Debatables

The Ethicist: Academia

2014-03-31T07:43:00.001-04:00

An academic twofer this week:

"I am a public-school teacher with a limited budget for supplies. Is it unethical to illegally download copyrighted instructional materials for use in my class?"

"I am a graduate student at a state university. One of four required texts for a course was written by the professor, and the subject matter of the text is also the content of his lectures. A significant portion of my grade is based on a "review" I write of his text. Is it ethical to require students to buy a book that you wrote? Aren't I already paying tuition for this professor's expertise and knowledge?"

-- From The Ethicist, 3/30/14

The Ethicist: Wild Horses

2014-03-24T19:09:00.003-04:00

"Despite their romantic appeal, horses are an invasive species on this continent with few natural predators. In the United States, it's illegal to kill a wild horse on public lands. Yet wild horses can have destructive grazing behavior, and indigenous grazers and browsers (deer, for example) presumably have to compete with them for land. Advocates for wild horses like to compare the ecological impact of horses with that of cattle, but that's sort of like saying we should protect the Asian long-horned beetle because it kills fewer trees than lumber mills do. Is it unethical to protect wild horses?"

-- From The Ethicist, 3/23/14

The Ethicist: Woody

2014-03-17T18:12:00.001-04:00

"I was discussing with a friend whether it is permissible to boycott Woody Allen's films in the wake of the sexual-abuse allegations. We both thought it would be wrong to further empower someone who may have sexually abused a child. But our legal system is built on the principle that the accused are innocent until proved guilty, and preserving that value is important whether or not you believe the allegations. Is it permissible in this case to boycott, or should we presume innocence?"

-- From The Ethicist, 3/16/14

The Ethicist: Tipping

2014-03-11T18:15:00.001-04:00

"My daughter works with other teenagers in the coat-check room at a recreation center. The owner of the facility will sometimes empty their tip jar and distribute a portion of the earnings among the rest of the staff, including the kitchen. My daughter feels as if she's being used as 'tip-bait.'"

-- From The Ethicist, 3/9/14

The Ethicist: In the Home

2014-03-02T21:15:00.001-05:00

"I am an advocate for nursing-home residents. A new technique to control the wandering of dementia patients involves placing black floor mates in front of unsafe areas, such as outside exists. Due to a fear of falling, persons with dementia will not walk on dark spaces on the floor (they tend to see them as holes). This is an alternative to antipsychotic drugs and lockdown units. Since this technique uses fear and a disability to guide behavior, but with the intent of safety, is it ethical?"

-- From The Ethicist, 3/2/14

The Ethicist: Online Activity

2014-02-24T18:51:00.002-05:00

"I recently realized a colleague posts several times a day to the website Reddit. If the opinions he shares on this site are about his boss or his work environment (or even reveal his political leanings), he could potentially lose his current contract and have a hard time getting a new position in our insular field. I find this colleague to be immature and ill suited for our profession -- he seems to spend most of the day posting on Reddit -- and some of his posts have made his identity obvious to me. Do I have an ethical obligation to tell him that this behavior could hurt his career?"

-- From The Ethicist, 2/23/14

The Ethicists: Shootout in the ER Corral

2014-02-17T15:05:00.003-05:00

"My emergency unit handled a man who had been shot in the leg in the early hours of the morning. The trauma surgeons refused to have him transferred to the ward for wound management because they believed the victim would be pursued by his assailants, thereby posing a safety risk to staff members and patients. The police in the E.R. declined to pat down the injured man for weapons, as they were not legally empowered to do so. The man as retained in emergency for 12 hours. The emergency unit, which has an open-door policy for all comers 24/7, would most likely be the first place that assailants would look for an injured man. Are there ethical ramifications with the transfer of violent risk?"

-- From The Ethicist, 2/16/14

The Ethicist: A Tip for You

2014-02-10T15:27:00.002-05:00

"When an airline loses my luggage and then locates it several days later and has someone deliver it to my home and hour and a half from the airport, am I expected to tip the delivery driver? On the one hand, I feel as if the bag getting lost was not the delivery driver's fault and he should therefore not be punished for the airline's mistake -- but on the other hand, I am furious at the airline for the massive inconvenience caused by their mistake and don't feel that I owe anything more to anyone."

