The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning, and Sometimes Fighting With Others in Addressi

The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning, and Sometimes Fighting with Others in Addressing Ethics Problems in Organizational Life. Front Cover.
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Ethical behavior does not emerge automatically. Effective political method is necessary. While it may be difficult to teach ethical character, nonetheless, skill development with respect to joined ethics understanding and action-learning methods can help us develop the skills and confidence we need to actualize our ethical characters and social concerns.

An action-learning approach to organizational ethics can help stimulate and enable ethical character. Business Ethics in Applied Ethics. Find it on Scholar. Request removal from index. Google Books no proxy elibrary. Calton - - Journal of Business Ethics 68 3: Reintegrating Ethics and Institutional Theories. Would it be more defensible to give conditions that cause premature death a higher priority? Should strategies targeting prevention rather than treatment have a higher priority? Another factor is the costs of the treatments that might emerge though stem cell research.

Although basic science studies involving stem cells might help researchers develop new drugs and other relatively affordable medical interventions, the stem cell therapies that regenerative medicine enthusiasts describe could be relatively costly. Even more dramatic social justice questions arise when one considers biomedical research in an international context. Research is concentrated in wealthy nations and much of it focuses on the health problems of people fortunate enough to live in those nations. But does justice require that prosperous nations devote more of their research funds to conditions that cause premature death in poor countries?

Questioning the justice of research funding allocation decisions may seem sacrilegious, given how popular biomedical science is in this country. But bioethicist Daniel Callahan presents the following thought experiment:. The rich countries would remain rich. Most of their citizens would make it to old age in reasonably good health. There would continue to be incremental gains in mortality and morbidity, the fruits of improved social, economic, and educational conditions, and improvements in the evaluation and use of present therapies.

No prosperous country would sink from the lack of medical advances. Another startling take on research priorities comes from neuroscientist Floyd Bloom. In his presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Bloom declared that the quest for improved health care should focus more on health outcomes research than on the genomics research so often portrayed as a vehicle to medical advances. Although stem cell research might eventually deliver benefits to some patients, benefits could also be achieved by investing resources in other kinds of research.

The social justice inquiry is relevant to many areas of biomedical research, not just stem cell research. Indeed, such an inquiry might support research on some conditions that are the focus on stem cell research, such as juvenile diabetes and spinal cord injury, which affect many young people. Nevertheless, it is important to see stem cell research as simply one of many scientific opportunities that could deliver health benefits.

Investments in stem cell research will reduce the funds available for other types of biomedical research. In stem cell research, as in other research areas, the relative value and likely cost of any potential therapeutic benefits should be part of the decision making about research priorities.

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A second matter of social justice concerns the relative priority of research needs and health care needs. Supporters contend that stem cell research is needed to aid patients with conditions that cannot be treated with existing therapies. From this perspective, there is a social justice basis for channeling limited resources to stem cell research. But those defending a moral duty to conduct stem cell research should consider another social justice perspective. Expanding access to health care would assist a currently disadvantaged group of people.

Most standard health care interventions have been studied and found to be reasonably effective.

The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning, and Sometimes Fighting ...

Many are also relatively affordable. For these reasons, directing limited resources to health care delivery might achieve social justice objectives more efficiently than directing resources to stem cell research. This argument has even more force in the international context. Lack of access to basic health care, clean water, and other public health services produces high death rates in poor countries. The social justice inquiry raises questions about the priority that stem cell and other basic science studies should have in the competition for limited resources.

If government officials and health advocates want to help patients, meaningful help would also come from a system that supplied adequate health care to more people, both across the nation and worldwide. People have passionate views on stem cell research. Their passion has had two detrimental effects on the public debate. One is the exaggeration about therapeutic benefits I referred to earlier.

Stem Cell Research as Innovation: Expanding the Ethical and Policy Conversation

The other is disrespect for people with opposing positions. Too often, people caught up in the debate portray those with different positions inaccurately and unfairly. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research use the slippery slope to cast aspersions on the morality of research supporters. According to some opponents, research supporters will accept almost anything to advance science and human health. On the other hand, people supporting embryonic stem cell research belittle those assigning a high moral status to early human embryos.

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Underlying this attitude is disdain for anyone who would let religious and other moral beliefs influence their positions on science policy. Some scientists and advocates recognize that scientific considerations alone cannot determine appropriate state policy on embryonic stem cell research. Misleading terminology also characterizes the stem cell debate.

For example, many embryonic stem cell research supporters deny that they endorse human cloning. But the initial process of creating the cloned embryo which research supporters prefer to call somatic cell nuclear transfer is the same in research cloning and cloning to have children. Yet speakers often fail to clarify which definition of cloning they adopt, which leads to confusion in the public debate.

Such language games fail to give due regard to the moral disagreements underlying the policy disputes over stem cell research. The ongoing debates over stem cell research ought to reflect a better deliberative process than we have seen so far. In their work on deliberative democracy, political scientists Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson offer guidance for improving the deliberations over stem cell research. Below I describe their general framework for deliberative democratic policymaking and then apply it to stem cell policy formation.

