choice to not kill Claudius while he is praying and vulnerable.  Arguably, a completely unethical character would have taken that opportunity.

            However, Hamlet’s character is far from perfect, which is why he makes such a good ethical dilemma. Although he is the clearly established “hero” figure of this play, Hamlet’s direct actions and the indirect consequences of them have very unethical effects on the people around him. For example, in the bedroom scene with his mother, Hamlet stabs Polonius and kills him. Although Hamlet did not intend to kill Polonius, and instead believed that he had stabbed Claudius, his intention was murder either way which is far from ethical. Furthermore, his response to Polonius’ death is hardly remorseful: “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell./ I took thee for thy better” (Act. 3 Sc. 4 Line: 32-33).Another unethical consequence of Hamlet’s actions in the play is the death of almost every other character. Hamlet personally kills Laertes and Claudius and his plot/feigned madness is indirectly responsible for the deaths of Ophelia, Gertrude, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. Finally, in response to the argument that not killing Claudius immediately, it is important to note than in the actual scene Hamlet’s reasoning for restraint is not honor but the fear that if killed during prayer Claudius would go to Heaven instead of Hell. In this way, Hamlet’s actions arguably cause much more harm than good, and therefore, arguably, his character has a very unethical aspect as well.

  

          The fact that Hamlet’s character is so controversial from an ethical standpoint speaks to the skill of Shakespeare as a playwright. Characters with ethical ambiguity have more depth and complexity than characters clearly fall into a good/bad category, and in this particular play, Hamlet’s ambiguity is what helped to this play one of Shakespeare’s most loved and well-known works. 

The Ethics of Human Organ Markets

As I have already brought up before, I have a strong interest in the medical field, and therefore I would like to spend this post discussing one of the most controversial issues in medicine: the purchase and sale of human organs.

When people mention human organ “markets”, they’re usually talking about the secretive, underground trade where people sell the rights to a non-vital organ, most commonly a kidney, in exchange for money. The process is notoriously risky and unsavory, and highly illegal almost everywhere (a notable exception being in Iran). Is it no surprise therefore, that organ trading is widely considered dubious at best by ethical standards. However, it is important to note that the consequences of organ selling are not exclusively negative, and that the amount of good an organ can do for a patient desperately in need of a transplant arguably lends it some ethical qualifications as well.

To start off with an argument for why the organ trade could be at least partially ethical, I point immediately to the over 80,000 Americans who are currently awaiting a kidney transplant. Most people know of the grueling waiting process that a transplant patient must go through to even hope of getting lucky enough to receive an available (not to mention compatible) organ. The bottom line is that the current supply of donated kidneys is not nearly enough to satisfy the current demand, and many people are dying not from medical inability (a kidney transplant surgery is hardly a new or uncommon technique) but from the more simple and tragic absence of an available kidney. Most people simply aren’t motivated to donate a kidney unless prompted by the sickness of a loved one. An organ market, which motivates people through currency, is what many people argue is the solution to this problem. Organ trading could vastly increase the supply of kidneys and other transplantable organs available, potentially saving thousands of lives every year, clearly an ethical result.

However, those who oppose organ trading from an ethical standpoint are still numerous for several reasons. The key argument they reference is that the people who are providing the organs for sale are almost exclusively the extremely poor. Kidney markets are thriving in impoverished areas such as in India, where kidneys can net their previous owners around $3000. That rate is twice as much in slightly better off Iran, where a kidney goes for around $6000.  In this way they argue that any ethical benefit to the wealthy transplant patients is offset but the coercion and sacrifice of the poor. People in poverty without other sources of income or who otherwise struggle to make ends meet could be forced into a situation where selling an organ becomes the only way to make some money. Furthermore, experts argue that allowing organ trading would increase the amount of organ theft that already occurs in some impoverished areas, where people are kidnapped and killed for their organs. In this way, it is easily arguable that although in theory organ trading is perfectly ethical, in practice it has much darker and more unethical consequences.

Many people are searching for a way to ensure that any potential organ market would be forced to operate ethically, but currently there are no viable suggestions. What do you guys think? Is there a possibility for a more ethically-operated organ market in the future?

The Ethics of Clinical Trials and the Placebo Effect

Source: alzinfo.com

As an aspiring physician, one of the aspects of the scientific field that I have found most fascinating is medical research. However, this fascination forces me to acknowledge the ethically-challenging issue that that many researchers have come across, specifically those that revolve around clinical trials for medical drugs.

The most pertinent ethical focus-point of clinical trials involves the use of placebo measures. These measures are taken to account for a common confounding variable called the Placebo Effect, in which patients who believe they are receiving a helpful treatment experience a health benefit that is more due to mental state than the actual effects of a drug. It is critical for scientists to account for this phenomenon in order to accurately determine the beneficial and harmful capabilities of the developing medicines, however, the only way they can do this involves a very ethically-challenging practice of withholding information from patients.

