The Fordham University HIV and Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Training Institute (RETI), now in its 7th year, is a training grant sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (R25 DA031608-07), Principal Investigator, Dr. Celia B. Fisher, Director, Center for Ethics Education). The RETI provides early-career investigators in the social, behavioral, medical and public health fields with an opportunity to gain research ethics training. In doing so, RETI addresses the urgent need for HIV and drug use investigators who can identify and address ethical issues, engage drug using and other at-risk communities in the construction and evaluation of population sensitive research protections, and generate empirical data to inform ethical practice and policies for HIV prevention science. Through their funded Mentored Research Projects (MRP), RETI fellows generate empirical data, publish their findings in a variety of high-impact academic journals, and are trained to apply for increasing grant opportunities.
The program’s aims are to: (1) increase trainees’ knowledge of and capacity to address key ethical issues in HIV and drug abuse prevention research; (2) increase trainees’ capacity to ethically engage participants and communities in the construction of participant protections that reflect the values and merit the trust of all stakeholders in HIV and drug abuse prevention research.; (3) increase trainees’ capacity to conduct research that will generate data to inform HIV and drug abuse prevention research practices and policies; and (4) create and sustain an information and communication network for trainees, faculty and others in the field for enhancing ethical knowledge, ethical dialogue and future professional collaborations in HIV and drug abuse prevention research ethics.
With the advent of 3-D printers and similar technology, modern science has come closer and closer to artificially solving medical issues and imitating parts of both the anatomy and physiology of the human body. However, when it comes to issues of reproduction and pregnancy, it’s an entirely different battle. Attempts to create an artificial womb for human gestation have proven to be be unsuccessful over the last two decades. However, researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia were able to create an artificial womb in which premature lambs were able to grow.
A recent article from The New York Times considers the ethical and legal implications of this new technology if it is applied to humans. One of the most likely situations that could arise would be using the artificial wombs for premature infants. An artificial womb could eliminate or address many of the issues and risks that face premature infants in incubators such as undeveloped lungs and neurodevelopmental challenges, and could be a life-saving technology for many. However, artificial wombs would not allow for contact or interaction between parents and infants that can be facilitated with incubators, which is something that is extremely beneficial for both the parents and the infant emotionally and physically.
“When I started my Ph.D. looking into the ethics of artificial wombs in 2009, several people told me that it was purely science fiction, and not anything that will happen anytime soon,” stated Dr. Elizabeth Yuko, Health & Sex Editor for SheKnows Media. She continued, “While the recent trials were conducted on lambs, not humans, the rapid evolution of reproductive technology means ethicists have to stay a few steps ahead of clinical practice.”
Dr. Yuko’s research interests include sexual health and reproductive ethics, human enhancement and research ethics. She adds that she is “thankful to have had the opportunity to address some of these early ethical issues in The New York Times.”
It is quite difficult to get through a day without hearing or seeing some mention of sports or athletics in our world. They practically dominate society. Professional athletes are some of the highest paid people on the planet. They are the epitome of what children aspire to be, fans fawn over and television networks profit from. Yet, in the midst of all the glory of these games, the evident violence that accompanies them seems to be conveniently overlooked. But is it okay to simply ignore that the most watched event on television is a game of grown men tackling each other, beating each other and then celebrating the fact that they physically harmed another human being? Is it ethical to teach our children that the most exciting moment in ice hockey is when the defensemen drop their gloves and fist fight? I am here to say that it is. The violence of sports, in technicality, is ethical because sports are not promoting violence, but rather mimicking and projecting the society that we live in.
We want to rationalize and determine if an action is ethical. Just recently we have seen Colin Kaepernick kneel during the national anthem and cannot imagine why anyone would even condemn him for expressing his freedom of speech. But then, we see the war veteran without legs who so bravely defended our country and does not have the privilege to stand for the flag he fought for and our ‘ethical’ minds question, what is right and what is wrong?
The same dilemma happens in sports; however, we fail to see both sides. We see the violence of football, boxing and ice hockey, and automatically determine that this is affecting us, our children and the way our society functions. On the contrary, we do not look at the violence already in society and in some way see how it reflects itself and impacts sports.
Violence in the sporting arena has been around longer than historians may even know. Gladiators fought until the death and 20,000 people encouraged the fighters to slaughter each other. In 1930, Maximillian Adelbert Baer killed a man in the boxing ring and spectators cheered until they realized his opponent was not moving. It seems that we as fans love this ferocity. We watch in awe and anticipation, and almost thrive off of the viciousness within the arena.
But why does the violence make us feel invigorated, even happy? I believe the answer lies deep within the human soul. We all have our own opponents. Every single day we wake up there are obstacles we have to face, problems looking to crush us and the unstableness of life. This instability causes anxiety. It causes anger. We cannot always understand why bad events tend to happen. We cannot understand why they happen in general, not only to us, but to humanity. When evil attacks, our response is to fight it. We do not welcome it with open arms into our lives, but rather, we wish to eradicate it from ever coming near the people and things that we so love.
So we wrestle with the malevolence; we stand up for ourselves, we protest, we fight for our beliefs just as the gladiators looked to defend themselves and the defensive lineman looks to tackle the running back charging towards him. In sports the opponent is the evil, trying to invade our basket, our end zone, our goal line, which at that moment is the most valuable piece of life. When we defeat the challenger and win the passing of a particular job or make the game-winning basket, then, we feel alive. We have defeated that invasion, rising victorious.
The violence of sports is a projection of society, not a promotion of actions. Sports respond to the way that human beings act. Charles Darwin theorized about survival of the fittest in 1859. The animal, the human being, the plant, that knows how to adapt, knows how to defeat the other to survive. We cannot blame sports for influencing violence in the world, when there is an inherent desire to demolish the competition within all creatures of this earth. Sports project this tendency that already exists. If we are unhappy with the climate of the sporting arena then the only way to change it would be to change the climate of life.
So, in the most literal and figurative way, the ball is in your court to decide if this violence is ethical or not. But before you decide, look at the world around you. See the wickedness that occurs every day in many different ways and then determine whether this is because of sports or if sports are simply a slightly more manageable way of projecting this wickedness in ways that are more controlled than most acts of vice in the society of our time.
Maria Trivelpiece ’19 is a student at Fordham College Rose Hill. She is double majoring in psychology and journalism.
Hundreds of demonstrations and protests have taken place across the country in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order which targeted immigrants in the reevaluation of visa and refugee programs, otherwise known as the “Muslim Ban.” While the intention of the protests was to reflect America’s inclusivity, the tactics and media coverage of the protests revealed exclusionary ideas. The fixation on cases of immigrants with superseding academic credentials and contributions to America has a purpose, perhaps, but as we protest Trump’s baseless policies, it’s worth considering the value of all immigrants rather than only those who are believed to have greater status or worth based on these qualifications.
The model minority typically describes Asian Americans or Asian immigrants, who are highly educated and successful; those who, in essence, embody the American dream. Our cultural climate allows for the simultaneous disrespect and idolization of these minorities. Members of minorities who fit our standards of meritocracy and success are deemed the “good immigrants” while the others are ignored. Just as meritocracy and wealth define opportunity and status, our conception of immigrants, too, is tinted by our fixation on measurable successes. In the new tumult and chaos of our national politics, the model minority has been transposed to other migrants, particularly those who are Muslim or from majority Muslim countries, in order to combat the poisonous view of immigrants that has been presented.
When Trump signed his first “Muslim Ban” he targeted the immigrants (many of them legal and green card holders) of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen. Immediately, I was struck by my personal connection to his illogical order. Had this ban been written 40 years ago, I wouldn’t be alive. My father, an Iranian immigrant, was lucky enough to leave Iran in the midst of war, and eventually earn a B.S., M.S., Ph.D., and, perhaps most importantly, his citizenship. Trump’s executive order was met with consistent protests and thousands of social media posts detailing the brilliant and qualified minds that would now be debarred from our entering country. Over the course of a few days, sources like The New York Times and The Atlantic began covering the Ph.D. students and qualified scientists now unable to return to the U.S. These narratives, and that of my father and my family, serve to undercut the dichotomous images of danger Trump presents; that immigrants are rapists or terrorists, and rarely, “good people.”
President Donald Trump’s first week in office was spent signing executive orders regarding the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines, visa and refugee programs and a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, all which sparked nationwide demonstrations and protests. Since the beginning of Trump’s campaign and more frequently over the past week, media outlets and select “experts” have been gaining attention by diagnosing Trump with various mental or personality disorders. However, is it ethical for experts in psychology and psychiatry to offer professionals diagnoses of Trump and what are the political implications?
A recent article published in U.S. News & World Report titled, “Temperament Tantrum,” featured a professional assessment of the 45h President from John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist who previously taught psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins University. Gartner told U.S. News & World Report that Trump has “malignant narcissism,” an incurable narcissistic personality disorder. Despite the Goldwater Rule, in Section 7.3 of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Ethics Code, which cautions against offering a professional opinion about an individual in the public eye who has not been formally evaluated, Gartner argues that in the case of Trump, he can “make this diagnosis indisputably” and the breaking of the [Goldwater Rule within the] ethics code is warranted.
According to Dr. Celia Fisher, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education, however, such misleading statements by mental health professionals “helps the Trump administration hide their strategic intent to undermine traditional democratic principles under the guise of a President whose impulses often get the better of him.”
The 2016 Fordham/Santander Universities International Student Scholars
The application period for scholarships to attend Fordham University’s intensive three-day interdisciplinary ethics graduate course is now open! The course, or workshop, will be held May 23 – 25, 2017at Fordham University, New York City, USA!
The Fordham/Santander Universities International Student Scholarship in Ethics Education provides direct financial support for international students who wish to pursue graduate-level study in Fordham University’s Master’s in Ethics and Society program.
Students who apply to the program through the scholarship complete the workshop titled, “CEED 6100: Theories and Applications in Contemporary Ethics” which is designed to provide cross-disciplinary perspectives on moral theory and applied ethics. Using a team-teaching approach, this course brings together faculty from at least six different disciplines to integrate foundational knowledge about moral theory from the humanities and sciences with contemporary applications and social issues.
The scholarship covers:
Tuition: The cost of tuition for the graduate courses and administrative fees.
Travel: Applicants may request funding for travel to New York City Applications should include estimates of costs, including the source for the estimate (e.g., airline website, travel agency).
Lodging: As part of the scholarship, housing may be provided to funded students at one of Fordham’s graduate student housing facilities.
Discussing her NIH-funded research on ethical issues in research involving LGBT youth, Dr. Fisher discussed the “interfamilial, regulatory and ethical tensions” that emerge in HIV prevention studies striving to recruit sexual and gender minority adolescents under 18 years of age.