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Gutmann and Thompson describe four deliberative democracy characteristics relevant to stem cell research policy. First, policy arguments and choices must be supported by reasons. The requirement for reason-giving rests on a moral principle that underlies democracy: To participate in a democracy, citizens must understand why certain choices are made. Learning the basis for official actions allows people to challenge decisions that rest on false or misleading reasons.


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The reason-giving requirement also demonstrates respect for all citizens, no matter what their economic or political power happens to be. All are entitled to an explanation for the policies their officials impose. Gutmann and Thompson describe a second feature of deliberative democracy, which is that the reasons underlying a policy must be accessible to all affected by that policy. Accessible reasons are understandable not only to those agreeing with the policy, but also to those opposing it.

To fulfill this requirement, decision makers must publicly articulate their reasons for a specific policy choice and those reasons must have an acceptable public content. This means that reasons should rest on facts, rather than false information. Members of the public should also be able to evaluate the beliefs supporting a policy choice: Deliberations are aimed at a specific policy decisions, and at some point those decisions must be made.

Policies then become binding on citizens. But deliberative democracy requires that policies remain open to revision. If new facts are discovered that undercut the initial policy choice, officials should reassess their original choice. If emerging discoveries or events provoke people to new value judgments affecting their policy views, officials should take these changes into account. People should be free to challenge existing policies, and officials should make revisions when they are justified. As Thompson and Gutmann observe, those disagreeing with a policy choice will be more likely to accept it if they know they can in the future work to alter that choice.

Thompson and Gutmann discuss a fourth dimension of deliberative democracy with special relevance to the stem cell research debate. Policy debates about stem cell research should incorporate these features. Proponents of different policies should offer accessible reasons for their positions. For example, research supporters should go beyond simplistic slogans linking stem cell research with lifesaving cures. They should supply clear and accurate information about potential clinical results, tempering the promises of effective therapies with realistic accounts of what must be achieved before therapies become available.

In turn, people promoting alternatives to embryonic stem cell research should supply clear and accurate information about adult stem cells, induced pluripotent cells, and other alternative sources that avoid embryo destruction. They too should speak of therapies as possibilities that remain uncertain and probably many years away. Both groups should emphasize that most stem cell work remains in the laboratory and that no one can say whether or when medical applications will emerge from that work.

Both advocates and opponents of embryonic stem cell research should also do a better job of confronting the moral questions raised by their positions. Those whose views reflect religious beliefs about the moral status of early human embryos should offer reasons for their positions that can be accepted by people who fail to share those beliefs. Those who claim to see the human embryo as an entity owed special respect should explain why embryo destruction is consistent with this moral status position. People worried about risks to women providing eggs to create embryos for stem cell research should explain why the usual human subject protections are inadequate in this situation.

And those who think the risks to women are justified should consider how they will respond if women experience harm from the egg production process. Adversaries in the stem cell debate should aim for an economy of moral disagreement as well, seeking to develop policies that individuals with differing positions could accept. For example, if people on both sides agree that the goal of improved health care justifies government funding for stem cell research, federal officials could decide to pursue that goal in a manner that demonstrates respect for those opposed to embryo destruction.

Officials could for a limited time period fund only stem cell research using cells from alternative sources. If suitable alternatives failed to emerge during that time, government support could be redirected to research involving stem cells from destroyed embryos. A similar policy approach could be taken to research cloning, with support initially directed to research aimed at developing patient-matched stem cells through methods that avoid the need for donated eggs.

Policies incorporating the reverse presumptions might also be devised. Such policies would authorize financial support for embryonic stem cell research from IVF and cloned embryos for a limited period, but would cease such support once alternative sources became available. And these options are not the only possibilities. A deliberative commitment in policy development could yield a variety of options that accommodate to some degree the different moral positions on stem cell research. How does the latest development in federal policy look through the lens of deliberative democracy?

In the revision of the federal funding policy for stem cell research, some features of deliberate democracy were evident, but there were deliberative shortcomings as well. In announcing his plans to liberalize the policy, President Obama cautioned against exaggerating the possibility of medical benefits from the research. Thus, the president gave a nod to the moral dispute and the importance of supplying accessible reasons for the position he endorsed, but the deliberative effort was relatively superficial.

The guidelines permit federal funding for research on stem cell lines created from embryos donated by couples who have completed their infertility treatment. But the guidelines rule out funding for research using lines created from embryos produced purely for research. But another aspect of the guidelines failed to conform to deliberative ideals. Nielsen - - Journal of Business Ethics 3: A Study of Managers in Singapore. Boo - - Journal of Business Ethics 29 4: Nielsen - - Journal of Business Ethics 9 Bridging Ethics and Self Leadership: Neck - - Journal of Business Ethics 43 4: Innovation in Experiential Business Ethics Training.

Nielsen - - Business Ethics Quarterly 8 3: Johnson - - Sage Publications. Richard Nielsen, the Politics of Ethics: