Ethical to Treat Two People From Same Family
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Contents/Introduction
Part 1. Values and Value Judgments
Part 2. Ethical Requirements on Action
Role 3. Moral Graphic symbol and Responsibility
Part iv. Privacy, Confidentiality, Intellectual Property and the Police force
Fine Points
Notes
Part 2. Ethical Requirements on Action
- Moral Rights
- Moral Obligations, Moral Rules and Moral Continuing
1. Moral Rights
Along with the concepts of benefit and harm, one of concepts most commonly used in discussions of ethics is that of a moral right. A right is a justified merits, entitlement or assertion of what a rights-holder is due. For a person to have the moral right to have, get, or practice something, there must exist a moral basis or justification for the claim. These bases or justifications are different for different categories of rights. We shall see that "human rights" is a name given to those rights that all people take because they are people. Rights possessed by only past some are called "special rights." For example, if I have promised that I will drive our car pool in February, then you have a moral correct to be driven by me in Feb. Being driven past me in February is a special right you have. Special rights may be acquired through agreements or contracts, or through (chosen or unchosen) relationships--for example, "parental rights." In this department we volition examine four major contrasts in the categorization of rights: alienable vs. inalienable rights; human rights vs. special rights; negative rights or liberties, vs. positive rights; and absolute rights vs. prima facie rights.Moral rights, along with moral obligations and moral responsibilities, constrain how far a person may go in seeking to meliorate an upshot. For example, suppose you observe yourself in some sort of emergency where you tin can act to save 1 person's life or to save 4 (other) people's lives. (Other things being equal) you ought to save the four people, rather than one. Nevertheless, the greater value of iv lives as compared with 1 would non allow y'all to violate another's right to life in club to save four others. Thus it would non be morally permissible to kill one person in order to harvest that person'due south organs and transplant them into four people who each need one of the organs to survive. In contrast, although both human life and great art have value, art does not accept moral rights. Therefore, it would exist justified to destroy 1 great painting to save iv others--for example, by using the first to wrap the other four.
People talk about legal rights as well every bit moral rights. Although an try is often made to bring the force of law behind some moral right by making it a legal right, moral rights must exist distinguished from legal rights. There is no contradiction in saying that a person has a legal right to do something but non a moral right to practise it, or in challenge that some laws are unjust. Laws that treated enslaved people as holding violated the moral rights of those who were slaves. The argument given to justify slavery in the U.s. was that the Constitution guaranteed rights only to citizens. The constabulary did not recognize slaves to be citizens and then did not accordance them civil rights, that is, the legal rights of citizens. Furthermore, the law regarded slaves equally the holding of others. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.Southward. Constitution provided that old slaves are citizens and all citizens possess the right to life, liberty and property (although but men had the right to vote) and that naturalized citizens accept the same rights as native-born Americans. The same year, 1868, the Burlingame Treaty was signed. Information technology denied the possibility of naturalized citizenship to Chinese-Americans, although it permitted gratis immigration between China and the U.South. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Deed, the first federal law preventing immigration to the U.Due south. of a specific indigenous group, and information technology was not repealed until 1943. A Constitutional amendment to accord voting rights to women was passed in 1920. The Ceremonious Rights Acts of 1964-65 legislated confronting all forms of discrimination based on race, sex, religion and national origins.
The term "human rights" is 1 that Eleanor Roosevelt brought into widespread apply. Previously these rights were chosen the "rights of human being" (or sometimes, "natural rights"). She chose "human" as a more inclusive modifier. At that place is now international and cross-cultural agreement that all people have some rights simply because they are people. Notice that is not "because they are human." Beingness human is neither necessary nor sufficient to capture the sense of what characteristics qualify one for "human rights." A culture of human tissue would be both live and human, simply not an person and no one would claim it has human rights. This is a topic we will revisit later in this introduction when nosotros consider the moral standing of various types of creatures.
The view that in that location are human rights gained broad credence in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. It strongly influenced the U.Due south. Declaration of Independence, the framing of the Constitution, and the Nib of Rights. The term "right" (and the corresponding terms in other languages) dates only from the seventeenth century. Engineers and scientists face bug of homo rights directly when they confront the requirement to obtain the informed consent of whatsoever person who is to be an experimental discipline in their research. Human subjects are used in some biomedical inquiry and in product testing. For example, in testing a biomedical device each subject is informed not just of the risks and his right to refuse to participate, merely besides of his right to withdraw from the study at a later bespeak.
The thoroughness with which subjects in biomedical experiments are informed of their rights due to the stringent requirements on experimental use of human subjects at institutions that receive authorities support for experiments involving man subjects. In Affiliate 8 nosotros shall talk over a case that dramatically illustrates the absenteeism of such constraints when production testing is done in industry. The consideration of homo rights is necessary for any discussion of professional ethics, because the international recognition of human rights provides an important example of a standard for upstanding behavior that transcends cultural differences and has worldwide agreement. Homo rights are implicitly considered in formulating responses to a broad range of problems. Amidst those problems are the ethical bug that arise for engineers in technologically developed democracies that are the focus of this book. The notions of a moral dominion, and that of virtue, which will be discussed in the following sections, have been explicitly used in a larger range of cultures than has the notion of a right. Virtually every ethical and major religious tradition employs some counterpart of the notions of virtue and moral rule. Traditions vary on the content of moral rules, of course and on the characterization of particular virtues, and on the relative importance of i moral virtue as compared with others.
Discussion of rights has a particular prominence in comparatively individualistic societies, such equally the United States.
The United States in the tardily twentieth century is sometimes described as a "civilization of rights" as assorted with Japan, which is sometimes described every bit a "civilisation of duties." All the same, when people and groups representing a spectrum of political and religious opinion seek to codify basic moral requirements that use in a variety of cultural contexts, as in the United Nations, they oft formulate these moral requirements in terms of human rights. Therefore, notions of rights and human rights are broadly used today even though the notion of rights arose only in the seventeenth century in relatively individualistic societies.
In a pluralistic guild with many different subcultures, people may hold more readily on what each person is due rather than on what each person owes others. For case, suppose that in one culture certain tasks of kid rearing are duties of the father and in another similar tasks are duties of the female parent or of the maternal uncle. Members of dissimilar cultures may disagree on the moral duties of fathers, mothers, and maternal uncles, but withal exist able to agree that a child should receive such care.
Philosopher Annette Baier points out that people brand claims and requite moral justifications for them in every human grouping with any social organization. Therefore there are claims with moral justification in every society. Since rights are justified claims, and so at that place is an equivalent of the notion of a right in every society, even in those that exercise not have a ready term for justified claims. Cultures that see basic moral considerations in terms of responsibilities, virtues, obligations and duties take the equivalent of moral rights, because the moral requirements they do recognize provide moral justification for certain claims of individuals. The Declaration of Independence conspicuously rests on the assumption that human rights be: all persons are created equal, for all are endowed with certain "inalienable rights." In the strongest sense, to say that a right is inalienable means that it cannot be taken abroad by others, traded abroad by the person, or forfeited equally a result of the person's deportment. In a weaker sense, it means that the right cannot be taken or traded abroad, but it could be forfeited through the person'due south actions. In the United states of america a convicted felon forfeits the correct to vote, for example, although it is seen as wrong for others to deprive a person of the right to vote and whatsoever trading abroad of the right to vote is seen as morally invalid. In the weakest sense, to say that a right is inalienable ways only that others are not justified in removing or abrogating that correct. Thomas Jefferson and the framers of the Proclamation of Independence regarded such criminal punishments as imprisonment and executions merely, even though these involve the forfeiture of liberty or life.
Today, many people interpret the rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence every bit inalienable in the sense that one cannot merchandise them abroad. Today the inalienable right to liberty is more often than not agreed to mean that a person cannot make a morally valid agreement to sell himself into slavery. In view of the widespread seventeenth-century practice of making agreements to be an "indentured servant," it is not so articulate that the framers of the Declaration thought inalienable rights could not exist traded away, at least temporarily. In this book the term "inalienable" will exist used to depict a correct that others cannot take abroad and that ane cannot merchandise, but that can exist forfeited.
Rights that may be removed are chosen alienable. You may give up your ownership of a car by selling it, for example. This possibility illustrates that a property right, different the right to freedom, is alienable. Furthermore, the general right to holding, which forbids that ane'south property exist taken without compensation, may exist lost if the property obtained equally a result of illegal activeness.
Rights need not be exercised, even if they are inalienable. One may fail to exercise a right for many reasons, including but not getting around to it. For example, if you obtain the special legal right to drive, past getting a commuter's license, you may decide that yous do not want to do any driving, in which case you will non exercise that right. If one acts to voluntarily requite upward the merits, one is said to waive the correct. You may accept the right of way but yield to someone else (waive your correct to proceed beginning). The question of whether one waives a right usually arises when the do of that right comes into conflict with something else--in this instance someone else'due south desire or need to continue beginning.
From an ethical point of view, it is crucial for professionals to distinguish clients, patients and students who wish to waive or choose not to practise some correct--perchance the correct to some further information--from those who do non realize that they have the correct in question, or who practice non know how to become about exercising the correct.
To waive a correct, a person must be aware of the right and cull not to do it. In some cases others, usually practicing professionals, accept an ethical obligation to inform people of their rights. Situations that are unfamiliar to most people or that they exercise not enter willingly, such as beingness a patient, existence nether arrest, or being defendant of some wrongdoing, are ones in which people are likely to exist ignorant of their rights.
When in addition to having a right to do something, a person is morally required to exercise that matter because of a role causeless or an agreement, we say the person has an ethical obligation or duty as well as a right to do the thing in question. An ethical duty or obligation is a moral requirement to follow a sure class of activeness, that is, to do, or refrain from doing, certain things. For example, according to many engineering codes of ethics, engineers take a moral right to heighten issues of wrongdoing exterior their organizations, but they besides have an obligation to do and then when public health and safety are at pale.
Recall what makes some claim a moral correct: When in that location is moral justification for some claim, so that person has a moral right. From this definition we run across that for a person to have some moral correct all that is necessary is that the person's merits be morally justified.
A person'due south claim (commonly) continues to be morally justified even if that person chooses to waive the right in some circumstances. The decision to waive a correct in some circumstances does not mean that one waives it in others. For case, in the United States students have a legal right to see records concerning their operation. A educatee may waive the right to run into a detail letter of reference, just the general correct remains in forcefulness and may be exercised with respect to other fabric. However, certain rights, such as the legal right to keep others off your land, are forfeited if you do not exercise the right for a given period.
Consider whether a right that is inalienable would always have to be exercised. That a correct is inalienable means that the person'due south claim is always justified, but non that the claim must ever be pressed. That is, the right does not have to be exercised by the person who has the right, even if information technology is inalienable.
Sometimes rights conflict with one another or with other types of moral considerations. In order to sympathize how to make a moral assessment of such a situation, we must be able to brand other distinctions amid rights.
A term that is often confused with "inalienable" is "accented." An accented right is a right whose merits can never be outweighed past other moral considerations. The right not to be tortured is widely regarded as an example of an absolute right. This means that no circumstances ethically justify torturing person.
