Ethics news
Keep up with ethics-related stories appearing in the news.
Below are stories collected from news sources around the web relating to ethics. Click on the links provided to read the stories in full.
We frequently add to our Ethics News stories, so check back often. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
nb. Links to new stories are generally to external websites. St James Ethics Centre is not responsible for the content on these sites. Some links may become invalid over time and this is beyond our control.
More discrimination, please! Against liberal censorship
26 October 2012 - ABC Religion and Ethics
The meaning of words and the political significance of dictionaries have been, oddly enough, among the most debated topics in Australian politics over the past week. And the word on everyone's lips of late is misogyny.
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Time to wave farewell to gallantry?
31 October 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
There’s been a lot of talk about misogyny in recent weeks - so much so, that following Gillard’s now-infamous spraying of Tony Abbott in Parliament, the Macquarie Dictionary announced that it would broaden the definition of the word. Formerly used to describe a pathological “hatred of women”, the Macquarie definition will now encompass an “entrenched prejudice of...
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The great shark debate: to cull or not to cull?
22 October 2012 - The Conversation
The great shark debate continues in Australia as summer approaches. Shark bites on bathers and surfers are a particularly sensitive reality. These are personal and community-wide tragedies that implore us to find adequate solutions. The goal of everyone is to improve shark bite prevention and risk reduction while finding solutions that reflect the values of the public.
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Ethics probe into Transport and Main Roads D-G Michael Caltabiano
26 October 2012 - The Courier-Mail
SIDELINED Transport and Main Roads' boss Michael Caltabiano will continue to bank around $10,000 a week while he awaits the outcome of an Ethics Committee investigation.
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Life could still be in organ donors declared dead, says ethicist
24 October 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Medical practice in intensive care units has moved ahead of the law and is declaring people brain dead for organ donation when they may still be legally alive, the Melbourne bioethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini says in a new book.
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Can Neuroscience Challenge Roe V. Wade?
28 October 2012 - The New York Times: Opinionator
When I was asked this summer to serve as an expert witness in an appellate case that some think could lead to the next Supreme Court test of Roe v. Wade, I was surprised.
Rick Hearn is the attorney representing Jennie McCormack, an Idaho woman who was arrested for allegedly inducing her own abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol — two F.D.A.-approved drugs, also known as RU-...
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Four Myths About Doctor-Assisted Suicide
27 October 2012 - The New York Times: Opinionator
IN a little more than a week, voters in Massachusetts will decide whether to allow doctors to “prescribe medication, at the request of a terminally ill patient meeting certain conditions, to end that person’s life.” A similar bill is being debated in New Jersey. Unfortunately, like so many health care questions, the debate about physician-assisted suicide is confused,...
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Evil, part 3: does freedom make us evil?
29 October 2012 - The Guardian
Kierkegaard believed that human sin was a result of a combination of pride and fear in the face of freedom
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Evil, part two: does it exist?
22 October 2012 - The Guardian
St Augustine's theory was that evil was 'nothing other than the absence of good' – an idea supported by modern science
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Evil, part one: how can we think about evil?
15 October 2012 - The Guardian
The religious idea that thinking about evil involves coming to terms with a darkness in all our hearts provides food for thought
The Lance Bomb has blown, but is doping really cheating?
18 October 2012 - The Conversation
Should Lance Armstrong lose his seven Tour de France titles for doping, as is being proposed by the US Anti-doping Agency (USADA)?
It’s an issue that puts the UCI – the international cycling union – and Tour de France organisers in a very awkward position. To move the issue from being a “witch hunt” of Lance Armstrong to being about protecting the integrity...
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Islamic world unleashes the demons of misogyny
27 October 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
THE targeting of Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl shot this month by a Pakistani Taliban assassin, brought back memories of my teenage years in Tehran, where theocratic zealots were similarly in control. The words of the Taliban's chief spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, had a chillingly familiar echo in my ears. A bullet had Malala's name on it, he explained to the news media, because...
How do you stop online students cheating?
