Ethical Tenets Research Articles

Médias acadiens : fondements et limites d'une pratique journalistique militante

Is advocacy of a cause, an identity, or an ideology compatible with the imperatives of mass media news ? This is clearly one of the major questions raised by journalistic practice in Acadia. In story selection and news values, the professional journalists of this linguistic minority often express partisan views, which can be seen in their accounts of their own practices and in their media output. Even if numerous factors account for -if not legitimate -this partisan approach to news, the commitment of Acadian journalists calls into question some of the major tenets of journalistic ethics.

The Reception of Brandenburg-Prussia's New Lutheran Hymnal of 1781

ABSTRACTThe attempted introduction of a new rationalist Lutheran hymnal into Brandenburg-Prussia in 1781 was largely a failure due to the successful popular opposition towards it. This opposition was inaugurated by four parishes in Berlin. They petitioned the monarch in January 1781 with the request to continue using the old hymnal. Similar petitions were submitted from theLandständeof Pomerania, Magdeburg and East Frisia. Frederick II immediately granted this concession to all parishes in Brandenburg-Prussia. The strength of this opposition – which also occurred in other German lands where new hymnals were introduced – indicates the limitations of the religiousAufklärungas a popular movement. Traditional religious beliefs could not be easily replaced by more rationalist doctrine that stressed only Christianity's ethical tenets. While Frederick was indifferent to questions of doctrine, he would not allow any religious reforms to be imposed upon his subjects. For the first time this central feature of his religious policy was influenced by the force of public opinion. He was persuaded to halt the implementation of a measure that enjoyed the support of both enlightened clergy and laymen.

Lying to patients: can it ever be justified?

The acts of withholding information from patients and of deliberately issuing false information have been embodied in nursing and medical practice for centuries. The author considers the relationship of veracity, or truth-telling, to the four established tenets of medical ethics: autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence. Although there are occasions when withholding information can be supported, particularly when the patient has requested that this be so, she concludes that there can be no moral justification for health professionals lying to patients.

Scholarly Communication, Peer Review, and Reference Librarian Ethics:

There is some apparent conflict involving reference librarian ethics and their relationship to some recently published views relating to peer review and the scholarly communication system. A case study, based on the gap between the promotional rhetoric and the actual peer review, editorial practices of a famous reference work, the Lexicon of the Middle Ages (Artemis Verlag, Munich), brings this conflict into sharp relief. An academic debate in the field of art history of the Middle Ages, known as the Guide Riccio controversy, has been called the "case of the century" in art history. Material distributed by the Lexicon of the Middle Ages states that in the case of controversies, protagonists of opposing sides will have the chance to express their ideas in the pages of the lexicon. But the protagonists of one side of the Guide Riccio controversy were flatly rejected. If providing accurate information, and providing access to all sides of an issue, are tenets of library ethics, it would seem logical that academic and reference librarians would become professional allies of the academic whistleblower.

Code of ethics and the telemarketing industry's code

This article examines the role of the code of ethics in the context of other approaches to institutionalized improvement in business ethics, and reports the results of an empirical study among on-the-phone telemarketing personnel regarding their support of various ethical tenets embodied within the industry's professional code. The results indicate that practicing telecommunicators do not indiscriminately support or reject the various tenets of the 12-tenet code. Clarity and honesty in presenting telemarketing offers received the strongest endorsement. Conversely, however, there was significant disagreement with other tenets that called for no telemarketing deceit. The tenet prohibiting delivery of recorded messages without first obtaining permission with a live operator received the least support, implications of the findings suggest that a concerted industry educational effort is needed on telemarketing's code of ethics. There is also the possibility that the code itself may lack the specificity necessary to make it work up to its greatest potential as an institutionalized tool of telemarketing industry self-regulation.

Dilemmas in administering the death penalty: Conscientious abstention, professional ethics, and the needs of the legal system.

This article critiques ethical arguments against conducting forensic evaluations of capital defendants or condemned prisoners and against treating prisoners found incompetent for execution, and considers the impact of widespread professional abstention on the legal system. It concludes that arguments for abstention by forensic evaluators are grounded mainly in personal moral scruples against capital punishment, rather than in tenets of professional ethics, but that abstention would be ethically required if the evaluator's scruples preclude objectivity. It also concludes that treatment of incompetent prisoners known to want treatment is ethically permissible but that treatment for the sole purpose of readying the prisoner for execution is not.

Confidentiality limits with clients who have the AIDS virus.

Limits of confidentiality have not been defined for the life‐threatening dilemma of a client who has the AIDS virus and who continues to be sexually active without informing her or his partners. The authors review the medical background of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, legal limits, and ethical tenets of confidentiality. A position supporting breach of confidentiality is taken, and specific suggestions for counseling the client are offered.

Financial Incentives to Physicians

Physicians are under increasing pressure from hospitals and managed care plans to practice more efficiently. The focus is no longer on a minority of outliers but instead on the practice patterns of most physicians, since it is recognized that large savings are possible only when doctors as a group move in the direction of greater efficiency.The challenge is to find appropriate ways to change physicians' practice patterns. Historically, doctors have resisted change initiated by those outside the medical profession. This resistance results not only from habits acquired in medical school and residency training but also from the ethical tenet . . .

