At school, I’m taking an ethics class and my semester-long assignment is to come up with ethical dilemmas and discuss them. I’ll post those that relate somewhat to politics here. Note: I did not actually come up with this dilemma. Professor Honeycutt mentioned it in class – I do not know if he came up with it or got it from somewhere else.
In this instance, I would have to conclude that a) the treatment should be returned if it has yet to be used or some arrangement for paying for it should be reached if it has been used, and b) the man should face some consequences (what those are would be up to the justice system). There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the man broke the law. Even in a case where someone is ethically in the right, they should be willing to face the consequences of their actions. If that is not followed, then to what degree the law is followed will vary for each and every person; in such a situation, law and order breaks down. Not facing consequences would only encourage repetition. Please note that I am not saying that the man is in the wrong for breaking the law. It is certainly conceivable that his conscience should be clear, but he must still face consequences.
The second reason has to do with whether or not his action was, in fact, ethical. Doctors, in general, do not simply demand a sizeable sum of money for no reason, even if that reason is not readily apparent. How many years of the doctor’s life have gone into the research for this treatment? What has he sacrificed? How much money has he poured into it? These questions are all relatively trivial (one man’s finances are not more important than the life of another’s wife), but worth asking.
More importantly, the doctor probably has one of two reasons for demanding so much money. The first is straightforward: money. The doctor wants money, either for profit or to compensate for his expended resources or to put into further research and development. This may or may not be a matter of greed (see the questions above), but it comes down to the same thing. Now, if that is his motivation, why would he demand an amount beyond an ill person’s means? He gains nothing in that scenario and would do so for only one of two reasons that I can conceive. If the treatment simply costs that much (requires a lot of costly chemicals or some such thing), then why should the doctor be the one to pay? While sympathy drives us to side with the sick woman, bankrupting researching medical doctors cannot possibly be in humanity’s best interest – note that this sort of situation could likely arise around research involving any terminal illness or condition and allowing such thievery to transpire would have the end result of destroying medical research on fatal sicknesses. Then where would we be?
Or perhaps the cost of the treatment is relatively small, but it is a matter of supply and demand. There could be half a dozen people with the same condition, but only one “dose” of available treatment to go around. The doctor is not seeking money, but raising the cost is the only way he knows to reduce the number of patients to match the supply. Perhaps essentially giving the treatment to the most financially rich patient is not the best way to choose who gets it, but neither is giving it to the patient with the most dedicated relative or the patient with the least amount of respect for the law. In either of those cases, murderous members of the Mafia would likely take precedence over a farmer, or a doctor, or a teacher or police officer.
Am I saying that the man was ethically wrong? No – for all we know, the doctor is a sadist who gets off watching people die with salvation just out of reach (although why such a man is researching cures to illnesses is beyond me). Am I saying that I wouldn’t do the same thing (after exhausting all preferable alternatives, of course)? No. This situation is extremely different from any of my experiences, so I cannot say with any certainty how I would act. But, in conclusion, the man must face the consequences of his actions and reparations must be made (either by returning treatment and paying to fix any damages such as broken windows or by paying for the used treatment).
A while ago, Frank J. wrote an essay about his plan for world peace. I’ll give you a hint – it combines the capabilities and research of NASA with the products developed in the Manhattan Project.
But upon stumbling across this infograph, I believe I have found an even better solution. You see, nuking the moon is all well and good for intimidating terrorists, but it still leaves us with the problem of that giant monstrosity of a rock hanging over our heads, moving our large bodies of water at will and constantly causing people to turn into wolves for some unknown reason. How do we get rid of this unruly and presumptuous neighbor? That’s right, we destroy it with a planet-killing battle station!
Now, I know what those of you who like this idea are thinking; “We’ll never get the general public to agree to build something called the ‘Death’ Star.” You’re probably right. But, see, unlike Alderaan, there’s no life on the moon, so there’s really no need to call it the “Death” Star. Rather, since it would firmly establish world peace and get rid of a neighbor who has a Wilson-like tendency to hide his face from us, we could call it something more appropriate, like “Neighborhood Watch Planetoid of World Peace.” Doesn’t that roll off the tongue better than “Death Star”?
And I know some of you practically-minded folks are thinking; “Sure it’s a great idea, but nukes are cheap and plentiful (heck, if Second Wave could get their hands on one, why can’t we?) and this battle station sounds expensive.” Nonsense! I mean, yes, it will cost roughly $15,960,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 for the raw materials alone (excluding equipment), but I have personal assurances from President Obama that this will not add “one dime” to the deficit. In fact, not only will it get rid of our loony neighbor, but it will create and/or save thousands of jobs (Wookiee slave labor excepted, of course).
But there are probably some naysayers among you (and some non-equestrian pessimists as well) who are thinking about what the effects of such an explosion would be on our home planet. You’re probably thinking that there will be billions or trillions of meteorites laying waste to a large portion of the globe. I have a simple, two-part response to that concern:
We wait until the moon is over some place unimportant, like Antartica or the Ukraine (seriously, it just bugs me that that place is so hard to hold on to in Risk).
WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT FREE MOON ROCKS?!
Clearly, my plan is the world’s best hope for world peace. So if you don’t support it, you’re just an ignorant peon bitterly clinging to your giant space-rock!
Sorry, Adam Baldwin, but no matter how likable an actor (or his character) is, and no matter how wholesome the show, they could still bite you in the back.
I know this because they hate Obamacare. They just passed a proposition defying federal mandates to buy healthcare. Therefore, they must be racists, since just over half the letters in “Obamacare” spell the name of a black man.
“Consider this a shot across the bow of the U.S.S.[R.] Obama. Consider it a preview of November. Consider it Lexington of the Second American Revolution. Consider us out of metaphors.”
Consider it as healthy for Obamacare as Obamacare is for America.
Consider it Missouri’s little way of saying “We would’ve ratified the 10th Amendment too if we’d been a state back then.”
What a surprise! The costs for healthcare providers is going up because of people who get insurance after they get sick and cancel when they don’t need it anymore.
This is an update from the original Obama Hates Me post. I am not a singer, but my sister happened to visit my house today, and she is. No instruments and you can kind of tell it was made by amateurs, but it’s good if I do say so myself. Slightly different lyrics from the original.
Obama Hates Me, a SCAAC original parody: Written by Guffy Conservative with Contributions from SisterO. Sung by SisterO (download):
I just re-posted an IMAO post that ended with “What grade do you give Obama and why?”
To that, I would have to answer “It depends.”
Are we grading him on whether he’s done (in a more or less specific sense) what he’d said he do? As SNLso clearly illustrated, no! He definitely gets an “F” there, though that could change with time.
Are we grading him on whether he’s done what he tried to do? This differs in that it would still include Gitmo and Iraq, but would also include Copenhagen. It would not include the Auto bailout. Here, he gets an F-.
Or are we grading him on how good a President he’s been in general? In that case, he gets a D, maybe a D+. He hasn’t totally destroyed foreign respect for our military (no one’s attacked us yet!). He hasn’t released everyone in Gitmo. He hasn’t outlawed any of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights (at least, not completely). But he’s also set up a 100% increase in the national debt, thus the nosedive on the grade.
Here’s to Obama having just as “successful” a term as he’s been having so far.
I left a couple of comments on a YouTube video of the Alan Grayson thing and got suckered into a debate with this guy obdaddy. So far, we’ve gone back and forth on waterboarding, torture, religion, the media, Rush, Crowder, Obama, liberalism, conservatism, and a good bit more. Essentially, he’s a bitter middle-aged man who can’t send a message or leave a comment without being condescending (concerning our age gap), insulting people (“tea baggers”), or something of the like.
It’s almost funny how he calls me a “zombie” and a “sheep” when he regurgitates (or at least appears to) stuff I’ve heard many, many times. Let’s just go through a quick rundown of some of what he’s said to me.
He really harped on Rush being a druggie, despite me trying to explain that Rush got hooked on what was originally necessary medicine (or as necessary as painkillers can be). He also consistently ignored the fact that Rush kicked the drug.
He told me to stop mindlessly listening to Hannity, Beck, and the like. I told him I’ve watched Hannity maybe three times and I’ve never even heard or watched Beck, or any of a number of other people he mentioned. He proceeded to call me a liar. To which I say, why would I lie about something like that? I told him I listen to Rush! Why wouldn’t I “admit” to listening to Beck or Hannity if I did? It makes no sense to me.
He said that waterboarding is torture because the waterboard-ee doesn’t know that it’s relatively harmless. So, apparently, we’re now allowing the ignorance (or lack thereof) of terrorists to dictate what we define as torture.
He accused me of being in a cult when I said I believe that the overwhelming majority of “Christians” are not Christians at all. However, I gave him specific Biblical reasons for this. He replied by saying that not everyone believes the Bible. To which I said that that doesn’t matter! Do you have to believe the Qur’an in order to use it to determine whether or not someone’s a Muslim? No.
He called pretty much every sort of media “snake oil salesman” (Rush, ESPN, liberal news, Disney, etc.), apparently because their motivation is selling adspace and stuff. I’ve asked him if he hates capitalism or something, but no response to that yet.
He says that I’m just a young idealist who’ll learn better as I grow. Does that ring just plain false with anyone else? Let’s see, the demographics show that a much bigger proportion of middle-aged people are conservative compared to the number of college students who are conservative. Seems to me that it is far more likely that my peers will grow to be conservatives, rather than us few conservatives growing to be liberals.
He essentially called liberalism the ideal of being benevolent, of helping society’s weak and claimed that conservatives construe health care for all as “evil.” I asked him what he, personally, does to help society’s weak and gave a few examples of what I’ve done, pointing out that liberals would actually have laws passed forcing others to care for society’s weak, rather than caring for them themselves. He hasn’t yet cited a single thing he’s done to care for the weak. He also told me not to try and pass off missionary work as anything other than condescending and rude. Someone’s got to explain that one to me.
He said Tea Partiers are racist and hateful but has yet to supply a single example (although I did ask). He claims he’s not calling me racist but says I “protest too much” when I gave him the short version of what’s in my letter to Janeane Garofalo.
