ethics news & views

Getting a living wage? | April 1 @ 7pm

What is a "living wage?" Is it practical? Can Emory or Atlanta afford it?
Will it hurt the economy? Has anyone implemented it in Atlanta?

New for Spring 2003: Ethics minor for Emory College

Recently approved by the College Curriculum Committee, an Ethics Minor is now available for Emory College students majoring in anything from business to biology.

For years, a small but significant number of Emory College students expressed interest in a major or minor in ethics. Students could search for ethics courses offered occasionally across various departments or participate in a co-curricular ethics program such as Science & Society or Ethics and Servant Leadership.

Rethinking just war: Fall 2002/Spring 2003 events series

Bioterror and America's Secret War CANCELLED

Due to the current situation in Middle East, New York Times journalist Judith Miller has been assigned to northern Iraq and will be unable to make her previously scheduled speaking appoint on February 26. We apologize for any inconvenience. No rescheduling is anticipated at this time.

U.S./Korea: Where are we heading?
4 p.m. February 13 White Hall 208

Emory University announces that James T. Laney, President Emeritus of Emory University, 1977-1993, and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, 1993-1997, will address the community at the Emory Public Issues Forum.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited. The public is welcome. Seating is limited. Reception to follow in the White Hall lobby. Co-sponsored by the Joint Activities Committee of Emory College, the Division of Campus Life, and the Center for Ethics.

Georgia receives end-of-life care report card

November 18 the Last Acts organization, a national coalition dedicated to improve end of life care, released the report "Means to a Better End: A Report on Dying in America Today". The report is based on indicators chosen by a national panel of experts; indicators included:

• advance care planning,
• the site of where deaths occur,
• utilization of hospice care,
• time spent in intensive care,
• pain management, and
• physician and nurse training.

Each state was rated according to these indicators.

Improving cancer treatment means care for dying patients

One of every two men and one of every three women in Georgia will develop cancer during their lifetime and almost one-half will die from the disease. The Georgia Cancer Coalition, funded by the tobacco settlement money in Georgia, has a goal of increasing cancer research, prevention, early detection and treatment. The Coalition has also made a commitment to those patients who will not be cured.

As a primary partner in the Georgia Collaborative to Improve Care, the Health Care Ethics Consortium of Georgia is working with the Cancer Coalition to address quality of life, palliative care and end of life care in Georgia. Palliative care supports comprehensive care of the cancer patient and family from the point of diagnosis, including relief from symptoms, psychosocial and spiritual support, and support for family through bereavement.

Neuroethics: Summer 2003 faculty seminar

This year’s Faculty Ethics Seminar theme is “Neuroethics.” We wish to bring together neuroscientists who have an interest in ethics, and persons with considerable background in ethics who have an interest in neuroscience.

The seminar this year will begin Wednesday, May 14 and proceed through the following week (there are eight sessions in all). Each daily session lasts three hours, and we alternate mornings and afternoons. Participants usually number about 15.

Center launches new Clairmont Campus student community: 'Bridging Academics, Service, and Ethics' to begin next semester

Nirvana on campus?

No, there has not been a mystical reunion of the famous band—but, the Center for Ethics has teamed with the Program in Science & Society and the Emory Scholars Program to develop, if not a nirvana, then at least a new and exciting environment for truly integrated learning.

Imagine an environment in which students live in the same building as faculty, share meals, and integrate their academic classes with their extracurricular activities. Imagine, for example, a group of undergraduates and faculty tackling a complex issue like stem cell technology and examining the ethical, biological, religious, and political perspectives on the issue by taking classes that address related questions, inviting speakers with expertise for dinner, discussing the fine points of these questions over laundry, developing programs for peers and the community, integrating alumni into the discussion. . .

Is unilateral war against Iraq unjust? Message from the director

As this edition of our magazine goes to press the world watches the drama of the United States and our President moving troops and the tools of war in great numbers into the Middle East. With a growing sense of gravity, this nation and our allies are divided over the question of whether the US should declare war on Iraq in order to bring down the regime of Saddam Hussein. We have a United Nations mandated international team of weapons inspectors combing the palaces of Hussein and the military installations of his regime.