Medical ethics and medical practice: a social science view.

This paper argues that two characteristics of social life impinge importantly upon medical attempts to maintain high ethical standards. The first is the tension between the role of ethics in protecting the patient and maintaining the solidarity of the profession. The second derives from the observation that the foundations of contemporary medical ethics were laid at a time of one-to-one doctor-patient relations while nowadays most doctors work in or are associated with large-scale organisations. Records cease to be the property of individual doctors, become available not only to other doctors but also to educational and social work personnel. Making records openly available to patients is suggested as the only antidote to this irreversible loss of individual practitioner control. The importance for doctors of understanding the nature of professional and bureaucratic organisations in order to deal with the hazards involved is stressed as is the responsibility of the General Medical Council to regulate medical competence as well as personal behaviour.

Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

A headlong descent into a maelstrom of unethical disregard for the value of an individual person is unavoidable in the near future: that is the prediction of this book. The disturbing feature is that it is undoubtedly true, unless man is willing to proclaim against the insidious onslaught of the calamities described and documented by the authors. Today, no person can avoid facing the challenging questions and ethical problems proposed in the book. Because of the erosion of moral and ethical precepts long given at least lip service in Western culture, this book may be, instead of a point of reversal, the last gasp of exhausted moral and ethical tenets, which we as individual men have long held sacred but as Man have ignored. Because humanity can no longer endure advances in the trends described in this book, reading it becomes an obligation to all who retain the slightest semblance

Progress report: the carcinoid syndrome.

Gender dysphoria (GD) is a clinically significant incongruence between expressed gender and assigned gender, with rapidly growing prevalence among children. The UK High Court recently conducted a judicial review regarding the service provision at a youth-focussed gender identity clinic in Tavistock. The high court adjudged it ‘highly unlikely’ that under-13s, and ‘doubtful’ that 14–15 years old, can be competent to consent to puberty blocker therapy for GD. They based their reasoning on the limited evidence regarding efficacy, the likelihood of progressing to cross-sex hormone therapy and the ‘life-changing consequences’ of puberty blockers. In this article, I offer two concurrent arguments to dispute their reasoning. First, I argue that minors can be competent to consent to puberty blockers for GD, because the decision to undergo puberty blocker therapy is no more complex or far-reaching than other medical decisions that we accept a child should be able to make. Second, I argue that—irrespective of competence—such legal restriction for all children fundamentally contradicts the central ethical tenet of child healthcare: best interests. For these two reasons, the high court should not restrict access to puberty blockers for competent GD children.

Are Human Tests Ethical?

> THE ETHICS of experimenting on humans has been getting almost as much attention as the right and wrong of animal research. U.S. Public Health Association has awarded a grant of approximately $100,000 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston to support an inquiry into the moral and ethical basis for research involving human subjects. Eight medical organizations have now endorsed the ethical principles approved in 1964 in the Declaration of Helsinki by the World Medical Assocation concerning human experimentation. Dr. Henry K. Beecher of the Harvard Medical School has charged in the New England Journal of Medicine that 22 cases of human experiment-ation had been either unethical or questionable; that is, performed without the patients' full knowledge and consent and without promise of benefit. Dr. William H. Stewart, Public Health Service Surgeon General, told the American Federation for Clinical Research last April that one of the pivotal clinical research problems of the day is related to the use of human beings as research subjects. The decision to become a subject for research must be made by the subject, said Dr. Stewart. We may like it or not, but the individual subject and only he, with all his personal whims and superstitions and foibles, can make the important choice. Being as fully informed as possible, he can make the choice for any reason, or for no reason at all. principle involved is the same one that condemns slavery and underlay the judgments at Nuremberg. Prior to the Helsinki Declaration, guidelines for doctors in clinical research were provided chiefly by the ethical tenet to do no harm as stated in the Hippocratic Oath, and in the Nuremberg Code adopted by the Nuremberg Tribunal in the Nazi warcrimes trials. Helsinki statement emphasizes benefit to the patient who is ill.

Professional Ethics and Civic Morals.

Emile Durkheim is one of the founding fathers of sociology and Professional Ethics and Civic Morals is one of his most neglected yet insightful works. Durkheim's view that the instability of industrial society was connected to the decline of religion and his characterization of the state as the ultimate moral force in society reveal his lifelong engagement with the relationship between the individual and society. In Professional Ethics and Civic Morals Durkheim poses a major question: given the negative social consequences of unfettered markets, which caused what he termed ‘anomie’, how is the state to reconcile morality with the market? Durkheim argues that the answer is to be found in the evolution of a civil religion, in the form of professional codes and civic values, which would counteract the effects of individualism, just as guilds had regulated medieval economic life. Arguing that the state has a vital role to play in moral life and that morals are at bottom social facts – a controversial position which drew considerable criticism – Durkheim also argues that the state had a duty to protect the rights of the individual, via a form of cosmopolitan patriotism. Durkheim also articulates a highly original and critical interpretation of the rules around property and inheritance – a perspective which resonates with debates about inequality and the redistribution of wealth today. Included in this Routledge Classics edition is a new introduction by Bryan S.Turner, placing Durkheim in contemporary context and outlining the key tenets of Professional Ethics and Civic Morals.