In dissimilarity to accented rights, rights whose claims may be outweighed by moral considerations are called prima facie rights--from the Latin, "at first face." Most rights are prima facie rights. For case, the right to travel freely, the correct to own a slice of real estate, the right to drive, the right to exist served next (when one has stood in line) are all rights that can be justly overridden under certain circumstances. Of course the circumstances that would qualify tin be common for one sort of prima facie right, but be rare in others. To say that a right is prima facie rather than absolute is to say that there might be other considerations that outweigh the correct in a given case. When the claim of some right is not met, information technology is mutual to say that the claim (and the right) is infringed. For example, if A refuses to plough over B'south car keys to B because B is likewise drunk to drive or is nether the influence of medications that severely impair his driving power, B's right to bulldoze has been infringed. If a moral wrong is done in infringing a right (i.east., if in that location are not adequate moral reasons for infringing the right), it is said to exist violated. If A refuses to turn over B's automobile keys simply because A is in an unpleasant mood, A has violated B's correct to the employ of his belongings.
An inalienable correct demand not be an absolute right, because to say that a person has a right which is inalienable only means that in that location is always moral justification for that person's claim. This does not mean that there couldn't be an fifty-fifty greater moral justification for overriding that claim in some particular state of affairs. Consider the right to travel freely; we regard this as a basic liberty and an inalienable right, but information technology is only a prima facie right. If people are conveying a unsafe and highly contagious disease, we believe that there is justification for temporarily overriding their right to travel freely and putting them under quarantine. This example illustrates the signal that in the case of some rights, justice may be best served by overriding (though non disregarding) people'southward claims.
The same point is illustrated by the fact that we regard information technology as just for people to be fined or imprisoned in some cases, however their inalienable right to liberty and to belongings. No court could justly take away their right to own property, however, or deny them all liberty past making them slaves, even if they were imprisoned for life. Justice as well requires that the amount of the fine and the extent of imprisonment or probation must be in proportion to their crime.
Well-nigh rights are prima facie rather than absolute. However, the right of a (competent) person to refuse medical treatment is some other example of a right that is normally regarded equally absolute.
It is important to distinguish betwixt different categories of rights, in lodge to sympathise whether a moral incorrect has occurred when the claim of some right is not fulfilled.
There is another important stardom betwixt types of rights that cuts across the other distinctions considered so far. On the one mitt, some rights require of others only that they non interfere with or restrict the rights-holder. These are called negative rights or liberties. On the other hand, in that location are positive rights, which are claims to receive something. To respect another'southward negative right requires only that you lot non interfere with the person'due south exercise of the right in question, and not that you provide her with item opportunities to practice this right. Examples of these negative rights include a person's rights to free speech and to religious expression. In the instance of positive rights, it is not plenty to leave the rights holder lonely; something must be done for her. Usually some goods or services must exist supplied.
Obligations may be negative or positive in the sense just explained for rights. If y'all pay for the time to come delivery of an automobile, you have a positive right to the automobile and the seller has a positive obligation to turn it over to y'all. Your right to life, on the other mitt, is a negative correct, that is, everyone else must refrain from killing you lot--a negative obligation. Information technology does not impose on others any positive obligation to save your life. Obligations will exist discussed at greater length in Parts 3 and 4.
It is commonly held that all people have a correct to sure basic necessities, and thus a society that is able to provide them is obliged to practice so. Such rights are called economic rights, every bit contrasted with political rights, and are positive human rights. Political rights include physical freedom, or the correct to travel freely; freedom of association; and liberty of speech. These examples, which are all freedoms or liberties, propose that political rights are negative rights--that is, they require just that others not interfere with the rights holder's activities. Still, some political rights, such as the right to vote, require that the services, in this case those that ensure privacy and authentic tallying of the vote, be provided.
Positive rights to health care and to didactics are often held to be basic homo rights. The nature and extent of a right to health care is now widely discussed in the United States. Many people also claim that everyone has the right to a basic education, and indeed public education in the U.s. is legally mandated for all. Recent legislation affirms the correct of people with disabilities to an pedagogy in the least restrictive environment possible. This change illustrates how views of the telescopic of such rights continue to evolve.
