Look at you... you are so young, and so bright!! it warms my heart to see all that you have accomplished and your drive to teach the rest of us! I love your work and appreciate you so much.. thanks for being such a bright light in such a world! Wish I was closer I would love to take one of your classes. Until next time, Amy.
Thank you for putting this together, it all informs! I've shared some of this with you on posts a year or two ago, but with additional depth here now.
While ethics have a universal underpinning that is constantly being challenged, value judgments shifting to the times and those in power, I have leaned into the more specific area of bioethics for these times.
You share about the ethics of CRSPR and other emergent biotechnology that our times are facing. This piece gets into the ethics of Newgenics, that covers that and other related fields and ethical challenges of modern genetics, pointing to what is arguably the worst decision the US Supreme Court has ever made, Buck v. Bell. Which, tellingly, remains the law of the land.
Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test:
Putting Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century
Minnesota Journal on Law and Equity, January, 2020
This is a 225-page treatment of public health ethics. Even gets into infectious disease. It claims to be the work product of the "Good Stewardship" model of bioethics. It's really the rationalization and justification for collectivist authoritarianism, aka Communism.
[Note: Nuffield Council on Bioethics is largely funded by Wellcome Trust. Itself an offshoot of Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceuticals. No ethical conflict that I see in that (sarc.) A peer of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WEF Zero-Covid founding member that advocated for strict, totalitarian Chinese-style lockdowns during the pandemic, and for future declared public health emergencies.]
This article published in the American Journal of Law and Medicine asserted it was ethical to impose heavy-handed mandates based in psychological manipulation and deception for the greater good of a pandemic health emergency. Ethically aligned with Wellcome Trust/Nuffield Council on Bioethics:
Bioethics. As in Anthony Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, being the Chief Bioethicist at the National Institute of Health. Pushing vaccines made by the same pharmaceutical corporations that fund her office. No ethical conflict that I see in that (sarc.)
And since so much of the incoherent, inexplicable, inconsistent and unscientific directions that authorities and public health officials have been spreading since 2020 has really been based in deception, manipulation, lies, wrapped up as a pseudoscience, Behavioral var. there's actually the ethics of lying that is studied and understood. Ethical lying, it's considered:
There even was a discussion within the British Parliament about the ethics of deception, manipulation, lies, wrapped up as a pseudoscience, Behavioral var. to make public policy in December, 2012
Point is, I suppose if there is a point in this, that ethics are so subjective and nebulous to be rendered meaningless in any kind of finding of fact in a judicial setting. Those who become experts, Chief Ethicists, Chief Bioethicists, are able to massage any and all actions into an ethical construct with enough creativity and imagination. Which is why thousands of years after the sorts of ethical debates presented in your share, there's no universal agreement to be found. It all simply becomes a matter of who's imposed will prevails. And there can be no perfectly evolved man or set of man's rules and guidelines that even a very powerful and fast machine can compute and produce a definitive edict stating "Ethical" or "Unethical." Bias of the user, data, algorithms can never be eliminated; there's too many "in the eye of the beholder" biases to overcome. Will-to-power becomes the regulator of ethics at the end of the day. The judgement of ethics comes when the history books are written. By the victors.
thank you for your thoughtful comment and for brining these important issues to light in the comment and on your substack.
I am in full agreement that all of these issues are immoral but I think it's definitely wrong to proceed from this observation to the conclusion that we should just throw up our hands and say "de gustbabus non est disputandem" or "on matters of taste there is no dispute" because ethics is not merely a matter of taste. I think we agree about this, actually, since I can't see what reason a person would have for calling out all of these instances of government overreach and corruption if he didn't think there was some basis for his criticism other than personal taste. this is part of the reason that I think it's important to spend time with the study of ethics, as I tried to convey in the essay.
I am in full agreement with that. I don't share what I share to throw up my hands. It's to better understand what we are up against. Because those who are operating unethically will drop into these types of defenses and assertions that their ethics are the proper ones, ours are flawed.
From what I've learned, and I'm not a trained ethicist, I've merely availed myself to a lot of information and applied my own analysis and understanding of the field, I've learned that it is highly subjective based upon the values and different goals the ethicist possesses. And if an ethicist believes that collective needs always or almost always supersede individual rights, giving muted voice to individual rights as the Nuffield paper does, then those underlying assumptions and values must be known and countered.
The ethics themselves can float to any conclusion regarding the same facts, based on the underlying assumptions. Much as jurisprudence applied to the same facts produces 5-4 decisions; it will be the will of the five to prevail over the four. And the underlying assumptions and values held by those five.
Look at you... you are so young, and so bright!! it warms my heart to see all that you have accomplished and your drive to teach the rest of us! I love your work and appreciate you so much.. thanks for being such a bright light in such a world! Wish I was closer I would love to take one of your classes. Until next time, Amy.
thank you, Amy. you're very kind.
Thank you for putting this together, it all informs! I've shared some of this with you on posts a year or two ago, but with additional depth here now.
