PHI111 - Ethics for Scientists

Since the end of the 1950s, physicians have been able to use heart-lung machines to keep people alive for whom previously there was no prospect of recovery. Shortly thereafter, it also became possible to remove their organs for transplantation purposes. For many physicians, however, this raised the question whether it could be morally right simply to take away organs from living, breathing people.
Düwell, Marcus, and Marcus Düwell.

When deciding what to do, we often face uncertainty over, confusions about, or conflicts between, our inclinations, desires, interests, and beliefs.
Ethics in Practice : An Anthology, edited by Hugh LaFollette, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2014

Philosophers use the term consequentialism to identify a general way of thinking about right and wrong and thereby provide a convenient label for a whole family of theories or possible theories in normative ethics. Consequentialist ethical theories maintain that right and wrong are a function of the consequences of our actions – more precisely, that our actions are right or wrong because, and only because, of their consequences.

When people try to decide how they should act, they often think about the consequences of their actions: they try to find the action that leads to the best overall outcome.

Rights are fundamental to contemporary ethical debates. The third edition of Ethics in Practice (here in its fourth edition) contained 1596 references to rights.

“Virtue ethics” is a technical term in contemporary Western analytical moral philosophy, used to distinguish a normative ethical theory focused on the virtues, or moral character, from others such as deontology (or contractarianism) and consequentialism. Imagine a case in which it is agreed by every sort of theorist that I should, say, help someone in need.

This chapter introduces the problem of Darwinism and morality by discussing the familiar claim that if we are entirely products of evolution we must be inherently incapable of anything but self-interested action, and therefore of genuine morality. This is often regarded by dualists as an implication of the materialist forms of Darwinism.

Finally, consider one further argument that might seem to justify the claim that natural selection cannot produce anything unselfish, and therefore that if the the gene-machine view is true we must be fundamentally selfish.

In the spring of 2012, in the town of Beiliu, China, a 95-year-old woman named Li Xiufeng was discovered by her neighbor one morning in bed showing no signs of breathing or a heartbeat. She was placed in a coffin in the den of her home so that friends and relatives could pay their respects for the next week, as is Chinese custom. Six days later, the day before her funeral, neighbors returned to Li’s home to prepare her body for the funeral. What they discovered was an empty coffin—

eath does not always come at the right time. We are all aware of the tragedies involved when death comes too soon. We are afraid that it might come too soon for us. By contrast, we may sometimes be tempted to deny that death can come too late – wouldn’t everyone want to live longer? But in our more sober moments, most of us know perfectly well that death can come too late.

In this essay I offer an argument against establishing an institutional right to die, but I do not consider how my argument fares against countervailing considerations, and so I do not draw any final conclusion on the subject. The argument laid out in this essay has certainly inhibited me from favoring a right to die, and it has also led me to recoil from many of the arguments offered for such a right. But I am very far from an all-things-considered judgment.

The notion that there is a “normal” height or a “normal” salary is a relatively new one, and it's had a profound effect on how people think about each other and themselves.

In August of 2011, Dr Carl June and his team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center reported that they had genetically engineered T cells to recognize and attack the protein CD19 located on the surface of cancerous cells. They then injected these T cells into three patients suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and, after a year’s time, two of the patients were completely cancer-free,

The article discusses the ethics of sequencing and researching the genomes of human infants, focusing on the balance between potential health benefits and the moral questions around genetic modification.

Society should embrace the use of drugs that boost brain power. That's the message from a group of neuroscientists, psychiatrists and ethicists.
A recent survey found that at some US universities, up to 25 per cent of students routinely buy Ritalin or Adderall - prescription drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder - on black markets to boost memory and concentration. The stimulant Modafinil has also been touted as a mind enhancer.
However, studies of the effect of some of these drugs on cognitive function in healthy people have shown mixed results. Henry Greely of Stanford Law School in California, and his colleagues, call for more research on this, as well as into the drugs' safety. Cognitive enhancers found to be safe and effective should be welcomed, not feared, they say (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/456702a).

