Ethics Headlines            


Volume 2, Number 9
                            Friday, March 3, 2006


Ethics Headlines is an ethics-in-the-news clipping file published each Friday by Greg Feldmeth, a high school teacher at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. It contains news items from the media in the past week that deal with some area of ethical inquiry.

SUBSCRIBE. You can receive the file via email every Friday afternoon with links to the original articles. Just email your address here and put Ethics Headlines in the subject line. If you know of others who would be interested, please forward the page to them.

This week's headlines--select the headline to read the article
  • Doctors and executions. In California this week, two anesthesiologists refused to monitor the administering of a barbiturate designed to render unconscious convicted killer Michael Morales before he was to be killed with two other drugs.
  • Court to reconsider Hawaii schools case. Kamehameha Schools supporters were heartened this week when a federal appeals court in San Francisco agreed to reconsider a ruling last August that declared the school's admissions policy in violation of a Reconstruction-era law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 ...in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a non-Hawaiian teenager who claims that Kamehameha's policy of admitting only those who can prove indigenous ancestry amounts to racial discrimination.
  • Colombia man 'jailed over grope'. A bicycle courier in Colombia has been given a four-year jail sentence for grabbing a woman pedestrian's bottom, a TV station has reported. A judge's ruling - criticised by some as being too harsh - ruled the courier had committed an abusive sexual act.
  • It's not about Michael. Californians should not put Michael Morales to death on Tuesday, and the reason has nothing to do with DNA evidence, innocence or exoneration. A jury convicted Morales in 1983 of the brutal rape and murder of 17-year-old Lodi high school student Terri Winchell, and even his defense team makes no claim that the guilty verdict was wrong.
  • The quick fix:  schools where the only real test is basketball. Each day at Eldon Academy in Michigan, Dewayne Walker could sleep till 11 a.m., practice basketball for 90 minutes and never spend more than two hours in class. He said that the only other students were his teammates, that his only teacher was also his coach. "I'm not a Harvard-type person," Walker said, "but I thought it would be a lot more work."
  • Roots of violence found in disrespect. Perplexing violence overseas and in America seems to have a common thread - the yearning for respect. In the ongoing controversy over the Danish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, people on both sides agree that the strongest spark for the protests in the Muslim world is the message the cartoons send of disrespect for Islam and its followers.
  • When politics defeats science.  [Concerning a "morning-after" pill,] ...one of the main questions I hear is, "Does this pill cause an abortion?" In fact, the only connection this pill has with abortion is that it has the potential to prevent the need for one. Emergency contraceptive pills work exactly the same way as other birth control pills, and they do not interfere with or harm an existing pregnancy. Emergency contraception is simply a higher dose of daily birth control pills; it is not RU-486, the "abortion pill."
  • Character on campus, and afterward. According to a new survey, more than half of all faculty in higher ed say it's important that undergraduates develop moral character and enhance their self- understanding. The survey, conducted among 421 institutions by an ongoing project at the University of California at Los Angeles, reveals a big disconnect between teachers and students that may explain why so few schools of higher education spend much effort on character education.
  • Freedom of hate speech. Funny people, the Austrians. If you're Kurt Waldheim -- a former Nazi military officer linked to a genocidal massacre during World War II -- they elect you president. But if you're David Irving -- a British author who claimed that there never was a Nazi genocide during World War II -- they throw you in the slammer. On second thought, not funny at all.
  • California school suspends 20 who saw web site. A middle school student faces expulsion for allegedly posting graphic threats against a classmate on the popular MySpace.com Web site, and 20 of his classmates were suspended for viewing the posting, school officials said.