The four rights that were taken to be principle man rights at the end of the eighteenth century--the rights of life, freedom, "the pursuit of happiness," and holding buying--were taken tobe liberties, not positive rights. Other people by and large were regarded as beingness morally prohibited from interfering with the continuance of another'southward life, practise of freedom, pursuit of happiness, or retention of property. They were non morally obligated to save other people's lives, ensure their liberty, promote their happiness, or provide them with property.
In summary, consider what is at issue in the contrast betwixt:
ane. Alienable and inalienable rights;
2. Human rights and special rights;
iii. Negative rights or liberties, and positive rights;
4. Absolute rights and prima facie rights.
The first contrast deals with whether or past what means (due east.g., only past forfeiture) the correct may be removed from the person; the second with whether the correct belongs to all people; the third with whether the claim of the correct is to receive something or just to be left alone; and the 4th with whether it can ever be just (morally acceptable) to override the claims of that right.
2. Moral Obligations, Moral Rules and Moral Standing
The concepts of moral obligation and moral dominion have some of import characteristics in common with the concept of a moral correct. Moral rights and obligations and most moral rules specify what i is morally permitted, forbidden, or required to exercise without consideration of the consequences of the activeness--except in so far equally these consequences are function of the characterization of the acts themselves; killing, for instance, is an human activity that results in decease. Obligations and rules, like rights, may accept an institutional or legal footing rather than an upstanding 1. For example, at many colleges there is a rule that makes it an institutional obligation of all students to see their advisor on or before Registration Day. Students in some universities just non others accept a right to, an institutional guarantee of, on housing on campus. In contrast people mostly have a moral/upstanding obligation to keep their promises. Because rights, obligations and moral rules all concern taking action, they are related notions. Thus, moral constraint on action can be expressed in the language of rights or obligations, as well as that of moral rules. For example, if people accept a moral right to decline medical handling, and so a respective moral dominion prohibits treating people against their will. Therefore, health care providers all have a professional person moral obligation non to perform medical interventions on people without their permission. Moral rights and obligations are bailiwick to further classification, as we saw earlier. For example, rights may be classified as either absolute or prima facie, depending on whether the claims they embody always override other considerations in the case of accented rights or whether the claims can be overridden by weightier rights and considerations in the example of prima facie rights. In Function 3, we will take up the notion of moral responsibility and meet that information technology is a more complex notion than that of moral rights, moral obligations and moral rules.
A moral obligation or duty is a grade of action that is morally required. Obligations arise from many sources--from one'due south promises, agreements and contracts, and from one'southward relationships, debts of gratitude, and roles. Many roles are not chosen, so a person typically has obligations, such as the obligation of a citizen, or that of a son or a daughter, which are non the event of choices. Of course, one does take on professional roles in office from pick and consequently has certain obligations by option--the obligations of a nurse, an engineer, or a husband, for instance.
Often one party'southward right is matched by an obligation on the part of another party who stands in a item relation to the showtime. Rights and obligations accept counterpart moral rules. For instance, corresponding to the patient's right to refuse handling and the provider'due south obligation non to treat a patient without his informed consent is the rule "Practise not treat a patient without that patient'due south informed consent." An engineer'south obligation to keep a client's privileged information confidential corresponds to the rule that appears in the codes of ethics of many technology societies: to go along confidential a client'southward or employer's concern matters. Remember the earlier definition of negative and positive rights. Would the obligation not to disembalm a customer's privileged information be a negative or a positive obligation?
As stated, it would count as a negative obligation, because commonly it would crave only refraining from acts of disclosure. In many circumstances, however, one would really accept to take special precautions to avoid disclosing a client'south confidential information--as when 1 might take to shield a part of a new model from public view. In this case the obligation would require positive activity and and then would have the characteristics of a positive obligation. This example illustrates some of the judgments that must be made in applying ethical concepts.