29 October 2012 - BBC Online
Imagine taking a university exam in your own home, under the watchful eye of a webcam or with software profiling your keystrokes or your syntax to see whether it really is you answering the questions.
US election: Obama vote dilemma for black Christians
26 October 2012 - BBC Religion and Ethics
For millions of black Christians in the United States, the decision about who to vote for in the forthcoming Presidential elections is far from simple. President Obama's support of same sex marriage has angered many Christians, leading many African-Americans to state they could not vote for him.
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A bloody road to apartheid
28 October 2012 - The Economist
MYANMAR’S government has reported that 82 people have died in the past week’s ethnic violence in the western state of Rakhine, and 2,800 houses been razed by fire. Both figures are almost certainly underestimates. The whole length of the state, a narrow coastal strip whose northern end borders Bangladesh, has seen mounting tension and often fighting between the majority Rakhine...
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IQ2 and the St James Ethics Centre: Dr Simon Longstaff
14 October 2012 - TimeOut Magazine
The executive director of the St James Ethics Centre has plenty of schemes in place for debate and the exchange of lively ideas...
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Julia Gillard is no feminist hero
15 October 2012 - The Guardian
She has been praised for standing up to sexism but Australia's prime minister is also rolling back rights
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Australia’s prime minister comes out swinging in sexism row’
17 October 2012 - CNN
"Smoking hot" was how many observers described Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's blistering attack on sexism and misogyny in the bear pit of Australia's Parliament on Tuesday.
The roar of support from Australian women on Twitter was deafening. So too was their rage when the parliamentary press gallery almost uniformly condemned Gillard's excoriation of...
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True Progressivism
13 October 2012 - The Economist
A new form of radical centrist politics is needed to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth
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Ethical investing can be complicated but rewarding
12 October 2012 - BBC News
Becoming an ethical investor is not straight forward and deciding where to invest can be very subjective. But if you can find the right product, ethical investors say it can offer peace of mind as well as financial returns.
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Nobel prize winners prove that success can be cloned
10 October 2012 - The Conversation
The 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology has been awarded to John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”.
A pluripotent cell is capable of becoming any of the cells in the body, just as the cells of an early embryo can. When they are derived from an embryo, these cells are referred to as embryonic...
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The Scarlet Manifesto: The Rise of the Adulterous Woman
13 October 2012 - The Huffington Post
Back when I was in college, there were rules for the female students. We had to wear skirts to meals. Curfew was strict, broken under threat of expulsion -- or worse. Naturally, boys were not allowed into our rooms. These maxims were designed to "protect" us women -- we who were so easily taken advantage of, so at risk of being romantically duped -- not to mention reinforce the idea...
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The survival of the sexiest: Where has the sexual revolution gotten us?
10 October 2012 - ABC Religion and Ethics
As the votes came in for the recent same-sex marriage bill, it was no surprise to see this issue divide, more or less, along right- and left-wing lines.
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Why we must resist the march of the moralists
12 October 2012 - The Australian
LITTLE over 100 years ago American writer Henry Adams mused that "morality is a private and costly luxury". Today it has become a cheap, public staple.
The national obsession with the amount of contrition shown by Alan Jones for his extreme rhetoric at a political speech last month; shrill accusations of misogyny, along with revelations of hurt feelings, hurled at the Leader...
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Feature Guest – Nancy Lublin
17 October 2012 - Radio NZ: Nine to Noon
Radio NZ: Nine to Noon interview with feature guest - Nancy Lublin.
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Everybody Matters: A Memoir by Mary Robinson
5 October 2012 - ABC Radio National
Mary Robinson is perhaps best known as the woman who became the first female president of Ireland back in 1990. Over her career she's tackled some of the most difficult and entrenched issues in Irish society: divorce, contraceptives, homosexuality and women in the workforce to name a few.
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News too much for the Church of England
18 August 2012 - Ethical Investor
The UK-based Church of England has sold out of News Corp (ASX: NWS) after a year of dialogue that failed to generate sufficient corporate governance reform in the company.
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A Good Person
1 October 2012 - ABC Radio National
What does it mean to be a good person? Does it depend on wealth or qualifications or is it more than that? Can you become 'good' or do you have to be born to it?
