Ethical Dilemma 1

[From Joel]

At my local philosophy club we experience a downturn during the summer months. It becomes even harder than usual to find topics and speakers. In exploring possibilities for breaking the barriers that people have in preparing a talk, I devised this possibility and used myself for the guinea pig. I presented several ethical dilemmas that have appeared on the television show "Boston Legal," prefacing them with a short general view of ethics as viewed by Aristotle. The audience response was excellent. Watching a television show and reporting on the ethical dilemma presented doesn't seem like too difficult a chore. Unfortunately, we aren't in the early days of television when E.G. Marshall and "The Defenders" was popular. That would have made it quite simple.

The first dilemma concerns a powerful person (PP) being sued by a not powerful person (NPP). They are both dying of cancer and participating in a drug study. It turns out that the PP has used his influence to assure that he is part of the 50% getting the real drug, while the NPP takes his chances with the rest of the study group. Not actually being a fan of the TV program, I didn't hang around to find out the ultimate result, but it looked like there was going to be an out-of-court monetary settlement. Be that as it may, I asked our club to discuss, not the specific question of whether or not PP and the doctor acted unethically, but rather whether or not the use of placebos as a statistical tool in research studies is moral and ethical. What do you say? with respect -Joel