Ethics for the Real World from Engineers

Ethics for the Real World: Creating a Personal Code to Guide Decisions in Work and Life
Ronald A. Howard is a professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering in Stanford University's School of Engineering, and the director of the Department's Decisions and Ethics Center. Clinton D. Korver is the founder and CEO of DecisionStreet, which provides Web-based tools to help consumers make important life decisions.

Singapore debate legalising organ trading

Trading on the female body

handsoffourovaries

Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor
by Julia Derek

Welcome to The Dark Side

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

- Vice President Dick Cheney

A review of THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American IdealsBy Jane Mayer.

Something we often forget

Quote of the Day on government public financial reforms;

Even when developed to the ultimate stage of perfection, governmental accounting cannot become a guaranty of good government. At best, it can never be more than a valuable tool for promotion of sound financial management. It does not offer a panacea for all the ills that beset representative government; nor will it fully overcome the influence of disinterested, uninformed citizens. It cannot be substituted for honesty and moral integrity on the part of public officials; it cannot eliminate the demands of selfish interests, whether in the form of individual citizens, corporations, or the pressure groups which always abound to influence government at al levels-(Mikesell, 1956: 10).

World Bank Support for Public Financial Management: Conceptual Roots and Evidence of Impact by Clay G. Wescott

via IMF PFM blog

The end of race as we know it?

John H. McWhorter and Glenn Loury debate on Blogging Heads

Related;
The Stupidity of Dignity- Steven Pinker

This spring, the President's Council on Bioethics released a 555-page report, titled Human Dignity and Bioethics. The Council, created in 2001 by George W. Bush, is a panel of scholars charged with advising the president and exploring policy issues related to the ethics of biomedical innovation, including drugs that would enhance cognition, genetic manipulation of animals or humans, therapies that could extend the lifespan, and embryonic stem cells and so-called "therapeutic cloning" that could furnish replacements for diseased tissue and organs. Advances like these, if translated into freely undertaken treatments, could make millions of people better off and no one worse off. So what's not to like? The advances do not raise the traditional concerns of bioethics, which focuses on potential harm and coercion of patients or research subjects. What, then, are the ethical concerns that call for a presidential council?...

The sickness in theocon bioethics goes beyond imposing a Catholic agenda on a secular democracy and using "dignity" to condemn anything that gives someone the creeps. Ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago, the panic sown by conservative bioethicists, amplified by a sensationalist press, has turned the public discussion of bioethics into a miasma of scientific illiteracy. Brave New World, a work of fiction, is treated as inerrant prophesy. Cloning is confused with resurrecting the dead or mass-producing babies. Longevity becomes "immortality," improvement becomes "perfection," the screening for disease genes becomes "designer babies" or even "reshaping the species." The reality is that biomedical research is a Sisyphean struggle to eke small increments in health from a staggeringly complex, entropy-beset human body. It is not, and probably never will be, a runaway train.

A major sin of theocon bioethics is exactly the one that it sees in biomedical research: overweening hubris. In every age, prophets foresee dystopias that never materialize, while failing to anticipate the real revolutions. Had there been a President's Council on Cyberethics in the 1960s, no doubt it would have decried the threat of the Internet, since it would inexorably lead to 1984, or to computers "taking over" like HAL in 2001. Conservative bioethicists presume to soothsay the outcome of the quintessentially unpredictable endeavor called scientific research. And they would stage-manage the kinds of social change that, in a free society, only emerge as hundreds of millions of people weigh the costs and benefits of new developments for themselves, adjusting their mores and dealing with specific harms as they arise, as they did with in vitro fertilization and the Internet.

Worst of all, theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.

The prize Hillary isn't owed;

Women, we are told by some people who say they know them, are not amused. Women, or at least those whose consciousnesses have been properly raised, supposedly think that the impatience being expressed about the protracted futility of Hillary Clinton's campaign is disrespectful. They say that if the roles were reversed — if Barack Obama's delegate arithmetic were as hopeless as hers — people would not be so insensitive as to try to hurry a man off the stage.

But they would. And some people, claiming to speak for African Americans, would be explaining that African Americans find it all disrespectful. In identity politics, ritualized indignation about imagined affronts is highly choreographed and hence predictable.

In America, however, nothing ages as fast as novelty, and efforts to encourage Clinton to pack it in are heartening evidence that the novelty has worn off: The female candidate is like all other candidates. This is what equality looks like — life as an equal-opportunity dispenser of disappointments.

Another Stiglitz Moment

From an event at CFR- Q& A with Larry Summers;

Q:Lucy Komisar, I’m a journalist. I interviewed Joe Stiglitz not too many years ago. He was chief of the Council of Economic Advisors under Clinton . He told me that when Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary, he didn’t want to do anything to stop the free flow of money into the US . That meant not doing anything about money laundering because some of the freely flowing money was drug money, corruption money, money looted from developing countries. But when you came in, you really took some initiative to do something about the whole money laundering issue. I’m interested about what made you want to do that and how did you decide what you ought to do. Did you have problems with interests that didn’t want you to do this because maybe they wanted the money to come in freely without any blocking? This is an issue which of course is important today. Obama signed on to stop tax havens.

