Professional Ethics

Oxford Debates Cont’d – Proposer’s Opening Statement

by Practical Ethics
June 22, 2009

Part of the debate "The NHS should not treat self-inflicted illness"

Proposer: Dr Mark Sheehan (Oxford BRC Ethics Fellow at the Ethox Centre and
James Martin Research Fellow in the Program on the Ethics of the New
Biosciences)
Opening Statement

We generally think that people are entitled to live their lives in the way that they see fit, in a way that best coheres with what they take to be meaningful and valuable. This is perhaps the central tenet of western liberal society. Liberal society is centred on permitting and perhaps even encouraging, different conceptions of 'the good' and experiments in living. Alongside this freedom, however, comes a responsibility for the decisions that one makes. Because society remains a collective effort the freedom to choose to live in a certain way brings with it responsibilities — here, responsibilities for the consequences of our choices.

Oxford Debates – The NHS should not treat self-inflicted illness (Moderator’s Introduction)

by Practical Ethics
June 22, 2009

Moderator: Dr Paula Boddington

Should the NHS treat self-inflicted illness? This question raises a plethora of different issues, about science, society, social policy, as well as philosophical questions about human nature and individual freedom.

The best use of health care resources will always be debated. How much money should be spent on health? How efficiently can it be spent? How should it be divided within the healthcare system? These can never simply be questions of economics but also raise vitally important questions about values. This debate about what treatments the NHS should offer is taking place in an economic climate where there is a call to curtail public spending. Would refusing to treat self-inflicted illnesses be a fair place to start to save money?

But money is only one aspect of this debate.

Sometimes justice wears a mask: blogging, anonymity and the open society

by Anders Sandberg
June 18, 2009

After the Times exposed the identity of the police blogger "Night Jack" he has been disciplined by the police force. The blog (now deleted) had won the Orwell Price for political writing and often expressed critical views related to the police and the justice system. In a court ruling Mr Justice Eady claimed that blogging was "essentially a public rather than a private activity" and that it was in the public interest to know who originated opinions and arguments. Do we have a right to anonymity on the net? And is it truly in the public interest to know who every blogger is?

Not better than the alternative: an informal experimentation tragedy

by Anders Sandberg
June 15, 2009

Police are reinvestigating the 2007 death of Yolanda Cox, a woman who collapsed in anaphylactic shock after being injected with an experimental drug by her sister, a GP. The drug was developed by their mother, originally intended to treat diabetes but apparently believed to extend lifespan. After testing on diabetic patients and apparently themselves without any apparent side effects the mother and sister gave it to the woman three times, with tragic consequences the third time. Was it a failure of medical ethics, research ethics – or plain psychological bias?

Bad doctor, bad prosecutor or bad laws?

by Anders Sandberg
March 10, 2009

Ethics, medical practice and the law should ideally coincide. But as a current affair in Sweden shows, it is all too easy for them to collide.

On March 2 police took a doctor into custody at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital in front of her colleauges, suspected of killing an infant. The background is tragic: last year a three month pre-term infant suffered a stroke, causing serious brain damage. This was likely due to a medical mistake that was duly reported. Some months afterwards the dying infant was taken of ventilaton and died, with the consent of the parents. She was given high doses the painkiller morphine and anaesthetic thiopental to prevent suffering. Apparently the prosecutor investigating the initial medical mistake noticed these high levels and decided to investigate whether manslaughter had taken place. Much criticism has been aimed at the prosecutor for the heavy-handed use of the police and putting the doctor into arrest, especially since the events occured several months ago and it is very unlikely there is any danger of tampering with evidence. But it is more troubling that the doctors involved (at least given currently available information) were acting according to standard medical praxis. Are a sizeable fraction of the Swedish medical profession guilty of manslaughter?

The weight of conscience

by Francesca Minerva, University of Melbourne
March 9, 2009

President Obama is about to rescind the “conscience rule” the previous president G. W. Bush had instituted. This clause allows health care workers to refuse to do anything that might conflict with their conscience. This means that doctors, pharmacists and other workers in this field refuse to provide services or to give information about contraception, blood transfusions, abortions, vaccinations and anything else that they may find morally repugnant.

Just lose it?

by Alexandre Erler
March 5, 2009

A recent
study by researchers from the Harvard Medical School concludes that getting
angry at work, contrary to common opinion, may not be a bad thing, but may
actually be beneficial to your career and your overall happiness (as reported by BBC News and the Guardian among others). The researchers nevertheless issue a few caveats: in order for anger to be
beneficial, one ought to remain in control when expressing it and be able to
“positively channel” it. On the other hand, they advise against outright fury,
which they describe as “destructive”. There is indeed an important lesson contained in these statements; one might have wished, however, that the researchers had been a little more specific in the provisos they add to their main idea.

To Leak or Not to Leak?

by Roger Crisp
December 1, 2008

Last Thursday, anti-terrorism police in the UK arrested the opposition minister for immigration, Damian Green (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/29/whitehall-damian-green-civil-servant). He is suspected by the police of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public life’, having published documents leaked to him by a junior civil servant. That official was himself arrested on 19 November, and has been suspended from duty. We should expect that many other such officials are now asking themselves whether, if they come across some document which they believe is a matter of public interest, they should leak it.

The objections to assisted suicide are misguided

by Alexandre Erler
October 21, 2008

In a recent article in The Observer, philosopher Mary Warnock makes an eloquent plea for assisted suicide in relation to the case of Daniel James, a 23-year old rugby player from Worcester who requested to be helped to die after an accident at a training session last year left him paralyzed from the chest down, and whose parents helped to fulfill his request by travelling with him to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland. Warnock has many sound points to make on this issue, and I will not repeat all of them here. Rather, I will consider some of the arguments that those opposed to assisted suicide have presented in response to that particular case.

DON’T PANIC

by Dominic Wilkinson
September 22, 2008

It has been an extraordinary week in the financial markets of the
world. With the collapse of major international financial institutions,
and governments forced to intervene by propping up ailing insurers or
authorising the merger of banks, newspaper headlines have competed to
convey the scale and significance of the crisis. But there is a
difficult line for newspaper editors and sub-editors to tread between
accurately reflecting the enormity of the market upheavals, and
contributing to the crisis. Should newspapers be censored, or censor
themselves at times of great market sensitivity or do they have a duty
to their readers to speak the truth?