The Devil's Dilemma » Team Kenan at the Kenan Institute for Ethics

Contest winner: Perceived socioeconomic distance

May 162013

May 16, 2013 Posted by Team Kenan

This post is the third of three selected as a winner of this year’s blogging contest. The author is an ECE and Physics double major, Pratt 2015, who has asked not to be named. The dilemma I constantly experience when I am on campus is one caused by Duke’s diversity. Not racial, but socio-economic. I’m not even talking about only having friends who come from a similar financial background than you, but rather, having to think twice about talking about yourself for the fear of being judged. I’ve never actually felt being judged. My problem is with me judging others. The point however, isn’t how we may segregate ourselves based on our economic backgrounds but how we judge people based on theirs. For example, I have several friends in fraternities More…

Contest winner: When do I have an obligation to speak up?

May 062013

May 6, 2013 Posted by Team Kenan

This post is one of three selected as a winner of this year’s blogging contest. The author is Joy Liu, Trinity 2014, Public Policy and Biology double major. Congratulations, Joy! When do I have an obligation to speak up? Last week, in section for one of my classes, we were discussing op-eds in preparation for our own op-ed assignment. One example that we read and talked about was in defense of the North Carolina School for the Deaf. To summarize, the author argued against closing the schools as part of state budget cuts both from an educational perspective as well as a deeply personal one—the author’s parents both worked in special education. In the middle of our discussion about this particular op-ed, one student in the class raised his hand More…

Contest winner: When do the ends justify the means?

Apr 192013

April 19, 2013 Posted by Team Kenan

Contest winner: When do the ends justify the means?

This post is one of three selected as a winner of this year’s blogging contest. The author is a Biology major, Trinity 2015, who has asked not to be named. 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 More…

Blog Competition: Duke’s Greatest Dilemma

Apr 082013

April 8, 2013 Posted by Nihir

Blog Competition: Duke's Greatest Dilemma

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 More…

Sharing is Caring?

Apr 022013

April 2, 2013 Posted by Chad

I decided to visit New York Times’ Ethicist blog the other day, and I saw that a reader inquired about profit sharing: In a non-fiction work depicting people living in extreme poverty, is the author ethically obligated to share the book profit with the very people he/she portrayed? 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 More…

What’s in a name?

Mar 252013

March 25, 2013 Posted by Nihir Tagged with: Culture Clash, Free Speech, Paternalism

Meet Blær. She’s a fifteen year old girl from Iceland, and her name roughly translates to “light breeze”. Nothing unusual there, right? Except for the fact that her name is banned. According to the Icelandic government, her name is Stúlka (which is Icelandic for ‘girl’). In 1991, Iceland implemented the Icelandic Naming Committee to ensure that its newest citizens weren’t given un-Icelandic names. In classic bureaucratic fashion, the committee drafted a list of approved names. But this is Iceland, after all-a relatively progressive Nordic nation. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is a way to circumvent this list and get your name approved. The only problem is that the committee is composed of a whopping three people, nominated by three different groups (the University of Iceland’s Philosophy More…

Frozen Beauty

Feb 252013

February 25, 2013 Posted by Grace Tagged with: Frozen Model Rights, Guilty Pleasures, Professional Ethics, Questionable Beauty Standards

I am not the resident expert on sexy, sex, sex, but recently, I stumbled upon a Sports Illustrated cover that caught my eye: In an effort to be innovative (because the bikinis couldn’t get any skimpier), SI decided to tour all 7 continents for its swimsuit edition. The model on the cover, Kate Upton, had the pleasure of shooting in Antarctica. Yes, Antarctica. For those of us who have ever braved the cold in clubbing attire, we understand the sheer agony of this feat, and we don 40% more coverage (at least I would hope). Kate Upton modeled outside, in temperatures around -18 degrees Fahrenheit for 6 days. According to Upton, as she stood naked on set, she “literally couldn’t move, and the editors had to pick up [her] legs More…

Some Things Should be Censored

Feb 212013

February 21, 2013 Posted by Sadhna

Months ago, the violent shooting at The Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut stunned the nation. Since then, debates have resurfaced regarding the role of guns, videogames and the media in creating violence in American society. As people continue to process the events that occurred in their own ways, one gamer has chosen an extreme method to do this. A gamer going by the handle Gizmo01942 created a videogame in which users can shoot the leaders of the NRA. Fox News aired a story on the game and its implications. Even more appalling, Gizmo01942 is now making another game called “Class Warfare” in which the user plays as Adam Lanza and can virtually shoot children in the Sandy Hook elementary school. Gizmo01942 explains his motives for creating these games: More…

Vigilante Justice, Internet Style

Feb 202013

February 20, 2013 Posted by Grace Tagged with: Good Intentions?, Media Ethics

As an Asian-American student at Duke, I have been asked my opinion about the K-Sig “Asia Prime” party by friends, professors, and even my grandmother from China. Nevertheless, this is not a post on racism, Duke frat boys, or racist Duke frat boys. Rather, what I want to draw attention to are the flyers tagged with “#racistrager,” which used photos from the party itself. These pictures have gone viral on the internet. A Duke Student complained on the Rally for an Inclusive Duke Facebook page (now shut down) that although the faces were whited-out, the Asian American Alliance’s decision to plaster the flyers all over campus and the internet harmed the individuals portrayed because they were still recognizable. This brings me to my question: what are the acceptable limits of More…

An Ethics Exercise for a BME Course

Feb 152013

February 15, 2013 Posted by Chad

Below is an assignment for one of my biomedical engineering classes. We were told to write (in groups of 3) a half page single-spaced description on an ethical issue related to BME. In the following class, we broke into four groups representing the “perpetrators,” “defendants,” “sponsors,” and “regulators” and we then discussed these ethical issues through a role-playing exercise. The assigned theme for my group was “Regulation,” and here is the issue we decided to write about: Regulation – what is the role of regulation? Who is responsible? The Revolving Door: FDA and the Monsanto Company Link: http://ivn.us/2013/02/11/the-revolving-door-fda-and-the-monsanto-company/ Several senior members of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and private-sector company, Monsanto, a producer of agricultural biotechnology, have recently come under regulatory scrutiny in response to allegations of collusion. Among More…

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