I will never forget the day my mother got diagnosed. I could swear that just yesterday I was thirteen years old waiting anxiously to be called in from the waiting room of some fancy New York State doctor’s office. I was young, but I had some idea of what was going on. I knew my parents and I were there because they were going through a divorce and fighting for custody of me. What I did not know was that we were about to endure a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and that the results were going to change my life forever.
“Madeleine, your mom is very sick,” the psychiatrist attempted to explain to me. I did not understand. I did not know a sick person could look perfectly healthy. “It’s not a physical sickness, it’s in her head. She has a mental disorder called Paranoid Schizophrenia.” She went on using big words to explain how my mother’s brain “wasn’t like other people’s brains.” I sat there listening closely, hanging on every word the woman was saying to me. “She can’t help the choices that she makes, it’s not her fault that she is the way that she is. She needs help.” Every day since that day in the doctor’s office, that remark replays in my head over and over. “She can’t help the choices she makes.”
That is what gave me the most trouble. I sat around for years and years watching the choices that my mother was making, unable to intervene. If she cannot help the choices she makes, why could my dad or my mother’s other family not make the choices for her? Why could nobody make her take medication? I eventually learned that it was because my mother was sick, but “not sick enough.” The court ruled in favor of autonomy and said that my mother still had the right to make her own medical decisions. According to them she was functional and was not posing an immediate danger to herself or others. I understand autonomy. Autonomy is defined as “a principle in which a person should respect the rights of other individuals to freely determine their own choices and decisions” (Jonas). I understand how important free will and the ability to make choices about your own body are. It is hard for me, however, to understand how you can continue to honor a person’s right to make their own decisions, when every decision they make is only hurting them. It is hard to sit there, as a loved one, and not want to just make them take the medication they need to get better, or force them participate in that research study that just might help.
Psychologists are awarded the APA Ethics Committee Ethics Educator Award for demonstrating outstanding and innovative contributions to the profession of psychology through ethics education activities. These ethics education activities include presentations, workshops, publications and more.
Neil Gorsuch Speech at Trump Hotel Raises Ethical Questions
“Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is scheduled to address a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington next month, less than two weeks before the court is set to hear arguments on Mr. Trump’s travel ban.”
Trump’s Washington DC hotel turns $2m profit amid ethics concerns
“Donald Trump’s company is said to have taken home nearly $2m in profits this year at its extravagant hotel in Washington, DC – amid ethics concerns stemming from the President’s refusal to fully divest from his businesses while he is in office.”
Does Trump’s Slippery Slope Argument About Confederate Statues Have Merit?
“NPR’s Robert Siegal talks with Ilya Somin, a professor of George Mason University, about President Trump’s warning that pulling down Confederate statues may lead to a slippery slope in which monuments to the Founding Fathers are torn down.”
CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Embryo Research
“Although scientists in China and the United Kingdom have already used gene editing on human embryos, the announcement that the research is now being done in the United States makes a U.S. policy response all the more urgent.”
The Ethics Issue Blocking Organ Transplant Research
“The ethics of so-called donor-intervention research are incredibly fraught. How do you get informed consent and from whom? The dead donor? The live recipient—or possibly dozens of live recipients getting tissues or organs from a single donor, fanned out across the country at different hospitals each with their own ethics review boards? All this would unfold against intense time pressure. Every minute of delay is a minute in which the organ is deteriorating.”
NSF reiterates policy on teaching good research habits despite its limitations
“The National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, Virginia, has decided to double down on its implementation of a congressionally mandated policy aimed at reducing research misconduct among NSF-funded scientists, despite a new report that notes problems with the agency’s approach.”
What do revised U.S. rules mean for human research?
“Following a contentious 5½-year process, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) released a revised “Common Rule,” which governs federally funded research involving human subjects (1). The updated rule includes a number of welcome changes for U.S. institutions and researchers, and their scientific collaborators abroad.”
