One of the greatest personal ethical dilemmas that has arisen in my time at Duke is: when do the ends justify the means?

I work in a pharmacology laboratory at Duke, and many of the reagents (or “”ingredients”") in my experiments come from animals. As a result, I think about the justification for the use of animals in medical research often. Every day, I see tubes labeled with phrases such as Goat anti Rabbit, which means that the antibody was obtained from goats and rabbits grown specifically for this purpose. At first glance, it’s easy to forget the pain and suffering the animal endured in an invasive bleeding procedure to produce this clear, almost invisible liquid. But upon further reflection I’m left with a nagging feeling.

The purpose of biomedical research is to improve human health through science, which is often an open-ended process of discovery. We cannot know which attempts will lead to success and which will lead to failure. To combat the nagging feeling, I remind myself of the broader goals of the project and whether each experiment is key in meeting those goals. I remember that experiments can be expensive not just in terms of ever-elusive grant money, but also in terms of the life of an animal that produced the fetal bovine serum I use to grow cells.

Because I agree that the end of goal of improving human health is important, I am able to ethically justify many of the experiments that I do. Still, at the end of the day when a technical failure happens and my western blot comes out looking like several inconclusive smudged lines, I feel less certain about how the use of these animals is pervasive in biological research.

This question of when do the ends justify the means stretches beyond the use of animals for medical research into other realms of Duke students lives. We think about the morality of our career choices. Last semester, I joined a conversation with several of my friends debating whether it is ethical to spend a few years doing work that you believe is not in the interest of society to make a large paycheck and set up for a career serving others later down the line. While we agreed that the question was important, we did not come to a consensus. The practical option may not be the one that “feels right.”

These questions don’t have easy, cut and dry answers. I’ll never be a strict consequentialist, believing that only results matter. And that persistent feeling that something is wrong is something to be taken seriously, even if only to attempt to resolve the cognitive dissonance. In the rest of my time at Duke, I hope to develop a more thorough ethical framework to answer these questions – and sleep better at night.

Duke has a giant clock to remind us how we should go faster. Courtesy Eugene Kim via Flickr

I really don’t have time to be writing this right now. I’ve got two midterms, a paper, and a quiz that I need to be focusing on. Oh, and they take place in a span of 72 hours. But I’m somewhat thankful-it could be worse (sorry to my Duke friends who are reading this in an effort to procrastinate for their 15 exams and 7 papers and 2 problem sets and that pesky MCAT thing coming up). And because of all of this, I’m not going to double check this post. No time for review. Clearly, time (or rather a lack of it) is Duke’s greatest problem.

But Duke students are determined to succeed, regardless of how little time we have. We’ve streamlined every process of our lives to maximize the amount of time we can waste before we must absolutely start doing our work. We autonomously take notes in our classes. We automatically defer to Google Calendar to inform us of our next meeting. We intuitively know the shortest route between any two points on campus, and we can do it without looking up from our phones.

And therein lies the problem-we collectively spend so much time in autopilot. We all could benefit immensely from taking a few more moments to think about what we are doing and why we are doing it. We will never eliminate the constraints of time, but taking a few moments to think about what we’re about to do can make Duke a better place.

In the response, the Ethicist (Chuck Klosterman) states that the author for the non-fiction is not ethically responsible. Klosterman argues that it is unimaginable for the author of a best-selling book portraying Wall Street sex scandals to share profit with its subjects, and Klosterman further asserts that profit sharing will compromise the integrity of the non-fiction work because the participants will be less likely to tell the truth/participate in the future when no incentives are provided.

At first glance, I agreed with Klosterman that profit sharing should not be ethically required. However, I disagree with his reasoning.

Klosterman’s counter arguments seem to base more on logistical ground instead of ethical grounds. They seem more…situational if that makes any sense. It seems to me that Klosterman is saying that if the authors start sharing profits with its subjects, it’ll be a nightmare for everybody involved, and therefore he/she is not ethically obligated to do so.

I don’t think the Wall Street example is appropriate because the bankers are wealthy (but perhaps the bankers should be awarded for helping to write a book that has negative consequences for them?). I also don’t think the author of a poverty non-fiction book escapes ethical responsibility just because profit sharing will make it harder for future authors to write these books. Besides, if it is deemed that interviewees are likely to embellish stories due to financial incentives, shouldn’t the interviewers/authors be just as likely to embellish if they are getting paid for the stories?

Perhaps it can be argued that the poverty book author is raising awareness, and this in terms may improve the situations for the poor, and therefore he/she is not obligated to share the profit because they are already helping the subjects. But something still doesn’t seem right for me – perhaps I just don’t think the poor in this case are benefiting enough, if at all.

Perhaps this type of journalism is inherently unethical, or perhaps we should change our answers and say that yes, the author of the non-fiction is obligated to share the profit.

If that’s the case, then I may have to modify my belief that NCAA should not pay the student athletes.

What is the most significant ethical issue or moral dilemma facing Duke Students?

The contest is open to all currently enrolled Duke students. Bloggers should write for an audience of fellow Duke students and the Duke community.

Although the blogging team isn’t eligible to win the contest, they do have some thoughts on this issue, which might serve as examples of the kinds of things we’re hoping to receive. View them over at The Devil’s Dilemma.

Submissions are due by Monday, April 8^th at 11:59 pm.

Click here to go to the submission form.

Blog posts will be judged by Team Kenan’s Blog Team and and our special guest, Kenan Nonresident Senior Fellow Chris MacDonald. MacDonald is Director of the Jim Pattison Ethical Leadership Education & Research Program and Associate Professor, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He is also a prolific blogger, probably best known for The Business Ethics Blog. Participants whose blog posts are selected to be published on Team Kenan’s blog will be contacted directly.

Three winners will be announced on Monday, April 15^th. Each winner will receive a $50 gift certificate to a Durham restaurant!

In some ways, I wonder why the United States doesn’t have a list of approved names. Everybody has known somebody with an unusual (and possibly cruel) name. But that said, language and names both evolve. It’s natural, and probably inevitable (though some countries may disagree). As we move into an increasingly globalized world, many nations and cultural groups are seeking out ways to ensure that their customs are not forgotten. However, I’m not sold on the idea that hampering individual expression, particularly with regard to names, is required to preserve culture. Given that people often strongly identify with their name (and it is the most common identifier of individuals), it is important for governing bodies to also understand the significance of rejecting or forcefully changing a person’s name.

Apart from the continued rejection of an individual that a name revocation of sorts can have, Blær’s case is particularly unfortunate because her name was deemed appropriate-had she been male. That’s right-Blær is a great, masculine Icelandic name. This raises an interesting question of how gender norms are rooted in culture, and how cultures can be preserved while maintaining and promoting equality. While many languages have defined gender conventions for many words, I think it is safe to say that modifying the convention can be appropriate in certain situations (such as calling a female deliverer of mail a mail carier as opposed to a mailman), though this almost definitely modifies the original language. Still, equality seems like a justified cause for the loss of complete lingual accuracy. As for Blær, she and her mother appealed the decision, with the district court ruling in their favor. Hopefully, Iceland will revisit their naming policies in the near future.