Larry Summers: I got it, I got it. I’ll take my compliments where I can get them, even from Joe Stiglitz who hasn’t usually been complimentary. Let me just say that I’m aware of no difference in opinion on this question between Bob Rubin and myself, and some how the suggestion that he was representing Wall Street interests seems to me to be entirely unfair and unwarranted and devoid of merit. For a variety of reasons at the time when I became Secretary of the Treasury, given concerns that existed in a number of parts of the US government, given some of what we have been discovering at the IRS , we did launch a series of initiatives directed at what I like to call the dark side of capital mobility. But for the most part open capital markets, foreign investment, bring tremendous benefits. But we identified three highly programmatic things: tax havens that were costing the tax payer large amounts of money, principally because of bank secrecy, not just in the United States , but in the rest of the world. Pressuring the ability to maintain progressive taxation around the world. Money laundering and failure to adequately regulate levered financial institutions who could plant their leverage abroad. We launched a series of initiatives designed to multi-laturalize an effort, to diplomatically pressure jurisdictions with respect to all three of those issues. I would say that during the time that we did it, with the help of my colleagues – my colleagues Will Wexler, Neal Woollen and Todd Sturn – we made what by government standards was quite a bit of progress over a period of a couple of years. The new administration regarded this all as some kind of dangerous left-wing plot against the fundamental right of capital to hide itself and not pay taxes and basically eviscerated all the initiatives. They basically said they are not our policy anymore, we’re done, finished. Yes, we have been working in the OECD through all this time but it’s done. After 9/11 there was a bit of a change of heart, particularly around the money laundering parts of it. But I think we did the right thing, and by the way, if we are to maintain support for an open trading system, we had better be prepared in those places where open markets are coming with very substantial costs, to act aggressively and forcefully. I thought this was important in two respects. I thought the problems were large and important, and I also thought there was a broader symbolic purpose in making clear that our judgments and commitment to open trade were not some kind of ideological principle, but were based on a pragmatic judgment of what would best promote prosperity.

I find it hard to believe that well-known economists go about making outrageous accusations against other economists.

Related;
An Open Letter- Rogoff;

Joe, you may not remember this, but in the late 1980s, I once enjoyed the privilege of being in the office next to yours for a semester. We young economists all looked up to you in awe. One of my favorite stories from that era is a lunch with you and our former colleague, Carl Shapiro, at which the two of you started discussing whether Paul Volcker merited your vote for a tenured appointment at Princeton. At one point, you turned to me and said, "Ken, you used to work for Volcker at the Fed. Tell me, is he really smart?" I responded something to the effect of "Well, he was arguably the greatest Federal Reserve Chairman of the twentieth century" To which you replied, "But is he smart like us?" I wasn't sure how to take it, since you were looking across at Carl, not me, when you said it...

On page 208, you slander former IMF number two, Stan Fischer, implying that Citibank may have dangled a job offer in front of him in return for his cooperation in debt renegotiations. Joe, Stan Fischer is well known to be a person of unimpeachable integrity. Of all the false inferences and innuendos in this book, this is the most outrageous. I'd suggest you should pull this book off the shelves until this slander is corrected.

Good advice on field research

Confessions of a hustler;

Like many a researcher I felt the extractiveness of these interviews -- acutely. You tell yourself that the study is for the greater good -- that it will change policies and perceptions for the benefit of all. And indeed I think it has, at least more than I imagined.

Even so, I see now that these interviews were also a hustle. Me, scouring displacement camps for rebel leaders and victims, hungrily asking questions. Them, answering questions in the hopes that I could give them something, would give them something, in return for information. And if nothing else, I was simply a way to relieve the boredom of life in a displacement camp.

There is something very morally challenging in field work among the very poor. You fear that you exploit them. With your cleverness, wealth and influence, you think you must also protect them. But Sudhir realizes that he has overestimated his cleverness and underestimated theirs. He is using them for a selfish as well as a greater good, and they him.

Is political morality on the decline?

NYT has an Q&A everything you want to know about Spitzer.

Q. Why did Eliot Spitzer’s banking activities prompt the attention of authorities?

A. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, all financial institutions are required to file currency transaction reports with the Treasury Department for any deposit or withdrawal of more than $10,000 or questionable banking activities of any kind. As articles in The Times by David Johnston and Stephen Labaton and Don Van Natta Jr. and Jo Becker have reported, bank employees detected that Mr. Spitzer was moving around thousands of dollars in what they thought was an effort to conceal the fact that the money was his own. An audio interview conducted by Jane Bornemeier on Tuesday (available to listen online here) with Gerald L. Shargel, a criminal defense lawyer in New York, explains why the crime known as structuring, or making payments in such a way as to conceal their purpose and source, is illegal.

Q. What was the nature of the “unsafe” sexual practices that Client 9 — identified by officials as Mr. Spitzer — is said to have requested in the court affidavit unsealed last week?

