Expert answer:Philosophy ethics
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REGIONAL
ETHICS BOWL
CASES
FALL 2015
Prepared by:
Gretchen Adel Myers, Chair
Michael Funke
Susanna Flavia Boxall
Rhiannon Dodds Funke
Adam Potthast
© Association for Practical and Professional Ethics 2015
Editor’s Note: Please note that source materials cited may be used multiple times but only
identified once per case.
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Case 1: Holding Heritage Hostage
In March 2001 the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taliban government in
Afghanistan. The Buddhas were a sign of the place Afghanistan occupied on the silk road.
Explaining the destruction, a government spokesperson said, “We are destroying the statues in
accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue.”1 Other accounts suggest that if
foreign resources allocated toward restoration had been redirected to the Taliban, the Buddhas
may have been saved.
More recently ISIS made news by destroying ancient Assyrian reliefs, but according to a US
military spokesman, “[w]hat you don’t see is that ISIS is selling far more pieces than they are
destroying.”2 By some accounts, thousands of artifacts have been looted in ISIS-controlled areas
and smuggled abroad. David Gill, a professor of archaeological heritage, reports: “We went into
one gallery and were chatting about a piece and the person quite openly said, ‘We just got this
out of Syria . . . So it’s quite open in that sense.”3 ISIS has propaganda and religious interests in
destroying the pre-Islamic heritage of Iraq and Syria, but they have a strong financial interest in
selling off more portable artifacts.
However, the trade in looted artifacts is not limited to state or quasi-state actors. With rising
unemployment and weakening national authority in states like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, some have
taken to looting world heritage sites as a way to make ends meet. In the context of war (and an
attendant refugee crisis) resources are not focused on securing cultural artifacts. UNESCO
ambassador Philippe Lalliot says, “When tens of thousands of people are dying, should we be
worried about cultural cleansing? Yes, because heritage unites and culture provides dialogue that
fanatical groups want to destroy.”4
Given the security problems in failed states and war zones, it may be that paying looters is a
cost-effective way to secure cultural artifacts. James Cuno, former museum curator and CEO of
the J. Paul Getty Trust, writes “This unconscionable destruction is an argument for why portable
works of art should be distributed throughout the world and not concentrated in one place.”5 Of
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1
Buddhas of Bamiyan, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Retrieved August 3, 2015, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan#Dynamiting_and_destruction.2C_March_2001
2
Anik See, How ISIS funds activities through sale of ancient artifacts, CBC Canada, June 12, 2015,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-isis-funds-activities-through-sale-of-ancient-artifacts-1.3095925
3
Daniela Deane, Islamic State is selling looted Syrian art in London to fund its fight, The Washington Post,
February 25, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/is-looted-syrian-art-showing-up-in-london-to-fundactivities/2015/02/25/785ab630-bcd0-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html
4
Staff Writer, ISIS selling Iraq’s artifacts in black market: UNESCO, Al Arabiya News, September 30, 2014,
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/09/30/ISIS-selling-Iraq-s-artifacts-in-black-market.html
5
Andrew Moore, Deploring ISIS, Destroyer of a Civilization’s Art, New York Times: Opinion Pages, March 11,
2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/opinion/deploring-isis-destroyer-of-a-civilizations-art.html?_r=0
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course, purchasing looted items is illegal, but some looters argue that in a troubled time they are
selling their own heritage to pay for the necessities of life.6
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6
VICE. Egyptian Tomb Raiders: Sneak Peek. Retrieved August 3, 2015, from
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Case 3: Anti-Vax Tax
In January of 2015 over 100 people in the US contracted measles, mostly from an outbreak of the
disease at California’s Disneyland theme park.16 The outbreak was spread in part by people who
had refused to accept vaccinations for themselves or their children. In July of 2015, the
Washington State Department of Health confirmed the first death from measles in the United
States in 12 years.17
Vaccinations for diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella have kept these diseases in check in
the Western world for more than 50 years. While these diseases used to run rampant and threaten
adults and children alike, they had all but been defeated up until the early 2000s.18 Guided by a
pop-culture movement that cited, among other things, a (now retracted) scientific paper linking
autism with the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR),19 people began delaying
vaccinations for their children or refusing them outright. While numerous studies have shown
that childhood vaccinations are safe and reliable bulwarks against disease,20 the number of
parents refusing vaccines has continued to climb.
Anti-vaccination groups also cite a worrisomely close partnership between the pharmaceutical
companies making the vaccines and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) which oversees the
safety of vaccines. They maintain that the FDA does not sufficiently supervise the
implementation of precautions after the drugs are on the market for human use.21 They also cite
the existence of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) as evidence that
vaccines are legally recognized as possibly causing suffering that requires compensation by the
government.22 (They also suggest that the NVICP incorrectly shields pharmaceutical companies
from justified lawsuits.)
