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Ethics

Are some ethicists really really ethical?

In this blog recently Simon Rippon discussed the empirical evidence collected by Eric Schwitzgebel that suggests that perhaps ethicists are no more ethical in their behaviour than non-ethicists. A survey of academics in the US reveals that philosophers do not think that their peers specialising in ethics behave any better than those who do not study ethics. Self-described ethicists condemn meat-eating more than their peers, but their actual eating behaviour appears similar to non-ethicists. And, paradoxically, more ethics textbooks appear to go missing from libraries than non-ethics books.

As Simon noted, there are some reasons to avoid jumping from this evidence to the conclusion that the study of normative ethics is of no help in the living of a virtuous and ethical life. But even if we accept that on average ethicists are no better citizens than anyone else, it seems that at least in some cases deliberation about ethical issues leads individuals to make decisions that are highly laudable.

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Switzerland gets tough on suicide clinics

The Swiss
government (the Federal Council) has recently announced its intention to crack
down on “suicide tourism” and to severely restrict the activities of suicide clinics like Dignitas and
Exit, which have regularly made the headlines outside Switzerland in the last
few years (particularly Dignitas), as foreigners make up a large proportion of
the hundreds of people they help to die every year. The government is proposing two draft Bills for public deliberation until March. The first option is an outright ban on suicide clinics; were it to become law, clinics like Dignitas and Exit would simply have to close down. Such an extreme measure, however, doesn’t have the favors of most members of the Federal Council, and probably won’t have those of the Parliament either. The second option is more likely to prove popular, and I will thus focus on it: it would involve much stricter regulations – rather than a ban – being imposed on the activities of these clinics. Violations of those regulations would involve sanctions of up to five years in prison.

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Speaking truth to power

The sacking of Professor David Nutt from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has led to a spirited row between politicians and scientists. Colleagues in ACMD are resigning, refusing to be used as mere rubber stamps for pre-determined agendas. The home secretary seems to want to reorganize it to his liking.

The origin of the conflict is Nutt's staunch harm-reduction and evidence based policy position: he thinks drugs should be legally classified by the harm they do, not so much by political expediency. Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than cannabis, taking ecstasy appears to be less risky than horse riding (when counting injuries and death). Hence he has criticised policies ministers for upgrading medically less harmful drugs. While certainly controversial in the anti-drug community his arguments appear to be based on solid science. As a scientist he should also sound the alarm if the government is "devaluing and distorting" the scientific evidence.

Alan Johnson sees things differently: "He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy." The role of an advisor is only to advice, while the government decides policy. But if the policy is against the evidence, should not the advisor advise to change the policy?

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“Trust Me, I’m an Ethicist”

A paper forthcoming in the philosophy journal Mind inquires into perceptions about the ethics of ethicists. The paper reports on a survey that asked philosophers their opinions about the moral behaviour of ethicists compared with the behaviour of philosophers who specialize in other fields. Majorities of both the ethicist and non-ethicist respondents did not think that ethicists behaved any better than other philosophers. While ethicists were somewhat optimistic about other ethicists, with a larger number opining that they behaved better than other philosophers than that they behaved worse, non-ethicists were nearly evenly split between these views. We might reasonably expect that ethicists in general would be, on average, more practiced at moral reflection than other philosophers, and arguably more skilled at it – if not to begin with, then at least as a result of the practice. So the results of the survey suggest that philosophers on the whole do not think that more moral reflection improves moral behaviour. This invites the question: What, then, are ethicists good for?Read More »“Trust Me, I’m an Ethicist”

Protecting our borders with snake oil

The UK Borders Agency has recently come under fire for looking into the use of DNA tests and isotope analysis to determine the true nationality of asylum seekers. It is not just refugee support groups who are outraged, scientists are equally upset (perhaps more). The problems are many: there is no reason to think ancestry and ethnicity fits with nationality, the relevant genetics and isotope data is noisy, the research may not have been vetted for reliability, and it is not inconceivable that noise in the tests could be used as excuses for dismissing people who actually have valid asylum reasons (like linguistic tests occasionally do).

