Twenty years ago this spring, after finishing my last round of final exams as a college student, I was enjoying a civilized custom called “senior week,” a break of approximately seven days in length between finals and commencement. The campus had largely cleared of students who were not seniors, and suddenly we had time to relax and enjoy our beautiful campus before it was time to move on and become adults (or some close approximation).
One of those afternoons during senior week, I was out on the deck on the roof of my dorm, sunbathing (because 21-year-olds care not about incremental increases in skin cancer risk) and reading Newsweek.
Category Archives: Politics
Silence is the enemy: addressing the causes.
Yesterday, in my first post about the Silence is the Enemy campaign, I wrote:
Addressing rape directly. From the point of view of ethics, you’d think this would be a very short discussion. It is wrong to commit sexual violence. It is wrong to act out your frustration or your sense of entitlement or your need to feel that there is something in your life that is within your control on the body of another human being. It is wrong to treat a woman or a child (or another man) as less than fully human.
Anyone who would argue otherwise could only be a moral monster. Or thoroughly steeped in a culture that regards women and children as less than fully human, and the desire, anger, and frustration of men as something that can be acted out on women and children.
The ethics of sexual violence seem pretty black and white. And yet sexual violence is a reality — as a constant threat, if not as something that has been committed — for more women than you can imagine.
As usual, Zuska say it better than anyone else:
Some very raw thoughts on the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.
Sunday morning, Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, was murdered on his way into the church where he worships. Dr. Tiller was targeted because he was one of the few doctors in the U.S. who performed late-term abortions.
Proposed guidelines for embryonic stem cells: applying new ethical rules to old research.
You may have heard that the Obama administration has proposed new rules for federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. (The proposed rules are available in draft form through the end of the public comment period; the NIH expects to finalize the rules in July).
While researchers are enthusiastic at the prospect under this administration of more funding for ESC research, not everyone is happy about the details of the proposed rules. Indeed, in a recent article in Cell Stem Cell [1], Patrick L. Taylor argues that there is something fundamentally misguided about the way the new rules would be applied to old research:
Two new case studies on international clinical trials (and a plan to read them together).
Earlier this week, I found out about a pair of new case studies being released by The Global Campaign for Microbicides. These cases examine why a pair of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical trials looking at the effectiveness of microbicides antiretrovirals in preventing HIV infection were halted. Here are some details:
Fake journals versus bad journals.
By email, following on the heels of my post about the Merck-commissioned, Elsevier-published fake journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a reader asked whether the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS) also counts as a fake journal.
I have the distinct impression that folks around these parts do not hold JPandS in high esteem. However, it seems like there’s an important distinction between a fake journal and a bad one.
Flu pandemic ethics: rationing scarce resources.
In an earlier post, I pointed you toward the preliminary report (PDF here) issued by the Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project this January. This report sets out a plan for the state of Minnesota to ration vital resources in the event of a severe influenza pandemic.
Now, a rationing plan devised by an ethics project is striving for fairness. Rationed resources are those scarce enough that there isn’t enough to go around to everyone who might want or need them. If someone will be left out, what’s a fair way to decide who?
Let’s have a look at the rationing strategies discussed in the draft report:
Ethics in planning for a flu pandemic.
In my last post, I looked at some of the ethical considerations an individual might make during a flu epidemic. My focus was squarely on the individual’s decisions: whether to stay in bed or seek medical care, whether to seek aid from others, etc. This is the kind of everyday ethics that crops up for most of us as we try to get through our days.
If you’re someone who is responsible for keeping health care infrastructure or other state resources in good working order, however, the ethical landscape of a major flu epidemic looks quite different.
Free ethics advice for the Pope.
When, speaking to journalists about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, you make a claim that the epidemic is:
a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem
those listening who assume you are committed to honesty (because of that commandment about not bearing false witness) and that you are well-informed about the current state of our epidemiological knowledge (because, as the Pope, you have many advisors, and owing to your importance as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, leading scientists will take the time to help you understand scientific findings) may draw the conclusion that the distribution and use of condoms can make the spread of HIV worse.
President Obama’s memo on scientific integrity.
The full text of the memorandum is here. Let’s look at some of the details.