As the number of unvaccinated people grew, so did the risk that a carrier of one of these diseases
could spread the disease more rapidly. If the human “herd” lost its increased immunity to the
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16
Stephen Reinberg, Low Vaccination Rates and Disney Measles Outbreak, HealthDay Reporter, March 16, 2015,
http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/news/20150316/low-vaccination-rates-likely-behind-disney-measlesoutbreak-study
17
Maggie Fox, Washington Woman is First US Measles Death in 12 Years, NBC News, July 3, 2015,
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/woman-dies-measles-first-us-death-12-years-n385946
18
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (Division of Viral Diseases), Measles History,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 3, 2014, http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
19
Fiona Godlee, Jane Smith, and Harvey Marcovitch, Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was
fraudulent. BMJ 2011;342:c7452, January 6, 2011, http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452
20
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vaccine Safety, March 27, 2015,
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html
21
Shannon Barber, No, I Am Not an Anti-Vaxxer, But I Do Understand Their Stance, Addictinginfo.com, February
3, 2015, http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/02/03/no-i-am-not-an-anti-vaxxer-but-i-do-understand-the-stance/
22
Barbara Loe Fisher, Why Vaccine-Injured Kids Are So Rarely Compensated, Mercola.com Health News,
December 13, 2008, http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/13/why-vaccine-injured-kids-arerarely-compensated.aspx
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disease, even those who were vaccinated could be at risk. And with an increased number of lifethreatening illnesses comes increased healthcare costs. For instance, the cost of the measles
outbreak is high, potentially costing up to $10,000 per case. In a healthcare system like the one in
the United States, these costs are absorbed not only by the families of the sick children, but may
also be “shared” by all those paying for health insurance in the form of increased premiums.23
Citing the unfairness of saddling those who vaccinate their children with the increased health
insurance costs from those who do not, a team of doctors and lawyers are now proposing a tax on
those who refuse vaccinations.24 Since vaccinations have been established to be safe for most
children and vaccination costs are covered by all health insurance plans, they argue that the
choice not to vaccinate one’s children should be discouraged by creating a tangible disincentive
to opt out of vaccination, regardless of whether any members of the family actually contract a
vaccine-preventable disease. Furthermore, such a tax would allow the healthcare system to
recoup the costs directly from those whose choices potentially increase the costs. In this way, the
proposed tax would work much like a tax on cigarettes that would fund lung cancer treatment.
Anti-vaccination advocates and other libertarian thinkers, however, argue that such a tax
interferes with important principles of liberty.
Indeed, people generally have the right to refuse medical treatment for themselves as well as
their children—some advocates believe that they should have the right to refuse vaccines as well.
They argue that the state should not take a position on treatments where some people have
serious doubts about the scientific data, and that the tax amounts to economic coercion. There is
no such tax, for instance, on foods that may increase the risk of diabetes or heart disease (which
are far more costly diseases). And there are no societal sanctions on those who refuse to cover
their mouths when they cough or come to work when they are sick with the flu, even though the
flu is a communicable disease with a much higher risk of transmission than measles, mumps, or
rubella.
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23
Charlotte Moser, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, and Robert Schwartz, Funding the Costs of Disease Outbreaks Caused
by Non Vaccinations, June 3, 2014, Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2445610##
24
Ibid.
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Case 4: Forced Chemotherapy
Before Cassandra could have her first round of chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin lymphoma, she
had to have a port placed in her body to deliver the cancer-fighting drugs. During this surgical
procedure, she had to be strapped to the bed25 against her wishes, for she was adamantly against
receiving chemotherapy—a treatment she deemed poisonous to her body, despite knowing that
without it she would almost certainly die. Had Cassandra been at least 18 years old, she would
have had the legal right to refuse the cancer treatment. From a legal and moral standpoint, the
doctrine of informed consent and informed refusal protects the liberty of competent adults to
make autonomous medical decisions. However, being only 17, Cassandra’s wishes were
dismissed by the Connecticut Supreme Court. The judges unanimously ruled that Cassandra
could be forced by the state to receive chemotherapy, because she lacked the necessary maturity
to make her own medical decisions.26
After receiving her diagnosis, Cassandra and her mother, Jackie Fortin, began to miss medical
appointments, in order to avoid the prescribed chemotherapy. According to Cassandra, her
mother urged her to reconsider her staunch position against chemotherapy. Unable to change her
daughter’s mind, Fortin ultimately decided to respect the girl’s decision. Given that Hodgkin
lymphoma is a highly treatable form of cancer, but fatal without treatment, Cassandra’s doctors
reported Fortin for neglect to the Department of Children and Families (DCF).27 Shortly
thereafter, Cassandra was removed from her home and placed under the custody of the state. As
Kristina Stevens, a DCF representative, declared, “if the system . . . [didn’t] react and respond,
this child . . . [would] die.”28
While young children clearly lack the capacity to make autonomous medical decisions,
adolescents, especially older ones, pose a challenge to the doctrine of the presumed
incompetence (i.e., lack of legal ability) of minors. Adolescents find themselves at a transitional
stage between the incompetence of childhood and the competence and autonomy of adulthood.
