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One of the great things about this
particular focus of ethical reasoning
in action is that it applies in all of
our disciplines in all the different
areas of life across the university
what you’ll see is that professors
with very different backgrounds and
very different skill sets will be able
to talk about ethical reasoning
whether its in business or science
and technology or philosophy whatever
the courses might be that they can
talk about what this means and how
to think about it in that area of study
and we hope that will really get students
thinking about all aspects of their life and
how ethical reasoning applies in those context
I’ve been thinking about this a lot
how would I as an instructor incorporate
eight key questions into my existing classes
and the one I have thought most
carefully about is an introduction to
American studies course that I offer as
part of the general education program
every time I teach the course there is a
unit on race in American culture through
time and recently I’ve been assigning a
book by Rebecca Skloot called
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
It’s a very moving story about a very
ordinary woman who’s largely forgotten
to history but who’s cells gave rise to
HeLa the first immortal cell line that was so
instrumental in transforming the face of
modern science and medicine when
we have in the past looked at that book
we’ve been looking at questions of race
and culture and Jim crow and things of
that sort because it was 1951 when the
cells were taken from her *** without
her knowledge let alone any kind of
informed consent informed consent
didn’t even exist at that point and
from that I could imagine having a
whole new layer of conversation
about this text where we get into
the ethical dilemma that that poses
partly from the doctor who took the
cell sample but also from the scientist
who took the cell sample and cultured
it and so if we look at the eight key
questions we might take the one about
liberty for example and think about
her liberty as an individual person
as a citizen of the united states of
course we would have to situate that
in the moment 1951 before civil rights
have taken place and there were real
constraints on the liberties of
African Americans and our society
we might also juxtapose that with the
question about outcomes which
asks us to think about weighing say
the individual versus the larger society
the good of the greater society but then
we can go even beyond that because
the book connects this particular situation
to on going questions about donors
and cell tissue and the scientific
community and the benefits and
so I think again there are some
really rich conversations that we
can have with students connecting
something that happened in the
past to their everyday present and
thinking about the kinds of policies
that we create both at the state
level and at the federal level and so
for me I have to decide now
whether I want to have a casual
conversation in the class or
whether I want to take the next step
and really create a focus intensive
essay for example where I can ask
the students Ok we’ve talked about
it in class now I want you to reflect
on it carefully and apply all eight of
the key questions to this particular
dilemma and perhaps how does it
impact the way you think about these issues
There are certainly responsibilities with respect
to public accounting we have CPAs
that are out in the business world
who audit other companies we have
CPAs that actually work in industry
that work as chief financial officers what
is a revelation to the students who
are going into public accounting is
that as a certified public account your
first responsibility is not to your client
its not to the company who that employees
you your first responsibility is to the public
you must honor the public trust and
so if you see something going on you
cant say well my boss told me to do
it so I’m just following orders your
responsibility is to the public and
it’s a higher responsibility then to your employer
In the area of medical decisions particularly
surrounding scarce resources I think
there’s something really interesting
that comes out when you compare
and contrast for example the lens
of fairness with the lens of utility
or outcomes for example when
we’re deciding who should get
organs for organ transplantation we
tend to rely a bit more on fairness
then on outcomes in other words we
don’t ask which person is more
deserving of a particular organ we don’t
ask how society might be bettered
by giving the organ to one person
as appose to the other instead I think
the fundamental rule that drives our
decision is more that fairness in
other words treating people equally
and so who ever gets in line first usually
gets the organ first or perhaps whoever
is closer to death would get the organ
first and I think those are both
driven very much by a sense of
fairness where as by contrast if you
look at the use of vaccines for virus
pandemics say a flu pandemic for
example the government has outlined
a whole hierarchy of how we would
allocate vaccines in such a crisis situation
and its very much an outcomes driven
analysis its not fair because I’m at the
very bottom level I would never get the
crisis vaccines the flu vaccine under this
kind of an allocation system instead
the people who are at the top are
people who would be most deemed
at least by the government to be most
necessary in keeping our society
going so doctors and pharmaceutical
manufacturers get way up there
high on the list and politicians naturally
are fairly high on the list but also
people like for example truck drivers
are higher on the list than me because
the sense is if we’re going to deliver
these vaccines we might need truck
drivers so it doesn’t seem very fair to
me that I get the lowest level but its an
outcomes driven analysis in which we’re
deciding how we can best further the
long term outcomes in our society
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