Based upon this article from today’s Washington Post, I was going to write a snarky little piece about the limited job opportunities for ethicists in the White House. There’s one ethics advisor there (though I will bet there are others in the White House Counsel’s office who have a piece of those issues, as well), […]
Are the recent public apologies heard from celebrities, athletes, government officials and others accused of wrongdoing sincere or manufactured by publicists trying to minimize the damage? Ethicists examine the authenticity of public apologies in an article posted at the following site: http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=2072519&ct=6820489.
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The Cost of the Death Penalty
The number of executions in the US is falling, but capital punishment has not disappeared, as some had predicted. It is interesting, as a philosopher, to see what sorts of considerations have an effect in public life on the popularity of this form of punishment. A few years ago discussion focused on the possibility of […]
On the first day of the Obama presidency, a regulation promulgated in the waning days of the Bush administration became effective. The regulation (which you can read here) implemented three federal laws that (to one degree or another) protect individual health care providers and health care entities that decline to perform sterilizations or abortions from […]
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Religion and Morality
There has been quite a lot of discussion in the last few years generated by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. I have not followed if closely. But, being a moral philosopher, I am certainly interested in one aspect of it: the relation of religion and morality. It is often said that morality is based on […]
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More on Avoiding Another Meltdown
One of the most insightful economists writing about the meltdown is Robert Shiller, of Yale. He is also one of the few economists who gets credit for predicting at least some of it. In a recent column in The New York Times he added some reflections about how the behavior of consumers and lenders led […]
Federal law currently says no, or appears to say no, and it provides for criminal penalties for a violation of the law. So well-meaning states like Pennsylvania that want to pay burial expenses for organ donors have a hard time convincing state employees and funeral homes to pay or receive the benefit. Sen. Arlen Specter […]
According to an article posted to the the N.Y. Times‘ website today, drug maker Wyeth has turned over to the Senate Finance Committee a mountain of material on its practice of paying ghostwriters to prepare favorable articles for publication in medical journals. Physicians were then recruited to put their names on the articles. In some […]
Today’s Times has an interesting piece on the Cleveland Clinic‘s new policy of publicly reporting the business relationships that any of its 1,800 staff doctors and scientists have with drug and device makers. The clinic, one of the nation???s most prominent medical research centers, is making a complete disclosure of doctors??? and researchers??? financial ties […]
KTLA.com is reporting on a new survey of high school students’ ethics by the Josephson Institute for Ethics (press release (PDF)). Here are some highlights from the Institute’s summary: STEALING. In bad news for business, more than one in three boys (35 percent) and one-fourth of the girls (26 percent) ??? a total of 30 […]