A. The Associated Press has reported that the unsafe sexual practices referred to Mr. Spitzer’s preference not to use a condom, contrary to the prostitute’s wishes, but The Times has not independently confirmed this.

Q. Mr. Spitzer was a superdelegate supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton. What happens to his vote?

A. She loses it. David A. Paterson, the governor-designate, was already a superdelegate because he is a member of the Democratic National Committee. He has endorsed Mrs. Clinton. As governor, he still gets to vote at the convention, but only once.

Eliot Spitzer scandal- the latest

Buyer Beware

The Public Ordeal of a Private Person

The fall of ethics man

Looking Back on a Political Career: The Good, the Bad and the Contradictory

“The pattern of Eliot Spitzer is that there’s one set of rules for him and another set for everyone else,” Mr. Faso said.

The ‘Elite’ Rental Where the Spitzers Live (Pets Allowed)

While Gov. Eliot Spitzer may live in a rental building owned by his father, he is not roughing it in Manhattan’s second-tier rental world. The 25-story Fifth Avenue apartment tower where he is now encamped — with a scrum of press outside — is by the account of Manhattan real estate brokers one the city’s most “elite rental buildings.”

Synthetic life- the future has arrived

Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life


State of the Art on Bio-Hacking


Related;
Top 10 New Organisms of 2007

This Weekend, Start Building a New Life Form

Bio Hacking Resources

Biological Engineering courses online- MIT

Introduction to Bioengineering- Video lectures

Super-delegate and Client 9

Another of Don's letters;

Gov. Eliot Spitzer says that his patronage of prostitutes is a "private matter" ("Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring," March 10). He's correct; that matter is between himself and his family and is no one else's business. I wish only that Mr. Spitzer understood that many of his most famous crusades - for example, against musical-recording companies aggressively marketing their products, against banks lending money to lower-income consumers, and, indeed, even against prostitution rings(!) - were crusades against behaviors that in each case is a "private matter."

If Mr. Spitzer wants us to butt out of his private affairs, he should from here on in set an example by butting out of everyone else's private affairs.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Why is it a crime?

Federal prosecutors rarely charge clients in prostitution cases, which are generally seen as state crimes. But the Mann Act, passed by Congress in 1910 to address prostitution, human trafficking and what was viewed at the time as immorality in general, makes it a crime to transport someone between states for the purpose of prostitution. The four defendants charged in the case unsealed last week were all charged with that crime, along with several others.

Related;
The oldest question about the oldest profession.;

In the end, this seems like the most salient question: Forget Eliot Spitzer. Shouldn't prostitution laws come down to working conditions and the legal rules that would lead to better ones for sex workers? According to a recent working paper by economist Steven Levitt and anthropologist Sudhir Venkatesh, despite all the fighting and all the preaching, we apparently don't know that much about the specifics of the structure of the sex market—how much prostitutes make on average, how many tricks they turn a year, how frequently they and their pimps and johns actually get arrested.

To start filling in the gap, Levitt and Venkatesh took a look at data from the Chicago Police Department. They found that women working the streets were making $27 an hour but less than $20,000 a year (they don't log a lot of hours). The risks of the trade were serious: "an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex." There was also a "surprisingly high prevalence of police officers demanding sex from prostitutes in return for avoiding arrest." That looks like another argument against the bans on prostitution—presumably women wouldn't be caught in this particular trap if they weren't worried about going to jail in the first place. Levitt and Venkatesh also offer up this statistic: Prostitutes get arrested about once per 450 tricks and johns even less frequently. Two lessons here: 1) A law that isn't being enforced much may not be worth having; and 2) Eliot Spitzer looks really, really unlucky.

NY Headline of the Day

Gov. Eliot Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring

Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved...

Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

“”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”

Need a motivation to become vegetarian

The Long, Cruel Road to The Slaughterhouse

US orders massive recall of beef

I Love You, but You Love Meat

No-holds-barred carnivores, for example, may share the view of Anthony Bourdain, who wrote in his book “Kitchen Confidential” that “vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”

Returning the compliment, many vegetarians say they cannot date anyone who eats meat. Vegans, who avoid eating not just animals but animal-derived products, take it further, shivering at the thought of kissing someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea.

Meet the Spider Goat

GM goat spins web based future

CIA and torture

A film I wouldn't recommend

Zoo

Five Minds for the Future

An interview with Howard Gardner on his new book;

Would Mankiw approve a Fat Tax?

A leading Australian nutritionist has urged airlines to charge obese passengers more for their seats.

Dr John Tickell believes a "fat tax" would highlight his country's obesity crisis and make commercial sense, as heavier loads increase fuel costs...

Dr Tickell, a leading nutritionist and author, told the BBC that society should take a more hardline stance against obesity and get tough on fat airline passengers.

He said that Australian airlines should impose charges on their overweight clients, as they do for excess baggage, because heavier loads increase fuel costs.

"I fly Sydney to Perth - five hours - and being totally disadvantaged by some huge person next to me literally flopping over into my seat. Why should I pay the same as them?" he asked.

-Australia airline 'fat tax' urged

Quote of the Day

"In civilized society he [each one of us] stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons."

- Adam Smith