The project is unfortunately just the latest example that governments may be too eager to buy snake oil: on this blog I have previously criticized the use of voice-based lie detectors, the legal use of fMRI to determine guilt, ethics for military robots, pre-emptive DNA testing and electronic voting machines. The problem here is not that these technologies can't work, but that they are deployed far earlier than any careful demonstration that they actually work well enough to fulfil their purpose. It is a "science fact" problem: it is hard these days to tell what has proven to work, what is being developed and what remains a theoretical possibility. Especially when it is being pushed by enthusiastic researchers and salesmen.

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Suicide woman allowed to die

By Julian Savulescu

As read about in the Telegraph, doctors allowed 26-year-old Kerrie Wooltorton to die after she swallowed poison and gave them a letter instructing them not to intervene.

 

Reference:  Savulescu J. Should All Patients Who Attempt Suicide Be Treated? Modern Medicine 1995; Feb:113-120.  Reprinted in: Monash Bioethics Review 1995; 14: 33-40. With reply to critics: Savulescu, J. "Response to Bailey." Monash Bioethics Review 1996; 15: 44-5.

Should All Patients Who Attempt Suicide Be Treated?

Summary

Some patients who attempt suicide refuse treatment.  These patients are invariably treated if brought to hospital.  There are several reasons for this.  These reasons justify the treatment of many of these patients, but not all.  Some patients who attempt suicide ought to be allowed to die.  My argument for this claim turns on judging some patients who attempt suicide to be sufficiently competent and rational to be allowed to die. 

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Should we be afraid of virtual reality?

Prominent
authors like Susan Greenfield and Roger Scruton have raised worries about the rise of virtual worlds such as Second Life, which
they fear might have a negative impact on human relationships, as people
increasingly spend their lives hidden behind an “avatar”. The movie Surrogates, recently released, precisely pictures a future humanity that lives
as it were by proxy: the story takes place in a world where people stay at home
and send remote-controlled “surrogates” – androids that are typically younger
and better-looking versions of themselves – out in the world to do things for
them. In the same vein, American futurologist Ray Kurzweil predicts that within a quarter of a century, virtual reality (VR) will rival the real
world: “If we want to go into virtual-reality mode”, he says, “nanobots will
shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will
become commonplace”. However, far from sharing the worries of people like
Greenfield and Scruton, Kurzweil believes this is a prospect we should look
forward to.*

 

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T-illegal actions and the case for legal ambiguity

Question: When is a crime not a crime? Answer: when it will never be prosecuted.

The release this week by the Director of Public Prosecutions of his interim policy on prosecution of assisted suicide raises a number of questions – as discussed yesterday in this blog by Simon Rippon. The new policy formalises what has been informal for some time, that family members of patients with terminal illnesses (or other serious conditions) who help the patients to travel overseas to access assisted suicide are unlikely to be prosecuted for their actions. But their actions will still be technically criminal. Should there be a class of ambiguous actions that are neither legal, nor illegal?

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Supercoach and the MRI machine

Are there neuroethical issues in sports? Dr Judy Illes thinks so, in a talk given in Canada on September 17. People are using neuroimaging to assess ability (which may also pick up unsuspected pathologies in the brain), intervening against depression in athletes, and perhaps using deep brain stimulation for enhancing motor performance. Does enhanced training methods pose a new problem for sport?

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Anaesthe-steak™: pain-free meat and the welfare paradox

A recent article in the New Scientist raises the prospect that alongside ‘gluten-free’, ‘GM free’, ‘sugar free’, and ‘dairy free’ our supermarket shelves may soon contain ‘pain-free’ meat. American philosopher Adam Shriver, writing in Neuroethics, argues that everyone concerned with animal welfare should support the replacement of animals used in factory farming with livestock genetically modified to have reduced sensitivity to pain. (See here and here for blogs discussing Shriver's suggestion). However, many find the idea of developing ‘pain knockout’ animals disquieting or frankly disturbing. In a survey of attitudes towards the development of pain-free animals (for laboratory experimentation) vegetarians and members of the animal protection community were strongly opposed to such an idea. The strongest opposition to the development of pain-free animals may, paradoxically, come from those who have traditionally been most concerned about animal suffering.

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