As was noted in the first paragraph of the general ­ introduction to this book, Fritz Jahr was the first to use the term “bioethics” in his 1927 article, “Bio-Ethics: A Review of the Ethical Relationships of Humans to Animals and Plants” (Jahr, 1927; Sass, 2007; Goldim, 2009). In that article, Jahr used Immanuel Kant’s second formulation of his categorical imperative (which dictates that we treat other humans with respect as ends in and of themselves) and argued for a “bioethical imperative” that extended to all forms of life, not just rational human life

Nonhuman animal (“animal”) experimentation is typically defended by arguments that it is reliable, that animals provide sufficiently good models of human biology and diseases to yield relevant information, and that, consequently, its use provides major human health benefits. I demonstrate that a growing body of scientific literature critically assessing the validity of animal experimentation generally (and animal modeling specifically) raises important concerns about its reliability and predictive value for human outcomes and for understanding human physiology.

This chapter discusses the history of human experimentation, giving special attention to cases that have helped to shape ethical guidelines and policies. It discusses important ethics codes and provides an overview of U.S. federal regulations. The chapter also addresses some key concepts and principles in human research, such as informed consent, risk/benefit ratios, minimal risk, and research versus therapy.

This reprinted brochure originally appeared as Research Ethics: How to Treat People Who Participate in Research (pp. 1–15), by E. Emanuel, E. Abdoler, and L. Stunkel, 2009, Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Department of Bioethics. In Alabama from the 1930s to 1970s, researchers recruited black men to participate in a study of syphilis—a terrible disease that can cause disability and death. The researchers told the men participating that they were getting medical treatment, even though they were not. In fact, when the study began syphilis was untreatable. The researchers instead wanted to study what syphilis does to the body over time. After World War II, when a treatment—penicillin—was available for syphilis, the researchers kept the men from receiving it because they wanted to study what happened as the disease got worse.

When I was first asked to comment "philosophically" on the subject of human experimentation, I had all the hesitation natural to a layman in the face of matters on which experts of the highest competence have had their say and still carry on their dialogue. As I familiarized myself with the material, any initial feeling of moral
rectitude that might have facilitated my task quickly dissipated before the awesome complexity of the problem, and a state of great humility took its place.

This article aims to briefly present and assess the contribution of Hans Jonas to bioethics, a lively and expanding interdisciplinary field. Jonas's life spans the whole 20th century and his work is best known as a philosophy of responsibility for the technological civilization, but his contribution to health care and research ethics deserves to be more generally recognized. We claim that he made an important contribution to the birth of bioethics in the United States as a philosophical discipline 40 years ago, when Hans Jonas published a seminal essay about the ethics of human experimentation and organ transplantation.

Political communities across the world have recently sought to tackle rising rates
of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, by implementing coercive immunization programs,
or by making existing immunization programs more coercive. Many academics and
advocates of public health have applauded these policy developments, and they
have invoked ethical reasons for implementing or strengthening vaccine mandates.
Others have criticized these policies on ethical grounds, for undermining liberty, and
as symptoms of broader government overreach. But such arguments often obscure
or abstract away from the diverse values that are relevant to the ethical justifications
of particular political communities’ vaccine-mandate policies. We argue for an expansive conception of the normative issues relevant to deciding whether and how to
establish or reform vaccine mandates, and we propose a schema by which to organize
our thoughts about the ways in which different kinds of vaccine-mandate policies
implicate various values.

The issue of morality based exclusion to the patent law is discussed under
the term ethics as well. In the framework of this research, the interchangeable
use of concepts ‘morals’ and ‘ethics’ would not create any ambiguity to
understand the main issue. Ethics are defined as “the science of morals, the
department of study concerned with the principles of human duty.” Although we did not encounter a salient difference between concepts of morality and ethics within the framework of statutory texts, a terminological distinction is made by Zimmerli.

