Benefiting from 'evil': an incipient moral problem in human stem cell research

When does benefiting from others' wrongdoing effectively make one a moral accomplice in their evil deeds? If stem cell research lives up to its therapeutic promise, this question (which has previously cropped up in debates over fetal tissue research or the use of Nazi research data) is likely to become a central one for opponents of embryo destruction. I argue that benefiting from wrongdoing is prima facie morally wrong under any of three conditions: (1) when the wrongdoing is one's agent; (2) when acceptance of benefit directly encourages the repetition of the wrongful deed (even though no agency relationship is involved); and (3) when acceptance of a benefit legitimates a wrongful practice. I conclude by showing that, because of the ways in which most embryonic stem cell lines come into being, people who oppose embryo destruction may use human embryonic stem cells without incurring moral blame.

Vocabularies of motive for illicit steroid use among bodybuilders

Illicit steroid use, for purposes of performance and physique enhancement, is widely deemed unnecessary, wrong and dangerous. Such activity would appear especially foolhardy when engaged in by non-professional athletes who otherwise adhere to 'healthy' exercise regimens. Here a gap exists between many illicit steroid users' actions and societal expectations. Using qualitative data generated in South Wales, this paper explores bodybuilders' vocabularies of motive for illicit steroid use. These accounts which justified, rather than excused, steroid use were predominant during question situations between the participant observer and the researched. In supporting the fundamental tenets of their drug subculture, and as part of the underlying negotiation of self-identity, respondents espoused three main justifications for their own and/or other bodybuilders' illicit steroid use; namely: self-fulfilment accounts, condemnation of condemners and a denial of injury. Here steroid use was rationalised as a legitimate means to an end, observers passing negative judgements were rejected and it was claimed steroids do not (seriously) harm the user's health or threaten society more generally. These vocabularies of motive, acquired and honoured within bodybuilding settings, comprise a complex of subjective meanings which seem to the actor to be an adequate ground for the conduct in question. Similar to other sociological studies, this paper states that it is imperative to explore the social meanings which illicit drug users attach to their 'risk' practices. Without these understandings, researchers and health promoters may struggle to appreciate fully why illicit drug users behave as they do.

The ethics of human stem cell research

The medical and clinical promise of stem cell research is widely heralded, but moral judgments about it collide. This article takes general stock of such judgments and offers one specific resolution. It canvasses a spectrum of value judgments on sources, complicity, adult stem cells, and public and private contexts. It then examines how debates about abortion and stem cell research converge and diverge. Finally, it proposes to extend the principle of "nothing is lost" to current debates. This extension links historical discussions of the ethics of direct killing with unprecedented possibilities that in vitro fertilization procedures yield. A definite normative region to inhabit is located, within a larger range of rival value judgments. The creation of embryos for research purposes only should be resisted, yet research on "excess' embryos is permissible by virtue of an appeal to the "nothing is lost" principle.

Ethics seminars: physician complicity in the Holocaust: historical review and reflections on emergency medicine in the 21st century, part II

Part I of this seminar in ethics reviewed the participation of German physicians and the German medical establishment in carrying out Nazi policies and listed eight moral failures that could be attributed to doctors during the dark period of history known as the Holocaust. The collective acts that occurred during this period have, arguably, become a benchmark for abject ethical collapse on the part of mankind. Part II contemplates a variety of contemporary issues through the prism of the Holocaust. This article reviews and categorizes ethical pitfalls encountered by physicians during the Nazi era and examines them in relationship to several current issues. It also focuses on ethical concerns and challenges that confront contemporary emergency practitioners, some of which have parallels, though certainly not direct comparators, in the Nazi era.

Ethics seminars: physician complicity in the Holocaust: historical review and reflections on emergency medicine in the 21st century, part I

Individual physicians as well as the medical establishment were complicit in a wide range of activities carried out by the Nazis during the period that encompassed the Holocaust. This article examines these activities and lists eight moral failures attributable to physicians of this era. The accompanying article reviews the ethical pitfalls encountered by German physicians during the Nazi era and examines them in relationship to current issues. It also explores the role of professionalism then and now. In particular, ethical issues presently confronting emergency physicians are examined through this prism.

Seeing through the face of deception

We have developed a high-definition thermal-imaging technique that can detect attempted deceit by recording the thermal patterns from people's faces. This technique has an accuracy comparable to that of polygraph examination by experts and has potential for application in remote and rapid security screening, without the need for skilled staff or physical contact.

Responsibilities for poverty-related ill health

In a democratic society, the social rules are imposed by all upon each. As “recipients” of the rules, we tend to think that they should be designed to engender the best attainable distribution of goods and ills or quality of life. We are inclined to assess social institutions by how they affect their participants. But there is another, oft-neglected perspective which the topic of health equity raises with special clarity: As imposers of the rules, we are inclined to think that harms we inflict through the rules have greater moral weight than like harms we merely fail to prevent or to mitigate. What matters morally is not merely how we affect people, but how we treat them through the rules we impose. While current (consequentialist and Rawlsian) theorizing is dominated by the first perspective and thus supports purely recipient-oriented moral conceptions, an adequate approach to social justice requires a balancing of both. Such balancing results in a relational conception of justice, which distinguishes various ways in which an institutional scheme may causally affect the quality of life of its participants.

This essay argues that the strength of our moral reason to prevent or mitigate particular medical conditions depends not only on what one might call distributional factors, such as how badly off the people affected by these conditions are in absolute and relative terms, how costly prevention or treatment would be, and how much patients would benefit from given treatment. Rather, it depends also on relational factors, that is, on how we are related to the medical conditions they suffer. It then discusses some implications of this view for understanding responsibilities for international health outcomes.