Listening to NPR yesterday, they had a question for their ethicist, Randy Cohen, who writes 'The Ethicist' column for The New York Times Magazine.
I am disturbed that people routinely rely on professional academics as consciences, and how they approach problems in a way that renders the absurd "ethical".
The question involved a narco trial where the caller was a juror.
The whole case was that he had been present at the drug sale. There was no evidence of actual participation in the drug sale, just his presence.
The judge's instructions were that this alone was sufficient to convict, which the caller found to bogus.
Mr. Cohen made two points:
- People have an obligation to tell the truth during the jury selection process (True. If you are specifically asked about these issues, tell the truth.).
- Jurors are bound to follow the judge's instructions, even when if they profoundly disagree with them.
This flies in the face of hundreds of years of US and British law.
In fact, this is why the right to jury trial, is enshrined in the constitution.
(more below fold)
Two examples:
- The John Peter Zenger seditious libel case, where the judge specifically told the jury that truth is no defense against the charges. It established the principle that the truth is a defense against libel.
- The acquittal of William Penn of charges of heresy. In this case, I believe that the judge actually threw the jury in jail in an attempt to coerce them to convict.
The fact that their ethicists was clearly speaking from a position of marginal knowledge about the history of juries was appalling.
While there have been abuses by juries, most notably acquittals in race related lynchings, there is a very real reason that the founding fathers insisted on a jury of ordinary citizens as a brake on bad laws.
The more that I hear about the profession of ethicists, the less I am impressed.
It appears that their goal is to come up with counter-intuitive answers, simply to justify their existence.
An even more egregious case is the University of Pennsylvania case, where a generally healthy subject was chosen even though the severe form of the disease is fatal in infants.
The money quote:
The ethicist named in the suit, Arthur L. Caplan, is director of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and arguably the most prominent scholar in his field (The Chronicle, April 2, 1999). He urged Mr. Wilson and his investigators to test a genetically engineered virus on relatively healthy adults, like Mr. Gelsinger, rather than on babies with a deadly form of the liver disorder. Mr. Caplan maintained that grief-stricken parents of the infants couldn't provide true consent.
So guaranteeing the death of an infant, along with risking the life of a relatively healthy adult, is preferable to saving the life of an infant, and treating the adult later.
According to a man who is arguably the most respected ethicist in the world, an upside of two lives and a downside of one death is inferior to an upside of one life and a downside of two deaths.
I acknowledge that there are tough problems out there, but I'm profoundly concerned about this most basic of human obligations has been outsourced to "professionals".