-- From The Ethicist, 2/9/14

The Ethicist: Advertising

2014-02-03T19:05:00.003-05:00

"Our subconscious beliefs, which we cannot easily understand or change, motivate many of the decisions we make. Some companies use manipulative branding techniques that create untrue associations between their products and some deep human desires -- like sex or social status -- with the goal of having the viewer establish this connection unconsciously. The desired result, presumably, is that the consumer will then buy the product with the misguided intent of fulfilling said advice. Is this practice unethical?"

-- From The Ethicist, 2/2/14

The Ethicist: The Will

2014-01-27T18:13:00.003-05:00

"Recently, my aunt died and quite unexpectedly willed my sisters a substantial amount of money. I received nothing (and no explanation why). My sisters chalk it up to our aunt's dementia. I believe that it goes much deeper. But all of that is speculation. Both sisters readily acknowledge that I did not deserve the snub, but they've made no offer to share. Should they share any of their inheritance with me?"

-- From The Ethicist, 1/26/14

The Ethicist: Your Cheatin' Funeral

2014-01-20T21:07:00.003-05:00

"My good friend just died. In the last weeks of his lucidity, he told me he absolutely wanted his mistress of many years to attend his memorial service. He relayed a few messages through me to her, as he lay dying. His wife did well in her role as caregiver, running an in-house hospice for him. But their marriage was -- by his account and all available evidence -- in shambles for years. His wife knew the mistress existed, and only in the waning months of his life did my friend sever the extramarital relationship (in order to die with less complexity at home). There will be a funeral, hosted by his family. The dilemma: Enact the expressed will of my friend and ensure the mistress is present or -- given the wife's emotional fragility and proneness to angry outbursts -- enact my friend's constant goal of peace and simplicity for his child?"

-- From The Ethicist, 1/19/14

The Ethicist: Knowledge

2014-01-06T18:33:00.002-05:00

"Some knowledge about hypothermia comes from brutal Nazi medical experiments conducted on prisoners of war. Considering the data came from the destruction of others' lives, are there ethical issues when modern-day scientists use it? Could it be considered a form of collaboration with the Nazis? Or does the origin of the data matter if the data is useful? Declaring the data off-limits could lead to preventable deaths, while using the data seems cold-heartedly clinical."

-- From The Ethicist, 1/5/14

The Ethicist: Activism

2013-12-16T21:16:00.002-05:00

"For my daughter's high-school biology class, the students are required to take a public action addressing climate change. They have a wide range of options of what they can do: write a letter to a public official, design a website, develop a public-service announcement or organize a flash mob. They are required to submit proof that they presented their work publicly -- that is, that they mailed the letter, launched the website, etc. Is it ethical for the school to require the students to speak publicly on a specific issue? Or even to give extra credit for doing so? Does the students' right to free speech also give them not to speak publicly on this topic?"

-- From The Ethicist, 12/15/13

The Ethicist: The Running Man

2013-12-03T15:40:00.002-05:00

"My friend is running for political office. He is soliciting donations personally from friends and has asked me to contribute. I want to support him as a friend, but I don't believe in his platform. If I didn't know him, I wouldn't vote for him. How do I support my friend without supporting policies I don't believe in?"

-- From The Ethicist, 12/1/13

The Ethicist: Feed Me, Seymour

2013-11-25T17:43:00.001-05:00

"I believe medical professionals should act ethically. However, I'm not sure it's unethical to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike. Setting aside the issues associated with incarceration (and Guantanamo Bay in particular), is it ethical to allow a prisoner to die of starvation, even if that is his/her choice? Or is it more ethical to force-feed them? Most suicides are, at least in part, caused by depression or other mental-health issues. I also realize that prisoners choosing starvation may be making a political statement, and it might be unethical to squelch their political speech. What do you think?"

-- From The Ethicist, 11/24/13

The Ethicist: Pay to Play

2013-11-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

"My granddaughter is being asked to pay more than $2,000 to be on a traveling sports team. The coach of her high school team, who also coaches the unaffiliated traveling team, is asking for the payment as a condition of my granddaughter's participation on the regular high school squad. Is this unethical behavior by the coach? Is it proper for the person paying the fee (me) to bring this issue to the attention of the school system? How do I avoid retribution by the coach against my granddaughter?"

