ethics news & views

Medical education on end-of-life care reviewed

In a unique event, representatives of the four medical schools in the state of Georgia came together to jointly review the state of medical education on end-of-life care. Faculty, residents, and medical student representatives from the medical schools of Emory University, Medical College of Georgia, Mercer University, and Morehouse School of Medicine met at the Loudermilk Conference Center in Atlanta on April 23, 2001.

Rethinking just war

A year since the World Trade Center bombing, most Americans should feel confident that they can describe what constitutes an unjust war. But as the US considers a second invasion of Iraq in a dozen years, civilian deaths during the recent operations in Afghanistan and moral ambiguities surrounding US military operations in Somalia and the Balkans should cause Americans to revisit just war thinking.

First formulated in the fifth century as the Roman Empire crumbled, just war theory has changed as the context of warfare has changed.

Breach of trust: the naked truth

My friend and mentor Carlyle Marney, when he was a pastor of the First Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, would regularly go and speak at the annual Cowboy Camp Meeting in West Texas. He came to know and befriend a wiry cowboy in his early sixties named Joe. Joe had painstakingly saved from his earnings and then borrowed enough money to enable him to purchase his own herd of one hundred or so cattle. He planned to pasture and fatten them and make his first income from investment profit in more than forty years of riding herd. That early spring there came the worst blizzard in a hundred years in West Texas. Joe, along with many other cattlemen, lost his entire herd, frozen to death in the blizzard.

[ Posted by James Fowler on September 01, 2002 | Article Link | More Opinion articles | Comments (2) ]

Health Care Ethics Consortium of Georgia grapples with health care harms

A key ethical principle of modern day bioethics is nonmaleficence, defined by Beauchamp and Childress as “the principle that we ought not to inflict evil or harm on others.” Long attributed to Hippocrates, the maxim “above all, do no harm” has long been a fundamental part of the tradition of medical ethics. But what does one do when in the process of intending to be helpful and do good one causes another harm? The Health Care Ethics Consortium of Georgia’s annual conference—“Causing Harm in the Name of Doing Good,” held April 23-24—addressed just this dilemma.

[ Posted by Karen Trotochaud on September 01, 2002 | Article Link | More HCECG articles | Comments (1) ]

Ethics and Servant Leadership accepting 'Forum' applications until September 12, celebrates successful summer internships

EASL is proud to celebrate the conclusion of its third year of programming this summer. Melissa Snarr and Mary Sue Brookshire continue to lead the EASL program in its curricular and co-curricular development.

At the end of July, the Servant Leadership Summer internship program came to a close. Interns spent thirty hours a week at their community placements, which included the Community Housing Resource Center, The Children’s Museum of Atlanta, and Refugee Family Services (formerly Newcomers’ Network). In addition, interns invested an additional three hours each Friday reflecting with their peers. We also added a poetry component to this year’s reflection sessions, offering students a creative outlet for processing their experiences. Melissa Range served as our poet guide in this endeavor.

Georgia nurses report on end-of-life care practices in Center for Ethics survey

Nurses have long been primary care providers for patients who are dying, providing comfort and caring for patients, supporting grieving families as they struggle through this difficult time, and coordinating aspects of care provided by other healthcare providers. As a part of an interdisciplinary study, Georgia nurses were mailed a survey inquiring about current institutional and individual practices, attitudes, beliefs and experiences in caring for patients at the end of life. The Whitehead Foundation funded this survey as a part of the broader commitment to improve end-of-life care by the Health Care Ethics Consortium of Georgia at the Center for Ethics, in conjunction with the Georgia Collaborative to Improve End-of-Life Care.

A Just response? Terrorism, democracy, and 9-11

Is the world of September 2002 substantively different from that of September 2001? How much has our country changed since the terrorist attacks of one year ago? As we prepare for the anniversary of what has become commonly known as “9-11,” what is the lasting impact of these events on our daily lives?

Jonathan Schell’s “Letters from Ground Zero” should be mandatory reading as our nation approaches September 2002. While this portion of A Just Response is perhaps the most dated section of the book, the immediacy of reporting, Schell’s proximity to the site of the New York attack and the emotional rawness of these writings offer a window into the tangle of emotions we experienced last year as we watched the towers of the World Trade Center crumble into dust and twisted steel. Schell grapples with the desire to see the terrorists responsible for the devastation brought to justice and the fear that the response from our nation’s leaders might be hasty and out of proportion.

[ Posted by Paul Ficklin-Alred on September 01, 2002 | Article Link | More Book & Film Reviews articles | Comments (1) ]

Beyond the dream: from ubuntu to embrace

Recently, I remonstrated with a student concerning a set of unacceptable behaviors. He retorted that there was nothing illegal or immoral about them. I said they may be legal and “moral,” but it’s not the right thing. Ethical action—or doing the right thing—requires a new consciousness that calls many time-honored approaches into question. This is true, it seems to me, in intercultural pursuits in America these days, especially in higher education. It may be time to abandon the “I have a dream” rhetoric of the last fifty years and look to an ethic based on truth and reconciliation. The nostalgia of the Lincoln Memorial moment will have to be surrendered if the harmonious ordering of differences called peace is to reign in our country and our world.

[ Posted by Edward Branch on September 01, 2002 | Article Link | More Opinion articles | Comments (1) ]

American medicine: A profession or a business?

Medical ethics has long been associated with the investigation of moral questions arising at the two boundaries of human existence. We have long studied end-of-life dilemmas as well as issues in neonatal intensive care units. A very small portion of the human lifespan is spent in the birthing and dying process, yet medical ethicists and educators continue to focus much of their attention there. What lies in between is ripe territory for further ethical attention and deliberation.

Corporate ethics: values and valuations

Investors who were waiting for the other shoe to drop after Enron must feel as if they’re in Imelda Marcos’ closet.

The ethical wasteland called Enron—a shell game that happened to be the Bush administration’s closest corporate ally—was one thing. But accounting irregularities began to seem pervasive when they were revealed at such huge employers as WorldCom and then Merck, named by Fortune magazine as America’s “most admired corporation” for seven consecutive years until 1993.