Rules of upstanding conduct specify the acts or course of action that are required or forbidden. In this book I will follow the common practice of using "moral dominion" or "rule of ethical behave" narrowly and apply it only where there is a rather precise specification of the acts or courses of action that are forbidden, permitted or required. For instance, a manuscript submitted for publication should be one that has not been previously published, except for versions written for very dissimilar audiences. Full general exhortations such as "Exist honest" or "Care for every person as an finish and not as a means," might be called moral rules in a broad sense of "moral rules," but they are so full general that they are commonly called basic considerations or "ethical principles" and that is how I shall refer to them here. To summarize: a moral dominion has a specific form, an ethical principle is a general moral consideration. Therefore, the terms "moral rule" and "ethical principle" may use to the same ethical consideration. For example, people often speak of "the principle of informed consent" by which they mean the moral rule that before subjecting someone to experimentation or hazardous treatment one should requite them total information near what one proposes to practice together with any associated risks and obtain the person's consent. This dominion has become such a basic element in so many moral discussions (at least in technologically developed democracies) that it is termed a "principle." Although any given obligation has a corresponding moral rule, non all obligations or moral rules have corresponding rights. There are moral rules that apply to the behavior of moral agents toward beings who, although their welfare must be considered, are non the sort of beings that have rights. (This indicate volition exist discussed in this department in connection with "moral standing.")
It is often held that moral obligations and moral rules apply to the treatment of homo corpses and to non-human animals. Because these claims clarifies how to recognize moral obligations and moral rules in the absence of corresponding rights. Consider the handling of human corpses. Some religions hold that the treatment of corpses affects the person whose trunk information technology was, but most people recognize the moral rule that they ought to care for human corpses with respect fifty-fifty if they do subscribe to such a belief. (Simply what behavior is held to exist respectful varies with the culture. For instance, autopsies are regarded every bit disrespectful in some cultures.) A variety of reasons are given for believing that people should treat corpse with respect. One very common ane is that if we fail to care for human corpses with respect, we are probable to become callous toward living people. Another, more common in previous times, is that a person may be mistaken for dead.
The question of moral constraint on the treatment of human corpses was discussed with practical application to product development a few years ago when it was decided to resume using human cadavers in car safety test crashes. Treatment of corpses is likewise of applied importance in setting practices of teaching hospitals, which sometimes allow educatee physicians to practice medical procedures on corpses before rigor mortis sets in. This practice affords prospective doctors the opportunity to increment their proficiency before they apply medical procedures to living patients. Laws requiring the consent of the family for whatever procedures done to the corpse, are common and reverberate the repugnance with which most people in the U.South. view the instrumental use of corpses. However, this legal restraint is usually circumvented by the ploy of delay in pronouncing the patient dead. The broad ascription of rights to beings who do not make reflective choices has go widespread in the Us in the last few decades along with heightened concern about the welfare non-man animals. However, whether someone ascribes rights to non-human animals does not fully determine the person's view about how such animals ought, ethically speaking, to be treated. In practise, there is simply a very full general tendency for those who concord that animals have rights, to remember that animals should be treated much every bit we care for persons. Many who are reluctant to accredit rights to non-human animals exercise recognize obligations of people toward them. As already mentioned, a moral prohibition on cruelty to animals is widely recognized and is backed by some laws.
Since the strictness with which one uses the term "rights" does non settle questions regarding the obligations of moral agents toward beings who are not moral agents, more must exist said.
The question of the moral limits on experimentation with animals is of item importance for science. Some scientists burn and maim animals in lodge to devise treatments for burned and maimed people. Furthermore, because anesthesia and analgesics would interfere with some of these experiments, the animals are non given anything for their pain. Merely because these acts are called experiments does non mean that they should not be viewed as acts of cruelty. Then we must ask whether we should view these acts every bit cruel; whether such cruelty constitutes a violation of moral rules or obligations toward animals; and whether this violation can be justified.