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Think Tank: ethics - the bottom line is, you need them
7 October 2012 - The Telegraph
Simple is seductive. Perhaps that is why corporate chiefs are so ready to embrace Milton Friedman's axiom that the only thing for business to do is to increase profits within the rules of the game. The trouble is that the rules change fast and people with a finer ear than most CEOs get caught out. MPs and moats; hacks and phone hacks; police and leaks.
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The post-Jobs Apple has a different flavour under Tim Cook
9 October 2012 - The Guardian
A year after Steve Jobs's death, the replacement for the seemingly irreplaceable co-founder has made the company more ethical – and yet more profitable.
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Has Apple Become More Ethical Since Steve Job's Death A Year Ago?
10 October 2012 - Forbes
There’s an interesting piece here trying to detail the way in which Apple has changed under Tim Cook, the way that it is different since the death of Steve Jobs a year ago. They actually headline it by saying that the company has become more ethical. Something which I seriously doubt for three reasons.
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Physician-Assisted Suicide: Why Medical Ethics Must Sometimes Trump the Patient’s Choice
7 October 2012 - PsychCentral
Sometimes, medical ethics must set limits on a patient’s autonomous requests, even in the context of an understandable choice on the patient’s part. Thus, a patient may feel completely justified and “empowered” in requesting that the dose of her pain medication be doubled, even though that would be extremely dangerous to her health.
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Transplant ethics
7 October 2012 - StarTribune
Honor for Chinese leader at the University of Minnesota dishonors victims, according to 22 local and national leaders in bioethics, medicine and human rights.
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No, you’re not entitled to your opinion
5 October 2012 - The Conversation
Philosophy teachers owe it to our students to teach them how to construct and defend an argument – and to recognize when a belief has become indefensible.
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Prissy shrieks of fear and loathing
8 October 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Something to know about Alan Jones - the key thing, really - is that he's not all that bright. Far from it. Despite the artfully constructed public persona, there is no powerhouse intellect there, no vast store of wisdom. He is a crackpot muddle of prejudice and ignorance.
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The ultimate dilemma - freedom to preach v freedom of speech
9 October 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Jenna Price claims to be just an ''ordinary'' person who is ''sick of the way that Alan Jones speaks to us and tries to whip up hate''. Or so she told ABC Radio AM yesterday. Ms Price is the founder of a Facebook page which has campaigned - so far successfully - for companies to withdraw their advertising from Alan Jones's breakfast show on Macquarie Radio...
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Modern-day droogs are free to roam
15 September 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Can social media content really be effectively regulated? Deborah Snow and James Manning report.
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Defending multiculturalism is in all our interests
24 September 2012 - ABC Religion and Ethics
Abolish Australian multiculturalism and the strong cultural nationalist impulse in this country would go unchecked. Liberty and equality in Australia would be the first casualties.
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When research findings explode
20 October 2012 - The Sydney Morning Herald
The world of psychology has been rocked by fake and fraudulent scientific data and plagiarism, writes Alok Jha.
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Reinventing Ethics
23 September 2012 - The New York Times
Human beings and citizens in complex, modern democratic societies regularly confront situations in which traditional morality provides little if any guidance.
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How to confuse a moral compass
19 September 2012 - Nature
People can be tricked into reversing their opinions on moral issues, even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite of their original positions, researchers report today in PLoS ONE.
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Cory Bernardi is right, in Peter Singer’s anti-human world
25 September 2012 - The Conversation
Senator Cory Bernardi has been reviled for associating homosexuality with something repugnant, bestiality. Yet Australia has just awarded its highest civilian honour to a philosopher who provides a moral defence of sex with animals.
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'Untouchable' no more
21 September 2012 - Al Jazeera: The Stream
Despite a constitutional ban on India’s caste system in 1950, activists say discrimination based on social hierarchy continues.
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Misunderstanding 9/11
11 September 2012 - ABC Religion and Ethics
The fact that every mainstream media outlet continues to mark the terrible anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks is a victory for the perpetrators.
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