Last September saw the announcement from scientists of the first manufacture of human egg cells in the lab. As surprising as it may sound, the creation in a lab of human sex cells using stem cells has been in the works for over a decade, with earlier experiments succeeding in deriving primordial germ cells, the cells of an early embryo that eventually give rise to sperm and egg cells.

It is common to hold that a person who is subject to a great deal of suffering that cannot be alleviated would be “better off dead”. 1 So entrenched is this view that it is often held to justify both suicide and active voluntary euthanasia, with the devoutly-wished consummation of these acts being considered to be “a merciful release” that ends both “The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to”.

When does one begin to have parental obligations to another? Thanks to new reproductive technologies such as reimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) that allows the selection of a child’s traits, the question for me is an interesting one. I believe an answer to the question is relevant to reproductive ethics. When reading the literature, one gets the impression sometimes that parental obligations are generated the moment a child exists.

As Milton’s Adam observes in a fit of pique after his fall from grace, one of the things that parents do for children — analogizing God as father and mother both — is to presume to bring them into being. No informed consent is possible on the part of children-to-be, and once we are here, there is no not having been here.

The article reports on the challenges facing U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky amidst the surging coronavirus infections and crisis of public trust. Also cited are the emergence of the more contagious Omicron variant, how Walensky balances the economic and public health effects of the virus, and her efforts to restore the public's trust in science.

The article presents the author's insights on the traditional story of scientific objectivity, and the role of personal judgment on scientific research. Topics discussed include the planned March for Science, the impact of moral, political and religious opinions of a scientist on the results of scientific research, the mechanisms of grant-making and funding, peer review, and access to laboratory resources, and the politicization of science.

Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, bioethics was a prominent national issue, and an active and intensely contested political question. In 1998, human cloning was much on the agenda, with Dolly the sheep having been cloned not long before and the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans both eager for some boundaries—even if they didn’t quite agree on what those ought to be.

In a way, the regulation of experiments on humans constituted the starting point of bioethics after the Second World War. The foundation for this was laid with the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial of 1946– 1947. The way in which physicians in the Third Reich concentration camps conducted experiments on human subjects created an awareness of the need to develop standards for medical conduct, in order to make sure nothing of the kind could ever happen again. The first point of concern in this context was to establish clear boundaries for what physicians were allowed to do.
Düwell, Marcus, and Marcus Düwell. Bioethics : Methods, Theories, Domains, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/buffalostate/detail.action?docID=1092667.

The overarching ethical principle of showing respect for patients’ autonomous ability to make their own decisions is reflected in the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) Ethics Code through standards that require psychologists to provide information to, and secure consent from, consumers of psychological services (e.g., Standard 3.10). The doctrine of informed consent stems most directly from General Principle E: Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity, which urges psychologists to respect the self-determination of others. Respect for patient decision making has influenced the wording and content of other standards in the APA Ethics Code.

There is a growing recognition among scientists, government officials, research institutions, and the public that ethical conduct is essential to scientific research. Ethical conduct is important to foster collaboration, cooperation, and trust among scientists, to advance the goals of research, to and fulfill scientists’ social responsibilities, and to avoid or minimize damaging scandals resulting from unethical or illegal behavior. This chapter discusses the importance of ethics in research and the nature of scientific professionalism.

This chapter provides a historical overview of scientific publication and peer review and describes the current practices of scientific journals and granting agencies. It also examines a number of different ethical issues and concerns that arise in publication and peer review, such as quality control, confidentiality, fairness, bias, electronic publication, wasteful publication, duplicate publication, publishing controversial research, and editorial independence.

Since the 1980s, well-publicized examples of research misconduct increased public concerns and stimulated responses from government, universities, and other research institutions. Surveys indicate that the prevalence of misconduct may be larger than many researchers would like to acknowledge.