-- From The Ethicist, 11/17/13

The Ethicist: The End of the Affair

2013-11-11T11:05:00.002-05:00

"I manage a boutique retail shop and buy my products from various local distributors. I have never felt it wrong to steer business away from sales reps who serviced our account poorly or were too pushy or rude. Is it wrong, however, to steer business away from a rep who has always done a very good job, and who was actually a very good friend, but who has done something that I find reprehensible? The offense being that he cheated on his wife."

-- From The Ethicist, 11/10/13

The Ethicist: It Was a Pleasure to Burn

2013-11-07T19:45:00.001-05:00

"I help run a college TV network that recently held a promotional event where we destroyed a large number of VHS tapes to celebrate an upgrade. The tapes were all either ours (and already digitized) or donated explicitly for the purpose of destroying them. Some people were upset, even publicly comparing it to a book burning. Does it make sense to see a book burning as wrong but a tape smashing as acceptable? Is there a moral component to destroying one’s own property?"

-- From The Ethicist, 11/1/13

The Ethicist: Golden Rule

2013-10-27T22:09:00.001-04:00

"The Golden Rule (usually defined as 'One should treat others as one would like to be treated') is attractive to people as a guiding principle for ethical conduct. However, I feel that in our diverse, modern world, it is less than ideal. By assuming other people should be treated the way I want to be treated, it imposes my preferences and values on those around me. Wouldn't a better rule be 'One should treat others as they want to be treated'?"

-- The Ethicist, 10/27/13

The Ethicist: Riding the Train

2013-10-21T17:42:00.001-04:00

"Is it unethical to not rouse someone who is sleeping on the subway, and may therefore miss his or her stop? It seems like the proper thing to do, but the person may not want to be woken up. It could incite an altercation."

-- From The Ethicist, 10/20/13

The Ethicist: Scholarships

2013-10-16T16:37:00.005-04:00

"I am applying for various graduate programs and have been looking at a merit-based scholarship for people born with severe hearing loss. I come from a wealthy family, and my parents have assured me that they will pay for my graduate degree. I also have very high-functioning hearing thanks to my access to expensive hearing aids and speech therapy. Is it unethical to apply for merit-based aid, specifically one centered on a disability, when I have the means to pay for my education already?"

-- From The Ethicist, 10/13/13

The Ethicist: Wills and Parents

2013-10-07T10:44:00.000-04:00

I thought both of this week's questions were interesting.

"A family member died last winter and named me and my sister the heirs to his estate. In a letter accompanying the will (but not part of it), he asked us to donate several thousand dollars to certain organizations. Some of these are extremely right-wing groups, which we feel border on the fringe: paranoiac with no objectivity, with ties to militant political organizations. We feel conflicted about this - we want to honor our relative's wishes but really take offense to some of these groups."

"I was diagnosed with prostate cancer three years ago and chose not to tell my parents. I was concerned that my mother's reaction would interfere with my healing and her own well-being. Now that the cancer is gone, I finally told my parents - but instead of being happy I'm alive, they were miffed that I kept it a secret. Was I wrong?"

-- From The Ethicist, 10/6/13

The Ethicist: Science

2013-09-29T17:51:00.000-04:00

"I frequently encounter scientific evidence misused and misinterpreted to advance ideological viewpoints. As a scientist, what is my ethical obligation to confront pseudoscience and anti-science attitudes? Is there a difference in how I should engage relatives, co-workers, or the Internet community?

-- From The Ethicist, 9/29/13

The Ethicist: Yard Sales

2013-09-24T19:01:00.001-04:00

"Is it ethical to buy something at a yard sale or a flea market at the seller's asking price if you know the value of the item to be significantly higher than what is being asked? Let's say, for example, someone is selling an old comic book worth thousands of dollars but asks for only a quarter because he or she does not know the true value. Is it incumbent on the seller to do his or her research? Is the seller does not, is it fair game?"

-- From The Ethicist, 9/22/13

Ethicist: Paint Your Wagon

2013-09-15T19:07:00.004-04:00

"A local charity frequently leaves a flier on my door advising that a crew will be in my neighborhood painting house numbers on the curb. The fliers stress that this can help emergency services find my house. It also states that the painters are "licensed by the city," suggesting some official sanction to their work. It requests that if I do not want the paint job, it is my responsibility to tape a notice to the curb. What obligation do I have to pay if I don't opt out and the curb is painted anyway?"

-- From The Ethicist, 9/15/13