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
“Establish an ethics committee, pursue innovation safely, create a solid foundation, choose autonomy, not regulation…”
“We have made more progress in artificial intelligence (AI) in the last three years than in the preceding three decades. AI is transforming from handy little applications that make our lives easier (from Alexa and Siri to Uber and Netflix) to something more powerful…”
How to be Ethical in the Workplace, According to 3 Philosophers “Whether you’re a journalist, banker, salesman, chef—whatever your career path may be—you’re obviously going to want to be a good professional. A key factor in being “good” in any profession is to be ethical…”
The American Psychoanalytic Association announced earlier this month that members of the association no longer need to abide by the long-established “Goldwater Rule” named after 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. The rule, which can be found in Section 7.3 of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Ethics Code, cautions against most psychiatrists and other mental health professionals offering opinions about an individual publicly – including the President of the United States.
In an interview with Fordham News, Dr. Fisher stated, “Revising ethical standards to address a particularly problematic political figure or to condone the publication of a book does not reflect well on the association.The public should be aware that the American Psychoanalytic Association organization does not represent the field of psychiatry per se, but a group of professionals who practice a particular therapeutic orientation within the mental health profession known as psychoanalysis.”
“Responsible diagnosis in psychoanalysis, as in other mental health fields, relies on assessment techniques that are characterized by interactions with and analysis of patient responses to specific established questions. A professionally and ethically responsible diagnosis cannot be determined in the absence of such interactions or assessments.For example, although the American Psychological Association has not adopted a “Goldwater Rule,” the importance of appropriate assessments are intrinsic in its ethics code, which forbids psychologists from providing opinions of the psychological characteristics of individuals if they have not “conducted an examination of the individuals adequate to support their statements or conclusions”. To be sure, the mental health profession can and should share their knowledge with the public, but irresponsible “diagnosis” diminishes the profession and does not serve the public it seeks to inform.”
The American Psychoanalytic Association’s Statement on “Goldwater Rule” can be found on their website.
This May, the Center for Ethics Education at Fordham University oversaw it seventh successful installment of installment of Theories and Applications in Contemporary Ethics. The theme of this year’s intensive ethics workshop was Living with Moral Disagreement: Activism, Advocacy, and Interaction. In this course, students from Fordham University and around the world engaged with faculty members from six disciplines on how to live in a world with a vast and deep moral disagreement
The Center brought together Michael Baur, PhD on Law, Melissa Labonte, PhD on Political Science, Charlie Camosy, PhD on Theology, Orit Avashai, PhD on Sociology, Gwenyth Jackaway, PhD on Communication and, the Center’s new Director of Academic Programs, Bryan Pilkington, PhD on Philosophy. From each of these distinct perspectives, the faculty engaged with students on topics about which we deeply disagree, including rights to healthcare, religious and legal exemptions around the concept of death and female genital mutilation or cutting. The conversation was lively, practical and steeped in the deep theoretical commitments.
The Center was pleased to have Lerato Molefe as a participant in this workshop, thanks to the Fordham/Santander Universities International Scholarship in Ethics Education. Lerato Molefe visited Fordham from Johannesburg, South Africa where she is the founding and managing director of Naaya Consulting, a legal and strategy consulting firm for large and high growth organizations spanning a range of industries across the African continent. She has degrees from Harvard Law School, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Smith College.
How to Apply for the International Santander Universities International Student Scholarships
Politics and World News White House Waivers May Have Violated Ethics Rules
White House waiver allows all White House aids to communicate with news organizations, even if they involve a “former employer or former client.” Stephen K. Bannon, senior White House strategist, will be able to communicate with editors at Breitbart News.
A Vocal Defender of Ethics Has Fans — and Foes
Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, is one of the few people in government willing to second-guess President Trump and his advisers.
Tuskegee syphilis study descendants speak about tragedy, seek healing
For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward. Decades later, descendants continue to gather in memory of their fathers and grandfathers.
Rethinking Ethics Training in Silicon Valley “If technology can mold us, and technologists are the ones who shape that technology, we should demand some level of ethics training for technologists.”
Facebook and the ethics of moderation
An examination of Facebook’s challenge in moderating content and those who are monitoring and moderating the social web
When Will Robots Deserve Human Rights? As robotics and AI advance, sophisticated machines or “robots” may match human capacities in intelligence, awareness, and emotions. Should be granted human-equivalent rights, freedoms, and protections?
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.
