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March 11th, 2013
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The recent press storm detailing ethical failures within the NHS highlights the oversimplification (to two words) and under analysis (in two words) of the ethics challenge. This blog focuses on those two words: “moral purpose”. The key question is how will this “moral purpose” result in more ethical decision-making throughout the NHS but within the context of the NHS’ reality? Calling for a moral purpose is useful if it is shorthand for calling for on-going comprehensive ethics oversight and not a one-shot tagline. For the moment, the prescription is for these two words (with a code of ethics and dismissal...
Yale Professor Thomas Pogge admonishes us to “pause for a while and reflect on what it would be like to live on [$2 per day], equivalent in 2012 to $16.50 per week or $71.70 per month or $860 for the entire year…” and to “ask yourself whether you would consider such an existence to accord with what is affirmed in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that ‘…everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of himself and of his family…’.” Professor Pogge then reminds us that this $2 per day...
Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey this week reinforced his driving objective of “win at all costs”. However, the question that Oprah never directly asked during her provocative discussion was whether he ever thought he had really won when accepting the trophies after so intentionally and consistently cheating. There was not a single Tour de France race that he actually won clean. (more…)
I permanently lag behind in technology in all respects much to the exasperation of my tech-savvy family. However, one app that has recently made both my children’s iPhones and news headlines as potentially disrupting social media has caught my eye: SnapChat. As far as I understand it, SnapChat’s unique selling point is that it allows free sharing of photos via smartphones that then spontaneously self-destruct within a maximum of 10 seconds. Short lifespans raise interesting ethics questions. My own ethics work focuses on forward-looking decision-making, indeed the opposite of short-term (or micro-term) analysis. The ethical implications of SnapChat might question:...
(As first published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on November 16, 2012) The New England Compounding Center meningitis case spotlights the tragic consequences of failed organizational ethics. The news is rife with stories of natural disasters (the tsunami, Haiti, Hurricane Sandy) and human tragedy (cancer, poverty). These problems are beyond our control despite best practices and best efforts. The news is also rife with silence. Silent rapes in India, decades of hidden abuse by knighted BBC star Jimmy Savile, and the surreptitious collection of user data by the ubiquitous Angry Birds app all demonstrate this. But the 32 deaths from meningitis...