Since the Placebo Effect is a direct result of patients believing that they are receiving a helpful treatment, it is necessary for researchers to administer a fake or placebo treatment to certain clinical trial participants in order to gauge whether or not any observed benefits of a drug go beyond the effects of the placebo phenomenon. Therefore, there is a huge ethical concern due to the fact that patients involved in a clinical trial may be receiving a useless treatment without their knowledge.

However, on the other hand, all clinical trial participants are made familiar with this practice and agreement to the potential of being chosen for a placebo group in a clinical trial. So while patients may never directly know that that they are in a control group, they agree to the possibility of such a thing happening. Furthermore, advocates of this practice point out the critical role placebo measures play in trials which allows scientists to develop more advanced, helpful drugs than ever before.

So do the benefits of placebo measures in clinical testing outweigh the ethical concerns? Interested to hear your thoughts below.

The Ethics of Collegiate Sports

Source: scarborough.com

With the Olympic Games currently taking place in Sochi, I thought it would be appropriate to examine a sports-related issue as the subject of this week’s ethical dilemma: collegiate athletics.

College sports are already a huge and rapidly expanding facet of American entertainment and media. NCAA leagues have become more popular than ever with millions of viewers tuning in to watch with nearly as much enthusiasm as the professional levels. Student athletes are feeling the full effect of this increasing attention, and as a result have provoked a very ethically challenging discussion: should student athletes be paid?

Due to the increased popularity of collegiate athletics, student-athletes are generating greater amounts of revenue than ever before. However, due to the rules of the system in which they play, no student athlete ever sees a penny of this revenue. Considering the long hours of practice, academic obligations, and high performance expectations of these young athletes, many argue that they deserve to benefit from the financial potential of their abilities. Especially in recent years, where college programs have raking in more revenue than ever before, it seems unethical that a student athlete could be paid nothing in comparison to a professional athlete making millions.

However, some argue that student-athletes are compensated in other ways for their work. For example, many student athletes receive lucrative scholarships to the universities that they play for. Furthermore, some argue that the logistics of paying student athletes would be impossible to deal with as well as intrinsically unfair. While some schools have very profitable athletic programs, many others don’t. In fact, some collegiate athletics programs, especially for less-popular sports, are losing money. In these cases, it would be impossible for the university to compensate athletes at all let alone to a comparable extent of the more profitable schools. Finally, the critical ethical component against paying students athletes lies in the nature of the universities. Some claim that since the purpose of universities is to educate students, paying student athletes would destroy what is already a compromised system of student-athlete recruitment and would sacrifice the educational benefit to athletes in the name of profit. Basically, it would be a very ethically-dubious decision.

As someone with my own athletic high-school experiences, I can certainly attest to the long hours of practice and high expectations that burden student athletes. I can only imagine the increased intensity of the burdens at a collegiate level, and therefore sympathize heavily with the student athletes. However, I also recognize the serious ethical and logistical issues that arise with the option of compensating these athletes monetarily. Hopefully, universities and their hard-working student-athletes will eventually be able to come to an ethical compromise which will provide a fairer outcome for the players. 

First Semester Reflection

            This semester of blogging showed me many of the challenges that came along with viewing the world through an ethical lens, but it also yielded many of the rewards. My choice of blog topic was different from most of my classmates, many of whom chose long-held interests or topics of previous experience. Ethics is not a long-held fascination of mine, but rather a side-interest that I felt this project would allow me to explore.

            My process for each blog piece was standard. First, I determined a topic to write about. Whenever possible, I picked out situations from my own life, but most of my topics came in the form of news articles. After choosing a subject, I identified the ethical angles involved and did a pro/con analysis. This was harder to do when I had my own clear stance on the issue. For example, on the Pillars of Islam post, I had to ethically justify censorship of an educational Islam poster which I strongly believed had every right to exist. Finally, for each scenario I had to figure out what the purpose of examining the situation was in the first place and ended the post on that note.

            Although many of my posts were on news articles, my favorite ones were the situations pulled from my own experiences. Each case was something I had struggled with personally which made them much more fulfilling to talk about than any of the news articles. For example, my post about the Canned Food Drive was extremely personal and allowed me to examine my own choices from an ethical standpoint. It became my favorite because it helped me realize that the compromise I came to over which types of food to buy for the drive was the most ethical solution, and resolved any conflict I felt over having to make such a decision.  Although on a more micro-scale than mall bombings or affirmative action policies, these posts felt more important to me personally.