While ethics have a universal underpinning that is constantly being challenged, value judgments shifting to the times and those in power, I have leaned into the more specific area of bioethics for these times.
You share about the ethics of CRSPR and other emergent biotechnology that our times are facing. This piece gets into the ethics of Newgenics, that covers that and other related fields and ethical challenges of modern genetics, pointing to what is arguably the worst decision the US Supreme Court has ever made, Buck v. Bell. Which, tellingly, remains the law of the land.
Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test:
Putting Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century
Minnesota Journal on Law and Equity, January, 2020
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=lawineq
The bioethics of the "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" ruling:
https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/buck-v-bell-one-of-the-supreme-courts-worst-mistakes/
This is a 225-page treatment of public health ethics. Even gets into infectious disease. It claims to be the work product of the "Good Stewardship" model of bioethics. It's really the rationalization and justification for collectivist authoritarianism, aka Communism.
Public health: Ethical Issues
Nuffield Council on Bioethics, November, 2007
https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Public-health-ethical-issues.pdf
[Note: Nuffield Council on Bioethics is largely funded by Wellcome Trust. Itself an offshoot of Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceuticals. No ethical conflict that I see in that (sarc.) A peer of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WEF Zero-Covid founding member that advocated for strict, totalitarian Chinese-style lockdowns during the pandemic, and for future declared public health emergencies.]
This article published in the American Journal of Law and Medicine asserted it was ethical to impose heavy-handed mandates based in psychological manipulation and deception for the greater good of a pandemic health emergency. Ethically aligned with Wellcome Trust/Nuffield Council on Bioethics:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-law-and-medicine/article/abs/infected-by-bias-behavioral-science-and-the-legal-response-to-covid19/16F48C9C6608D62F5303B367C7352F2E
Bioethics. As in Anthony Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, being the Chief Bioethicist at the National Institute of Health. Pushing vaccines made by the same pharmaceutical corporations that fund her office. No ethical conflict that I see in that (sarc.)
https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/the-house-of-fauci-how-dr-christine
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/18/fauci-wife-authors-paper-supporting-vaccine-pressure-campaigns/
And since so much of the incoherent, inexplicable, inconsistent and unscientific directions that authorities and public health officials have been spreading since 2020 has really been based in deception, manipulation, lies, wrapped up as a pseudoscience, Behavioral var. there's actually the ethics of lying that is studied and understood. Ethical lying, it's considered:
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27970/chapter-abstract/211610866?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-ethics-of-lying-2670509
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/lying/
https://hbr.org/2014/06/lets-be-honest-about-lying
There even was a discussion within the British Parliament about the ethics of deception, manipulation, lies, wrapped up as a pseudoscience, Behavioral var. to make public policy in December, 2012
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldsctech/179/17917.htm
Point is, I suppose if there is a point in this, that ethics are so subjective and nebulous to be rendered meaningless in any kind of finding of fact in a judicial setting. Those who become experts, Chief Ethicists, Chief Bioethicists, are able to massage any and all actions into an ethical construct with enough creativity and imagination. Which is why thousands of years after the sorts of ethical debates presented in your share, there's no universal agreement to be found. It all simply becomes a matter of who's imposed will prevails. And there can be no perfectly evolved man or set of man's rules and guidelines that even a very powerful and fast machine can compute and produce a definitive edict stating "Ethical" or "Unethical." Bias of the user, data, algorithms can never be eliminated; there's too many "in the eye of the beholder" biases to overcome. Will-to-power becomes the regulator of ethics at the end of the day. The judgement of ethics comes when the history books are written. By the victors.
thank you for your thoughtful comment and for brining these important issues to light in the comment and on your substack.
I am in full agreement that all of these issues are immoral but I think it's definitely wrong to proceed from this observation to the conclusion that we should just throw up our hands and say "de gustbabus non est disputandem" or "on matters of taste there is no dispute" because ethics is not merely a matter of taste. I think we agree about this, actually, since I can't see what reason a person would have for calling out all of these instances of government overreach and corruption if he didn't think there was some basis for his criticism other than personal taste. this is part of the reason that I think it's important to spend time with the study of ethics, as I tried to convey in the essay.
I am in full agreement with that. I don't share what I share to throw up my hands. It's to better understand what we are up against. Because those who are operating unethically will drop into these types of defenses and assertions that their ethics are the proper ones, ours are flawed.
From what I've learned, and I'm not a trained ethicist, I've merely availed myself to a lot of information and applied my own analysis and understanding of the field, I've learned that it is highly subjective based upon the values and different goals the ethicist possesses. And if an ethicist believes that collective needs always or almost always supersede individual rights, giving muted voice to individual rights as the Nuffield paper does, then those underlying assumptions and values must be known and countered.
The ethics themselves can float to any conclusion regarding the same facts, based on the underlying assumptions. Much as jurisprudence applied to the same facts produces 5-4 decisions; it will be the will of the five to prevail over the four. And the underlying assumptions and values held by those five.