While we’re speaking about revolutions and such, Hilzoy on the ongoing violence in Gaza:
I imagine what people on both sides are thinking is something more like: do you expect us to just sit here and take it? Do you expect us to do nothing? To which my answer is: no, I expect you to try to figure out what has some prospect of actually making things better. Killing people out of anger, frustration, and the sense that you have to do something is just wrong. For both sides.
Back at the end of November, Martin wrote a post on the ethics of overpopulation, in which he offered these assertions:
- It is unethical for anyone to produce more than two children. (Adoption of orphans, on the other hand, is highly commendable.)
- It is unethical to limit the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption.
- It is unethical to use public money to support infertility treatments. Let those unfortunate enough to need such treatment pay their own way or adopt. And let’s put the money into subsidising contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption instead.
I understand the spirit in which these assertions are offered — the human beings sharing Earth and its resources have an interest in creating and maintaining conditions where our numbers don’t outstrip the available resources.
But, there’s something about Martin’s manifesto that doesn’t sit right with me. Here, I’m not trying to be coy; I’m actually in the process of working out my objections. So, I’m going to do some thinking out loud, in the hopes that you all will pipe up and help me figure this out.
Jake has a great post up today about the frequency with which American internists and rheumatologists prescribe placebos and the ethical questions this raises. Jake writes:
For my part, I don’t think I would be comfortable deceiving my patient under any circumstances. I see my role as a future physician partly as a healer but also as an educator. Patients — particularly patients with intractable chronic illnesses — want to understand what is happening to them. I almost feel like in deceiving them, I would be denying them that small measure of control — that small measure of dignity — that is vital to feeling like a complete person, even in the face of a life destroying illness. The ability to make decisions for yourself is an empowering feeling. You only take that away if you are absolutely convinced — as in the case of dementia or severe mental illness — that someone is completely incapable.
The whole post is well worth reading. But I’m wondering whether there couldn’t be some conditions under which use of a placebo wouldn’t violate a patient’s dignity.
From time to time on this blog, we discuss the obligation scientists assume by virtue of accepting public money to fund their research. These obligations may include sharing knowledge with the public (since public money helped make that knowledge). And they also include playing by the public’s rules as enshrined in various federal regulations concerning scientific research.
If a scientist takes public money, she expects there will be some public oversight. That’s just how it goes.
Of course, working from this mindset makes it much harder for me to fathom how someone (say a Secretary of the Treasury) could ask for a big chunk of public money (say $700 billion) with no oversight whatsoever. Indeed, in trying to make sense of such a request, I find myself entertaining some pretty odd hypotheses:
Do not claim to have earned a degree (or degrees) that you did not in fact earn.
Degree-granting institutions maintain records of degree recipients. Eventually, chances are good that someone will check.
And even if your talents are worth more to your position than a degree could be, your dishonesty will be held against you.
Go with talent and integrity over talent and pretend credentials. Those who employ you will appreciate not being played for chumps.
The elder Free-Ride offspring, having entered fourth grade this year, will be participating in the school science fair in the spring. The elder Free-Ride offspring is very enthusiastic about the whole science fair thing.
Meanwhile, I’m having a very hard time.
Once again, researchers who use animals in their research have been the targets of violence at the hands of animal rights activists.
As reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
The other day, Chad asked about the appropriate use of someone else’s published data:
There’s a classic paper on the Quantum Zeno Effect that I discuss in Chapter 5 of the book. The paper does two tests of the effect, and presents the results in two bar graphs. They also provide the data in tabular form. …
If I copy the data from the table, and make my own version of the graph, am I obliged to contact them and ask permission to duplicate their results in my book?
Chad’s commenters were of the view (substantiated with credible linked sources) that data itself cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. Therefore, Chad could use the data (citing its source, of course) to make his own graph without having to get permission from the authors. While not required, letting the original authors know he was using their data would be polite, and making a graph with some value-added (rather than one that looked exactly like the graph the original authors made from their data) would also be a plus.
It was a really interesting discussion that somehow reminded me of a related kind of question raised by a friend of mine earlier this week:
What are the boundaries between appropriate use of a press release and plagiarism of that press release?
Connected to my last post (and anticipated by my razor-sharp commenters), in this post I want to look at the pros and cons of routine screening mammography in women under age 50, drawing on the discussion of this subject in the multi-page “patient instructions” document I received from my primary care physician.
The aim of screening mammography is to get information about what’s going on in the breast tissue, detecting changes that are not apparent to the eye or to the touch. If some of these changes are the starts of cancer, the thought is that finding them sooner can only be better, allowing more time for treatments that remove the cancer or that slow its grown and arrest its spread to other parts of the body.
Having more information earlier, you’d figure, is bound to save lives. (Whether this conclusion is supported by the data is harder to discern, as Orac makes clear in this discussion of relevant research.)
But the information comes at a cost. Not only do mammograms require fancy (and expensive) equipment to capture the images, well-trained technicians to work with the patient to get the images, and well-trained physicians to interpret the images, but they expose the patient whose breasts are being imaged to low dose X-rays. Exposure to this sort of ionizing radiation can increase your risk of cancer.
So, right off the bat, it makes sense to have a screening policy that gets you the most useful information for the least risk and cost. Here’s how the patient information I was given lays out the thinking behind the risk/benefit balance my medical group favors:
There’s a question I’ve been thinking about intermittently (over the course of several years) that I thought I’d lay out here, on the theory that you all have a track record of sharing smart and insightful things (including related questions of your own) in the comments.
One of the things that potentially makes a human life good (at least, from the point of view of the person living it) is setting aims and directing one’s efforts toward meeting those aims. For many people, these aims run along the lines of making the world a better place for others in some particular way – by reducing suffering, increasing cooperation, building knowledge, etc.
Some people are in situations where they can work towards their goals as part of their day jobs. Other people may find themselves in circumstances where serious work towards their goals can only be conducted on their own time (assuming they can find the discretionary time in which to pursue these goals).
So here’s the question: