Natural science?
Stem cell research and moral culpability.
A piece in The National Review commends a US district judge for halting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Before this ruling the Obama administration drew a distinction between the destruction of human embryos to create stem cell lines and the subsequent use of these stem cells in research. The destruction cannot be federally funded, but the research can. In light of the judge’s opinion that such a distinction was indefensible, the piece asks an interesting question.
On the one hand, it is true that all research on embryonic stem cells was preceded by and is made possible by the destruction of an embryo; the two acts are morally entangled. […] But on the other hand, imagine a young scientist just beginning his career, experimenting on stem cells derived from embryos destroyed years earlier, on the other side of the country, when he was still in junior high. Is he morally culpable for the act of embryo destruction?
Let us first assume that destroying and using human embryos is a morally impermissible act, even weighed against the possible good that stem cell research might produce. While this is an obviously controversial assumption on which philosophy has much to say, I will sidestep it for the sake of argument.
Does the causal link between destroying the embryos and using the stem cells in research produce the relevant “moral entanglement”? Read more
Should we protect the wilderness?
A recent op-ed in The New York Times about wilderness areas raises important questions about the ethics of public access and environmental preservation in the national park system. Its author sharply criticizes what he feels is overzealous enforcement of the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Citing cases of deaths caused by lack of signage and vast expanses of wilderness, the article suggests that the laws once intended to preserve areas of natural beauty and promote easy access to them have instead needlessly endangered lives. Further preservation efforts, enacted as recently as 2009, only exacerbate the problem:
“… agencies have made these supposedly open recreational areas inaccessible and even dangerous, putting themselves in opposition to healthy and environmentally sound human-powered activities, the very thing Congress intended the Wilderness Act to promote.”
There is significant ideological tension between encouraging access to wilderness and the efforts to preserve it. Activists talk about the vital importance of the wilderness experience, but realistically, the only way to preserve that experience is through limiting access to it. But how much space do we really need?
A conflict inevitably arises. On one side, there is a kind of wilderness elitism. Its goal is to maintain the purity of large swaths of the natural environment for the privilege of a select few. It is, on a basic level, impossible to sustain for everyone. Its counterpart is wilderness populism, which maintains that these natural areas should be easily accessible for everyone. This idea of mass access, while egalitarian, threatens to destroy the qualities that make the wilderness so precious to enthusiasts.
So far, the government has struck a good balance, and accomplished great things with wilderness preservation. Refusing to put up signs, however, needlessly endangers people. More than that, it isn’t helping anyone to more fully experience the solitude of the woods.
-Ethan
Image used under a Creative Commons Attribution License from Flickr user Jagger
Who deserves sympathy?
On both the 11th and the 23rd of this month there have been stories on BBC citing the inadequacy of the international aid response to the Pakistani floods. At the moment, there are seven mentions of the Pakistani floods on the front pages of the BBC site.
U.S. news outlets have less to say. CNN, Fox, CBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have one or two mentions each on their front pages. ABC News and the Wall Street Journal have none at all. Elsewhere in the world, Der Spiegel, Xinhua and Pravda are about the same.
The British understandably feel a peculiar connection with their former colonial possession. But in most of the world, you would not think that there is an ongoing calamity displacing millions of people, exposing them to hunger and disease.
One BBC article offers tentative answers for this indifference. Some suggest that Pakistan is merely unlucky. The floods come while donors are fatigued from the Haitian earthquake; the disaster unfolded over a span of weeks and makes a weak headliner; the floods are a part of the seasonal monsoon rains.
Other explanations, however, point to Pakistan’s perceived faults. Namely, Pakistan’s links to terrorism and corruption within its government make sympathy a tough sell. Comments on the story’s page suggest, sometimes harshly, that a country capable of amassing nuclear weapons, maintaining a large army and funneling money to terrorists surely has the means to rescue its own people.
This is close to approval of collective punishment. Victims of the flood cannot be held personally responsible for the dubious actions of Pakistan’s ISI (its clandestine intelligence service), its decades under military government, or greed and corruption of its officials. Moral and legal codes everywhere assign agency to individuals and judge them accordingly. Can individuals be blamed for the actions of others in a group over whom they have little control? What are the bounds of collective responsibility?
-Charles
Image by Flickr user DFID-UK Department for International Development used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Poverty, choice and coercion
Should the poor be allowed to choose?
The New York Times reports that malnutrition and starvation remain stubbornly entrenched decades after India’s Green Revolution, which modernized agricultural practices, massively increased agricultural yields and eliminated the specter of famine.
The existing government food distribution system relies on bureaucratic rationing, through which the poor are given ration cards to purchase food from government-run distributors. It is notoriously inefficient and plagued by corruption. Some reform proposals emphasize improving monitoring and delivery within the system. Others favor entirely dismantling the system, replacing it with vouchers or cash payments to the needy. Read more
Lawful mutiny
The BBC reports that several federal police officers in Ciudad Juarez have arrested their own commander on grounds of corruption and racketeering. On the heels of the Wikileaks case and in the midst of two ongoing wars, it is worth considering the moral role of the individual in security-related institutions like the military and police.
Millennia of human experience demonstrate that discipline and professionalism distinguish effective security forces. Such forces can do tremendous good. But institutions are fallible. The uncertainties of both violent conflict and day-to-day human life also provide endless opportunities for rigid adherence to orders to cause grievous harm. When is it appropriate for those who are vested with the protection of a society to disobey orders and even turn on their superiors? Read more
Livin’ in the future
Global warming and intergenerational justice
As environmental activists and their allies mourn the death of the climate bill, the ethics of environmental protection bring up many interesting questions. In this post, I’d like to take a look at one often overlooked issue. The true effects of global warming (and other environmental problems), even at its worst, will probably be felt most by a generation that has not yet been born. Does this change the moral calculus? What do we owe future generations?
Theoretically, it is tempting to think that we owe them nothing. After all, future generations by definition do not exist, and it is hard to imagine persons who do not exist having rights. Classic conceptions of justice rely on reciprocity or consent – concepts that cannot be applied to future generations. Yet, this position is obviously counter-intuitive. Nobody thinks it’s morally permissible to leave the planet an inhospitable wasteland when we die. Read more
Just what the doctor ordered?
The White House this month asked states to end criminalization of HIV transmission. Basically, these laws make it a crime for anyone who knows they have HIV to engage in activities that could transmit the disease to others (unless informed consent is given). According to the White House:
In many instances, the continued existence and enforcement of these types of laws run counter to scientific evidence about routes of HIV transmission and may undermine the public health goals of promoting HIV screening and treatment. CDC data and other studies tell us that intentional HIV transmission is atypical and uncommon. A recent research study also found that HIV-specific laws do not influence the behavior of people living with HIV in those states where these laws exist.
The entire argument here appeals to “public health goals,” a broadly consequentialist notion about overall health of the community. But perhaps the justification for these laws can be found elsewhere.
After all, the state has a responsibility to protect individuals from the negligence of others, and this law may be an expression of this responsibility. This protection can have societal costs, but non-consequentialists might argue that the rights of the individual trump these concerns – the protection of individuals from others is still the first responsibility of the state, morally prior to protecting citizens from, for example, diseases and poor health.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user Trygve.u used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Democratic ADD
According to James Jay Carafano in today’s New York Post, the press has moved on from the Deepwater Horizon spill—at least, they don’t care about the disaster nearly as much as the locals in the Gulf do.
Carafano’s main project is to criticize the federal response to the spill, on behalf of Americans in the Gulf. But he also notes that people who aren’t still personally affected by the disaster are forgetting about the situation in the Gulf States, or that most people and our news media have a memory problem.
The idea that the citizenry gets apathetic unfortunately quickly with certain issues, like distant disasters and politicians’ records, is not new. It is, nevertheless, important.
Our society is a democratic one. It is the citizens who determine (however indirectly) what decisions are made and what issues need to be decided. If we can only keep our attention focused on each society-spanning problem until another problem arises, how will we resolve them?
Is this democratic ADD one of the reasons we are not a direct democracy, but a representative democracy or republic instead?
TPP’s own Sam Gill has written on a similar topic in a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed. Give it a read.
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user Deepwater Horizon Response.
Preventing the next Deepwater Horizon
I’ve written on risk and moral responsibility a few times on this blog. Like many good ideas we have, the mainstream media has followed suit. In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, economics columnist David Leonhardt considers who is responsible for preventing low likelihood, high consequence events like the Deepwater Horizon spill. Leonhardt writes: “When the stakes are high enough, it falls to government to help its citizens avoid these entirely human errors. The market, left to its own devices, often cannot do so.” He goes on to claim that, in passing a law after Exxon Valdez to limit the liability of the spiller, the U.S. government actually encouraged oil companies to underestimate the odds of a catastrophe. Check out the full article here.
-Marc
Who should make you eat your brussels sprouts?
The market, responsibility and perfectionism
The New York Times has an article from last week on a duo of internet filmmakers, known as the Internet Celebrities, who use humor and YouTube to spread a unique brand of social criticism. One of their most watched videos has them entering the world of Bronx food bodegas to highlight the diverse, yet disgusting food options available to many New Yorkers.
Beyond the humor – for example, the bodega food pyramid – their video raises important normative questions about the availability of healthy foods in low-income communities.
It is a well documented fact that middle- and upper-income communities have many times more supermarkets than low-income neighborhoods. As a result, people in these communities are forced to purchase food at corner markets, convenience stores and bodegas. And these food providers have little in the way of healthy options. This matters because a diet short on healthy foods increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity and other illnesses. So if healthy foods have such a direct impact on the life of individuals, whose responsibility is it to ensure that everyone, including those in low-income communities has access to them?
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