[ Posted by James Fowler on March 01, 2003 | Article Link | More Opinion articles | Comments (2) ]

Gollum, gollum: the effect of small cruelties on those in moral transition

Twisted and misshaped by centuries of attachment to the all-powerful One Ring, the creature Gollum finds his way on screen for the first time in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Played as an eighty-year-old heroin addict by the critically lauded Andy Serkis, the computer-generated Gollum follows (and later leads) the hobbit Frodo and his servant Sam on their quest to carry the One Ring to its destruction inside the evil realm of Mordor.

Tolkein fans will no doubt remember Gollum as the previous bearer of the One Ring in the prequel The Hobbit. Frodo’s uncle Bilbo tricks Gollum out of “his precious,” a loss that Gollum seeks bitterly to redress decades later when he tracks Frodo and his accompanying Fellowship en route to Mordor. Finding the two hobbits asleep, alone, and lost after the splintering of the Fellowship, Gollum springs upon them in hopes of retrieving the One Ring.

The ethics of future shock: pressures for the exercise of moral imagination

How can we solve the problems of the future? This is the question at the center of Thomas Homer-Dixon’s book, The Ingenuity Gap. Homer-Dixon is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and the Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. Before we can answer the question he has put to us, we need to understand it. Our future will involve systems of increasing complexity that generate complex problems. In order to avoid serious disasters, we will often have to respond to these complex problems with incredible speed.

Me, my clone, and I: reflections on the Raelian 'clones'

Over holiday break the Raelians’ much publicized announcement that they had produced a human clone caught the attention of Center for Ethics faculty. Without producing any evidence, Clonaid—a company connected to the Raelians, a UFO cult that believes homo sapiens were created by alien geneticists—announced in a live, internationally broadcast press conference that they had successfully produced the first infant human clone. They have since announced as many as three successful clones. Citing concerns for the personal privacy of mother and child, they have continued to refuse to provide proof of their claims and reversed a initial decision to allow for independent verification. Center faculty’s correspondence follows below:

Globalization and its discontents

By Stacia Brown. In former Clinton economic advisor Joseph Stiglitz’s analysis of "market fundamentalism" within the institutions of globalization, the World Bank gets to play good cop to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) bad cop. The IMF has failed to live up to its original mission of ensuring global economic stability, Stiglitz argues, because it has adopted an unofficial, even secretive, corporate agenda aimed at pursuing the aggressive interests of global finance. In comparison, the World Bank has begun initiating progressive reforms in order to better address the grassroots economic needs of developing countries.

Doing ethics at Emory Hospitals: an interview with CEO John Henry

Kathy Kinlaw and John Banja recently spoke with John Henry, Sr., CEO of Emory Hospitals & Wesley Woods Center.

Question: Does the current nature of health care raise ethical concerns? Are new issues presented or are the ethical concerns ones that have repeated over the years?

John Henry: I still think that the health care ethical concerns deal with rationing of care, and it is a little bit different today then it was ten years ago. Managed care companies decide what is appropriate in dealing with continued treatment; they also are not just managing care but managing payment. If I operate on Mr. Smith on Friday, and he went into the ICU on Friday and spent Saturday and Sunday in the ICU, I can guarantee that one of those ICU days will be denied as not necessary, regardless of the fact that we think that it might have been necessary. Weekend stays are one of the issues.

[ Posted by John Banja on March 01, 2003 | Article Link | More HCECG articles | Comments (1) ]

Haunted by the totalitarian past: Lessons in the failure of moral imagination

“Who worries about totalitarianism these days?” we may well ask. After the events of September 11, the specter of totalitarianism seems a faint memory compared to the more pressing global problem of terrorism.

But for Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the two are not so easily separated, for obvious reasons. An unrepentant Marxist and unapologetic Roman Catholic, Zizek sees a totalitarian menace where others see a totalitarian memory. Specifically, Zizek fears that false memories of what totalitarianism was endanger our chances of imagining a more whole society, exercising our moral imaginations, and condemning present evil.