            Although I was always interested about the topics I wrote about, ethics as a lens in general has turned out to be a challenging theme to blog about for me. I am a straightforward person who likes clear-cut answers and viable results, and I discovered early on that my exploration of ethics was not going to yield either of these things. The nature of ethics is a struggle between right and wrong, and in none of the scenarios I discussed was I able to determine which was which. Every dilemma had valid arguments from every perspective: even the parents who protested the display of an educational Islam poster were ethically justified in not wanting their children exposed to religion in schools. Every post I made started with an ethical dilemma and ended as an ethical dilemma because no clear solution was ever possible. This was frustrating because part of me felt like the work I was doing was fruitless. What was the purpose of examining these scenarios if I couldn't determine the right thing to do in the end? However, I eventually came to understand the value of examining problems without black-and-white solution. I stopped searching for the absolute rights and wrongs and started to question what ethical stances should be prioritized. This shift had a very meaningful impact on my analytical thought process.

            Beyond my own experience with blogging, I also have a great appreciation for the blogs that my classmates have created over this semester. My favorite blog to read has been Jack’s blog about devils advocacy. My favorite post of his was the one he wrote about the use of offensive language in rap music. I resonated strongly with his point that rappers may be “trying to be offensive, making it all the more appropriate. The number one priority is for a speaker to make their message clear and intended. Considering the array of meanings these words have accumulated in 21st century conversation, and their expressive, colorful nature, there should be no reason why we can't accept their places in our vernacular”. Before reading his post, I had resolutely disagreed with the use of such language in music because it seemed crude and unnecessary; his post completely changed my mindset and allowed me to see the complex choices that some rappers were making in being so purposely offensive. His posts consistently challenged my own viewpoints, which is not an easy thing to do and gave me a great respect for his blog.

            Overall, this experience has been very beneficial and I look forward to continuing to examine the world and my own life through this lens next semester. 

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The Ethics of Life-Support and Pregnancy

Source: nytimes.com
Husband of Marlise Munoz, Eric Munoz

           This week, I’d like to take a look at a situation that comes up frequently in an ethical context—but with a twist. Marlise Munoz was 33 when she collapsed in her kitchen in Fort Worth Texas this past Friday. A blood clot in her lungs put her in the ICU at John Peter Smith and eventually led to a declaration of her brain death. Her family was devastated, but was fully prepared to carry out Munoz’s previously decided wishes to not be kept on life support—that is until the State of Texas stopped them. The doctors informed the family that Munoz was 14 weeks pregnant, and that since Texas law forbids the removal of life-sustaining care from pregnant women, the doctors could not obey the family’s wishes to remove Munoz’s life-support.

            The State of Texas is not alone with its stance on this topic. Thirty-one other states have similar laws restricting physicians’ ability to remove life-sustaining care from terminally-ill pregnant women. The ethical argument is that unlike most life-support cases, which are already controversial, these situations have two lives at stake: the mother’s and the unborn child’s. Texas law is one among the strictest policies in forbiding life-support termination regardless of the stage of pregnancy, but the ethical case still stands. Although cases are few and far between, doctors believe that as long as Munoz is kept alive, the fetus could still develop normally. R. Phillips Heine, Director of maternal fetal medicine at Duke University, says of the case “As far as fetal development, as long as we can control delivery of blood to the fetus and make sure the mother is nutrient-enriched, and as long as the mother's got enough glucose and oxygen, she can serve as a vessel. . . . If they can get to a reasonable gestation, there's potential for a very good outcome”. Ethically, the law claims it is necessary to respect the unborn fetus’ life as an individual person, and that therefore Munoz must be kept alive for the pregnancy.

            However, the other perspective to consider is that maintaining Munoz’s life support goes directly against her own wishes as well as her family’s.  Munoz decided before her accident that she did not want to remain on life-support if she was ever declared brain dead, and her family not only agrees with this wish but also feels strongly about carrying it out on behalf of Munoz. Ethically, they claim it is their decision and that the State of Texas has no right to interfere. Furthermore, they claim that the hospital is misinterpreting the law to be stricter than intended. The law calls forbids the removal of “life-sustaining treatment” from a pregnant patient, which arguably applies to comatose and vegetative patients but not brain-dead patients like Munoz, who is legally already dead. Either way, the family claims that it is unethical to disregard their wishes and prolong their agony over their daughter’s death.

            This story has been gaining publicity quickly over the last few days and is prompting ethical debates among experts all over the country. Texas will likely be receiving a lot of scrutiny for this as the Munoz family continues to fight the life-support law in order to comply with their daughter’s wishes. Life-support is a controversial issue to begin with, but do the specific details of this case (brain-death, patient’s wishes, pregnancy, etc.) make all the difference?