What considerations are relevant to determining whether information technology is morally justifiable to practise experimentation with animals? The kickoff consideration is what happens to the animal--whether it is disabled, killed or caused pain. Beyond that, information technology depends on whether the obligation not to cause animals severe pain when their own welfare is non promoted is an accented or only a prima facie obligation. If information technology is prima facie, justification would depend on the relative strength of the countervailing considerations those that count toward taking actions that would cause the pain for case, benefit brought to people through some action that would cause pain to the beast.
Many who do wish to accredit rights to non-human animals fence that their well-being is important in itself, not only because their well-existence contributes to the well-beingness of humans. When the welfare of some creature must be considered for its own sake, it is said to have moral standing. To say that some grouping of beings have moral standing does not decide the question of whether they have the same moral standing as people and thus have "homo" rights, but only that the welfare of such beings must be considered for its own sake. The welfare of such beings might exist considered simply considering it benefited some people, only that would not require that they be accorded moral standing.
The history of ethical thought shows that those in power accept frequently recognized the moral claims just of others similar to themselves. The human rights of many people have been ignored because of their race, class, or gender. That beliefs is at present described as racism, classism or sexism, understood as unwarranted preferential treatment of the race, course or gender in power. If one claims that humans are the just group with moral continuing, this looks suspiciously like a new unwarranted bias, a bias in favor of the human species--what Peter Vocalist has called "speciesism." In order to show that the merits of moral standing (or absenteeism of moral standing) of members of other species is more than than an capricious exercise of prejudice on the role of humankind 1 must testify that distinctions in moral standing are based on morally relevant features of the beings in question. Another way of expressing the view that a beingness has moral continuing is to say that its well-beingness (or some aspects of it) is of value in itself, and non merely a means to other desirable ends.
Using Animals in Medical ExperimentsThose who claim that non-humans have moral standing and those who say that animals have rights often agree on what they believe is morally required in the treatment of animals. Both groups tend to disagree with people who are concerned about the treatment of non-human animals only if (and to the extent that) humans are afflicted past that treatment. Withal, fifty-fifty those who are concerned about the treatment of not-human being animals simply to the extent that such treatment has an effect on human well-being may object to cruelty toward non-human being animals on the grounds that cruelty is a moral vice and that the moral corruption of people should be opposed. Therefore, denying moral standing to non-human being animals does non thereby commit 1 to the view that "anything goes" with regard to their treatment.Suppose that certain experiments are thought to be needed to develop better ways of coping with extreme pain in humans. These experiments would involve performing a variety of procedures that would be very painful to the experimental subjects. The subjects would accept to be vertebrates. There is some expectation that species, such every bit primates, that are closer to humans according to evolutionary biology, might requite more meaningful results, but information technology is non known exactly how much like humans in this respect are the candidate laboratory animals. Because the information about neural response would be crucial, no hurting medication would be given. The subjects would be temporarily paralyzed to keep them from flailing nigh.
What, if any, species would it be ethically acceptable to use in such experiments? Is information technology morally relevant whether the subjects are mammals? Would intelligence exist morally relevant to the determination, and if so, how? Would the presence or absence of a complex social system in which members intendance for other members of the species be a morally relevant factor to consider? Would it exist morally relevant that one candidate species had a more humans face than some other? Would it be relevant that some detail individuals had once been human pets? If so, would it be amend or worse to use those individuals?
As Robert Proctor points out, the Nazis were stanch defenders of the view that it was wrong to victimize healthy specimens of other species by using them for scientific experiments and that it was morally preferable to use equally subjects "defective" humans (1). This example illustrates the betoken that cruelty to one grouping can easily coexist and even seek justification in pity toward another.
Contents/Introduction
Part i. Values and Value Judgments
Part 2. Ethical Requirements on Activeness
Function three. Moral Character and Responsibility
Role 4. Privacy, Confidentiality, Intellectual Property and the Law
Fine Points
Notes
© Whitbeck 1995pdsarin@mit.edu
Source: https://web.mit.edu/course/2/2.95j/readings/introethics_pt2.html
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