Patria Potestas

This week's reading assignments tackled the issue of personhood and made some very cogent points while discussing who or what is a human or a person and what does being a human or a person entail. What rights and responsibilities are to be accorded to him and what punishment should be meted out to individual failing to meet these responsibilities or violating the rights of others. With regards to the weekly reading and especially with respect to the discussion of rights of children in the text, I found the news article mentioned below to be highly relevant. The article brings to light the case of Santram, a boy hailing from the tiny village of Harda in Madhya Pradesh, India. Santram wa only 9 years old when he was mortgaged to a local merchant by his indebted father who was paid a sum of Rs5000 (roughly 80 dollars in today's forex rates) and a quintal of rice in clear violation of and human decency. The text discussed the idea of Patria Potestas and how this feudal idea is still prevalent in many parts of the world today. This case effectively highlights this fact. Children too are part of the kingdom of ends but not as object and means to the end. They are rational beings or shall in future be full fledged rational beings and thus must be treated as such, they too must be regarded as ends in themselves and not means to an end.



http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/mortgaged-at-9-for-rs-5-000-this-child-worker-waits-for-freedom-765813

Aruna Shanbaug: The end of a long fight.

Aruna Shanbaug has been the face of the euthanasia debate in India for well over 40 years till date. On May 18th, 2015, that face finally was graced with the restful solemnity which only the shroud of death can provide. For well over 43 years, Aruna Shanbaug has been in a vegetative coma. A nurse by profession, Aruna was a victim of a brutal sexual assault by a ward boy which left her in a coma. She was eventually abandoned by her family members who did not have the means to continue to support her. Aruna has been cared for by the nurses at KEM hospital for these 40 years as if she were a member of their own family. For every day, for 40 years, the nurses at KEM hospital, Bombay, have washed and fed Aruna and cared for her to the extent that Aruna did not have a single bed sore, a fact which was noted by the Supreme Court which ruled against passive euthanasia in the case of Aruna in 2011 however legalising it in other cases. It has been a long struggle for Aruna Shanbaug. It is tough to judge whether Aruna was a symbol of hope or a figure of pity. For the nurses who cared for her, it was tough to let go of Aruna. For them Aruna was not just family but a figure that brought them hope as she struggled to live against the staunchest challenges life had to throw at her. For activists like Pinki Virmani, who has fought a principled battle for the right of Aruna to end her suffering, Aruna was a figure of pity, one she sympathized with. For her, Aruna was needlessly burdened with a life she neither had the will or capacity to enjoy and live. On May 18th, 2015, these two Aruna's became one.
In the author's opinion, in the case of Aruna Shanbaug, the debate over euthanasia is between two diametrically opposite philosophies. Its a debate between the Utilitarian Pinky Virmani and her version of hedonistic calculus as applicable to Aruna and the dutiful KEM nurses who in this case are the proponents of Kantian argument for sanctity of life and human rational.
Pinky Virmani saw the pain Aruna suffered through and to her this pain was far greater than the joy Aruna was capable of experiencing. In Pinky's opinion, Aruna had died 40 years ago. Pinky saw it as a ethical sin to make Aruna suffer through all the pain.
Whereas for the nurses at KEM, they performed their moral duty everyday by keeping Aruna alive. According to Kant, human's are not means to an end but the end in itself and that each human life should be respected in the kingdom of means. This sanctity of life is what the KEM nurses fought to preserve. This was their duty and categorical imperative.

In the end, it is for each of us to form opinions regarding who is right or who is wrong. In my own opinion, each of them were correct in their own right. As for Aruna, I hope death was far more peaceful than life was for her.

 http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/aruna-shanbaug-if-time-can-heal/article7234771.ece

Rosenstand, N. (2012). The moral of the story: An introduction to ethics (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. 

Xenotransplantation: Moral Universalism or Moral Subjectivity

Modern medicine has made the impossible possible and continues to scale new heights everyday. We are looking to a future where we can conquer all known diseases due to advances in modern day medicine. While we are discussing modern medicine, lets discuss the case of Xenotransplantation. What is Xenotransplantation? It is the infusion or transplantation of live tissues, cells or even entire organs into humans from non human donors. It sounds grisly but xenotransplantation has helped save countless lives. From bovine and porcine valves for heart surgeries to cell culture implants to counter diabetes, xenotransplantation has a huge scope for the future. But xenotransplantation is not with its ethical dilemmas. Animal rights groups have raised concerns over the ethicality of xenotransplantation given the fact that such a procedure usually means that the donor animal dies. It is hard to justify killing of another organism on any grounds however it is equally hard to justify inaction while a human being suffers. Is not such inaction tantamount to murder? And if it is murder then can not the principles of soft universalism as set forth by James Rachels justify such a procedure. After all Rachel's justification of murder being an immoral act in itself is because it violates the social contract humans make with each other. If murder is condoned then society itself would fall apart as individuals would stop trusting other individuals. Is there any similar social contract between animals and humans? Yes our moral subjectivity dictates that we must accept that wanton killing of animals is wrong and that animals must be treated ethically, and many places of the world it has become part of common law. However when pitted against the universalistic argument against human murder, our moral subjectivity falls short in justifying arguments against xenotransplantation. In short soft universalism must take precedence over individual moral subjectivity. In other words, what an individual deems as moral may be in stark contrast to what society as a whole believes is moral. In the case of Xenotransplantation, the distinction between animal and human must be drawn somewhere.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/may/09/organ-transplants-animal-ethics/?#article-copy

Ethics and Ebola

On Saturday, 9th May, 2015, after months of no reported cases, Liberia marked the end of the devastating Ebola outbreak. The Ebola outbreak claimed nearly 4700 lives in the small west African nation and more than 10000 lives across Africa. Only after the personal sacrifices of over hundreds of medical personnel and aid workers was the outbreak contained. More than the loss of lives, the outbreak has forced the international aid and medical communities to ask hard questions of themselves. One debate which the crisis sparked off in the bioethics community pertains to whether or not patients suffering from critical diseases like Ebola should be administered drugs which have not undergone clinical trials. Another aspect of the debate was concerned with the moral defensibility of conducting a placebo controlled clinical trial in cases where untreated patients are almost sure to lose their lives. Individuals have proposed alternative testing mechanisms like side by side tests in which different drugs are tested on different patients with no placebo control .However, this approach has been criticized by the USFDA who maintain that controlled experiments are a necessary evil.



Richter, R. (2015, April 21). The Ebola crisis: An ethical balancing act. Retrieved May 9, 2015, from  http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2015/04/21/the-ebola-crisis-an-ethical-balancing-act/

Stanglin, D. (2015, May 9). Liberia is free of Ebola, says World Health Organization. Retrieved May 9, 2015, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/05/09/liberia-is-free-of-ebola-says-world-health-organization/27034655/

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: The Ethics of Net Neutrality

In this hilarious segment, John Oliver questioned the ethical standards of the US government and the FCC due to the appointment of Tom Wheeler, who was an ex lobbyist for the telecom industry. The Net Neutrality debate is highly nuanced and cannot be explained in a 10 minute video, however, certain controversial aspects of the issue have been brought to light due to the active involvement of TV personalities like John Oliver. The questions which Mr. Oliver poses through his highly entertaining piece on net neutrality deserve to be debated.