PEA Soup

Open Letter Regarding Compensation for Bone Marrow Cell Donation

I hope the Soupers won't mind a bit of public philosophy! http://donationethics.com

Arguably, the jury is still out regarding the ethics of compensation for organ donation (and even more so for allowing organ purchase). Legally speaking, in the United States such compensation is outlawed under 1984's National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA). New technology has recently altered the relevant legal landscape. It is now possible to collect bone marrow stem cells for transplantation, not through the traditional, invasive procedure of inserting a needle into the donor's marrow itself, but by giving the donor a drug that stimulates and releases stem cells into the surrounding blood, where it can be collected through something akin to a traditional blood donation procedure ("aphoresis") . In Flynn v. Holder, it was ruled that given this procedure's similarity to blood and plasma donation, for which compensation is legal, NOTA does not apply. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is proposing an amendment to NOTA that would effectively prohibit compensation for donation through aphoresis. My friend and colleague, Peter Jaworski, has written an open letter (with input from myself and others) to HHS opposing this amendment. He, myself, and the others who signed the letter agree that there is no legitimate ethical basis for the amendment. Importantly, I think even many of those who are wary of compensation for organ donation generally should share this view. Most if not all of the ethical concerns that attach to (e.g.) kidney markets simply do not apply here. 

Peter is inviting other ethicists to sign the letter. If you're interested, please check out the website (which I'm managing). If you'd like to add your name, you can contact Peter or myself. And, of course, comments are welcome, here or via email.

The Morality of Library Fines

My local library fines its patrons ten cents per overdue book per day. They will let you continue to borrow books as long as your fine balance is less than $10. As an academic, I sort of think of library fines as a cost of doing business, and I frequently carry a balance in library fines of a few dollars. (To be clear: I mostly incur these fines on books taken out for pleasure reading. What I mean is that I don’t have a moralistic attitude about my library fines.) Since there are no interest charges or time limits, I can carry such a balance for months on end. I’m following the rules, not cheating anyone, and I have never felt bad about my habit of being a few bucks in debt to the library.

Sex Work is Different

This post was inspired by a story in the WaPo, the relevant detail of which is that, due to the economic hardship in Greece, some young Greek women are selling sex for the price of a sandwich they cannot otherwise afford to buy. Also, the argument I want to make may be old news; this is not a topic where I have a lot of familiarity with the literature.

There are basically two moral views about sex work, which I will define for present purposes as the exchange of money for some form of sex in short-term, one-off transactions. (So, here, sex work is prostitution.) One view is that sex work is a lot like other kinds of work, except it is mostly performed by women and, due to various kinds of sexism and discrimination, has historically been stigmatized and exploited labor. The right course is to learn to treat sex work as normal work, and enact appropriate regulation that protects the sex workers, in the same spirit one would legally protect other kinds of workers.

The other moral view, which I take to be encoded in most state laws in the US (I can’t speak for elsewhere), is that sex work is morally problematic in some deeper way. The usual thought, I believe, is that it degrades the sex worker; sex work is intrinsically undignified. The proper way to handle sex work is to proscribe it entirely, where this is practical, and in any case discourage it.   What follows is an argument in favor of this general view.

CFA: Topics in Global Justice: Agency, Power and Policy

The second annual conference of the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham welcomes submissions on any topic related to global ethics, but will prioritize work focusing on the 2016 theme of agency, power, and policy. The conference itself will be on 26.-27. 5. 2016, and the deadline for abstracts 1 November, 2015. Full details below.

Call for Applications: Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop

The Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics (GISME), located in Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, invites applications for the 2015 Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop. The aim of the workshop is to provide critical feedback to junior scholars (i.e., junior faculty members, postdocs, or non-tenure-track professors) who are working on book-length manuscripts that address important normative issues related to the functioning of contemporary market societies.

CFP: Policing and Prisons (November 1st Deadline)

Policing and Prisons: Ethical and Political Questions about Law Enforcement and Incarceration 

The Bowling Green Workshop in Applied Ethics and Public Policy will take place in Bowling Green, Ohio, March 11^th-12^th, 2015. Our keynote speaker is Douglas Husak (Rutgers). Those interested in presenting a paper are invited to submit a 2-3 page abstract (double-spaced) by November 1^st, 2015. 

The Truth about Lying

Photo credit: Tristan Schmurr

Lying is an important social and moral category. We react negatively to liars and their lies. But what is it to lie? The standard view in philosophy and social science is that a lie is a dishonest assertion. This view goes all the way back to at least the 4th century, when Augustine wrote, “He may say a true thing and yet lie, if he thinks it to be false and utters it for true.” On this view, lying is a purely psychological act: it does not require your assertion to be objectively false, only that you believe it is false.

About two years ago, my son Angelo came across an expression of the standard view of lying. He wondered whether it fit the ordinary concept of lying. (You might be able to imagine the sort of dinnertime conversations that could lead a twelve-year-old to become curious on this point.) In particular, Angelo was interested in whether, on the ordinary view, lying was a purely psychological act. So we conducted some behavioral experiments to find out.

What's wrong with Torture

It's been a couple of days since the Senate released the torture report. The discussion in the press seems to concern (a) whether it really might be effective, (b) whether that doesn't miss the point, that it's wrong and that we should take the stance "we don't do that"; (c) whether the partisan bickering about the report--is it accurate? will it hurt us internationally?--will undermine any broader significance it might have; and (d) how other countries might respond to it--with violence, prosecution, admiration, etc.

A few days back I posted on my Facebook page a link to a piece in The New Republic entitled "We Will Never Know Whether Torture Works. That Shouldn't Matter." A friend then asked me if it was really true that its effectiveness doesn't matter. As he put it: "[T]he use of a flamethrower on [a] bunker is to protect the lives of one's own soldiers [and citizens], while in the classic "ticking bomb" scenario the use of torture is to protect civilian lives. So maybe there's more symmetry between the two cases than I've usually thought. But the difference remains that flamethrowers are effective in clearing bunkers, while torture is of questionable effectiveness at best. Would we consider flamethrowers acceptable were they ineffective, though still horrifying brutal, weapons? I think not. And would we consider torture permissible were it foolproof? Perhaps. So I'm not sure I agree with the article's conclusion that the question of effectiveness is irrelevant."

Climate Change, Broome and the Third Alternative

I’m preparing a course on climate change ethics and as a part of this I am reading again John Broome’s fascinating Climate Matters – Ethics in a Warming World book. One thing Broome does in this book is to offer a new third alternative in addition to the familiar options of doing nothing and bearing the costs of climate change mitigation and adaptation. He claims that this alternative is not morally ideal, but it is possible and perhaps more likely to gain political support for the efforts that are needed for avoiding catastrophic climate change outcomes. Here I want to quickly explain all of this and then ask a question about this possibility.

Call for Abstracts: Second Workshop on Ethics and Adaptation

Ken Shockey from the University of Buffalo asked me to post the following call for abstracts for a workshop on Loss, Damage and Harm. This workshop will be held on 8th and 9th of May 2015 at the University of Buffalo, and the deadline for 500 word abstracts is on the 15th of November, 2014. There is more information about the workshop below.