Science Ethics and Racism in Drug Enforcement Thread

Between this and candling, I'm starting to think people are just looking for an excuse to stick shit up their kid's rectum.

Fairly tame picture, but still...

So if I beat the fuck out of my wife because I believe it is appropriate and works, it's ethical?

That's the whole crux of this thread. lendarios position, and the Supreme Courts afaik (I leave it to others to find the documentation if it's not) is that it's ethicly acceptable for parents to medically treat their kids as they believe best. To the point that the no treatment or only prayer is allowed. I'd think any reasonable adult would seek out a professional if there is a medical issue. The problem is there are a lot of unreasonable and stupid adults in this country. And they breed.

Tuco_sl said:

Who is saying that?

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lendarios_sl said:

Giving kids an potentially dangerous medical treatment, that the parents 100% believe will help their children is not unethical parenting.

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I don't see the difference. He is basically saying that if you ignore evidence and go with what you believe to be correct it isn't unethical. Are you getting something different from that quote?

I prefer to use the way the courts determine subjective ideas (harassment, emotional trauma, pornography, etc.): would areasonableperson consider it to be that way? The key word is REASONABLE. It is entirely reasonable that a normal person would consider putting a well-known and highly toxic chemical into ones body (bleach) to be especially dangerous. As such, it is unethical even ifyoubelieve it is ethical.

The question then becomes what are the boundaries to population sample? For instance, in the US we allow specific groups of the ultra-religious to decline medical care. That's because in the US we hold religion as some special category that preempts other factors. If this were not the case would you be able to refuse medical care for your child simply because of your sky-wizard? No, because the group of 'reasonable' people would then include the whole population instead of just your sky wizard adherents.

In the same way, a scientific procedure can be ethical in one country but not another. It is all based upon a subjective definition of the population defining the sample of 'reasonable' people. You will get vastly different qualities of 'reason' between: NAZI scientists, the entire US population, Chinese politicians, the Amish, etc. Because these boundaries are often political, geographical or cultural in nature, ethics, while judged from the same 'standard', has different meanings to different people. The tendency (and a fallacious one) is to view it through the lens of 'typical American' because it is reasonable and natural to us. But that is unfortunately rose colored (or not, if you consider things like marijuana, Japanese internment camps, manifest destiny, etc. over the years).

There's too much confusion in the air

People are mixing up ethics, ethics guidelines for profession, and morals. Morals is just the social consensus on what is appropriate behaviour. It's definitionally relative, because societies reach a consensus (or don't) and this process has nothing to do with right and wrong. Ethics guidelines for professionals or research ethics is not ethics either. It's an objective standard of behaviours and principles. Now, there is an ethical obligation to do this, as well as practical and a morality-based argument for doing this.

And, finally, ethics is the branch of philosophy that examines the questions of right and wrong. It does claim universality. The concrete guidelines for ethical behaviour naturally change as we become more aware of the facts on the ground, such as when we realise that putting bleach in a rectum is bad for you. However, the ethical principle telling us what to do did not change, merely our understanding of the act did. This is not to say that ethics does not progress -- of course it does!

This is wikipedia level stuff, not sure why the discussion went on as if the concepts used by the parties were the same when they weren't.

hodj_sl said:

It becomes unethical when you're forcing and/or peddling the treatment on others, particularly children, and especially for a profit.

If you want to pour gasoline up your own ass for shits and giggles, by all means, have at it. You're fucking dumb as goddamn shit if you do it, but hey, there are no laws against stupidity.

The second you try doing that to your kids, however, is where you've crossed the line.

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Some have argued from Locke that one has the moral right -- one isn't acting unethically -- to stuff bleach in one's own rectum. This is, ofc, not the case, based on Locke's TTG 2 VII. From utilitarianism, Kant, and Rawls it's obvious that we don't have that moral right -- we are ethically in the wrong to sef-harm.

Why is this? For and from Locke, estate and liberty are only relevant if you have the health and life to exercise your liberty and enjoy your property. Now, many American philosophers like to downplay this because of their politics, so it is not surprising that you don't hear this in an American university.

For Kant, it's obvious that it cannot be the universal right to harm yourself. From the utilitarian position, the society as a whole is worse off if people self-harm. For Rawls, it is a question of fairness: since a Rawlsian society would have publicly funded health care, self-harming leads to use of resources that ought to have been used for the treatment of injuries that were not sustained by willful stupidity.

In the special case of a parent self-harming, there's just pretty much no justification under those ethical theories for calling it ethically acceptable, and Aristotelian or virtue ethics can be v easily added. (How could we justify self-harming as something a good parent does? A good parent would obviously choose whatever option it is that ensures the best outcome for their child)

Why are some of you talking about legal standards and enforcement of law in a discussion of ethics? We know that, to quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes "But if we take the view of our friend the bad man we shall find that he does not care two straws for the axioms or deductions, but that he does want to know what the Massachusetts or English courts are likely to do in fact." Whether the police will investigate his action or not, whether he is indicted or not, whether he is sentenced or not. Law enforcement has the power to shape people's behaviour and in that way shape the morals of a society (or vice versa) but that has nothing at all to do with right and wrong.

Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals. Prof. HLA Hart, Harvard Law Review, 1957 vol 71 p 593.

Quoting Austin:"The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another." p. 596 Then goes on for the rest of the paper to argue forcefully for not confusing morals or ethical worthiness of law with the question whether the law is, in fact, a law.

This is the position known as positivism: "what the Queen enacts in Parliament is law" (This is from Austin, obviously). This is more or less the dominant view in Western world: the validity of law comes from the process by which it is made, not from its conformity with any system of ethics or prevailing morals. There's a very good argument for this, and acting like unethical == illegal, or legal == ethical, or we can't legally enforce this in other countries == ethical, is not soundly debunked a fairly long time ago is somewhat disingenuous, especially from someone who attended law school.

The argument that the school of thought known as natural law makes, that it is deeply unethical for the State to compel us to act unethically, or for the State to punish us for that which is not ethically wrong, is a good one. However, the positivist position already accounts for this: Hart acknowledges that laws should conform with moral philosophy, but even if they don't they are still the thing we call 'a law.'

I wonder what would happen if you tried to candle a bleach enema.