Thus, as Dr. Saskia Nagel, a neuroscientist and philosopher, has argued, “[a]utonomy should not
be viewed as an all-or-none phenomenon. One does not have it fully or not at all.”29 Instead, she
proposes that autonomy should be considered a “gradual phenomenon that develops over
time.”30
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25
Briggs, Bill. “Connecticut Teen Who Refused Chemo Now in ‘Remission,’ Seeks Freedom.” NBC News. July 15,
2015, http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/connecticut-teen-who-refused-chemo-now-remission-seeks-freedomn320061
26
Nalpathanchil, Lucy. “Can Connecticut Force A Teenage Girl To Undergo Chemotherapy?” NPR July 15, 2015,
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/08/375659085/can-connecticut-force-a-teenage-girl-to-undergochemotherapy
27
Nalpathanchil, Lucy.
28
Nalpathanchil, Lucy.
29
Nagel, Saskia K. “Autonomy—A Genuinely Gradual Phenomenon.” AJOB Neuroscience 4.4 (2013): 60-61.
30
Nagel, Saskia K.
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This idea was echoed by Joshua Michtom, Cassandra’s public defender, when he said that
teenagers “can get contraception. They can get addiction treatment. They can donate blood. They
can be tried as adults for certain crimes. So there’s recognition overall that maturity doesn’t
happen overnight. You don’t go to sleep a 17-year-old knucklehead and wake up an 18-year-old
sage.”31 Thus, some states have adopted the mature minor doctrine, which grants individuals
under 18 with a sufficient level of maturity the right to refuse medical treatment. However, the
courts have recognized that “this right is not absolute . . . [and] could be limited by the state
interest to preserve life.”32
Today Cassandra is in remission. Though she is looking forward to returning to her home and
resuming her normal life, she is still troubled by what happened to her: “I will never be okay
with how this all happened — being taken away from home, hospitalized and especially being
strapped to the bed . . . I still wish I was given the right to explore and go with alternatives . . .
Anybody should have that right. Minor or not.”33
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31
Briggs, Bill. “Connecticut Teen With Curable Cancer Fights to Stop Chemo.” NBC News July 15, 2015,
http”://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/connecticut-teen-curable-cancer-fights-stop-chemo-n281511
32
Harvey, Martin T. “Adolescent Competency and The Refusal Of Medical Treatment.” Health Matrix 13 (2003):
297.
33
Briggs, Bill. “Connecticut Teen Who Refused Chemo Now in ‘Remission,’ Seeks Freedom.”
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Case 7: Composting Corpses
Katrina Spade wants to revolutionize the way we dispose of our dead. She founded the “Urban
Death Project”49 to develop a system for composting corpses into usable soil. The system uses
the process by which bodies would normally decompose and accelerates it using carbon
materials, aeration, and hydration. The scientific basis for this process is not new — it is widely
used to safely dispose of and repurpose livestock carcasses. Though process has not yet been
used to compost human remains, Spade aims to modify it to suit that purpose. Spade envisions a
three-story facility with a core made to house the composting system. Mourners would place the
body of their deceased loved one into the core during a ceremony. Within a few months, all of
the bodies that had been placed in the core would fully decompose into soil that could be used in
public parks or given to family members. Because many bodies would be placed in the core
together, the families would not necessarily receive the soil produced by their own loved one’s
remains. The nutrient-rich soil would be ideal to grow plants, nurturing new life.50
This process is more environmentally friendly than the more typical processes of burial and
cremation.51 Traditional burial entails draining the body of blood and replacing the blood with
preservatives, including the carcinogen formaldehyde. The internal organs are also injected with
toxic chemicals.52 Bodies are then buried in wood or metal coffins in concrete-lined graves.
Every year in the in U.S., this adds up to 90,000 tons of steel, 9 million meters of wood, and 1.6
million tons of concrete being buried with our dead.53 And for each cremation, crematory
machines use enough energy to meet the demands of a single person for a whole month.54 So, as
Spade notes, “there are environmental repercussions to both,” and composting the dead would
provide an alternative with less of an environmental impact.55
One criticism of composting — especially the collective aspect of Spade’s plan — is that it is
disrespectful to the dead. As one cemetery director stated, “[f]rom my perspective, personally,
human remains are deserving of a pretty high degree of respect . . . To do any form of collective
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49
The Urban Death Project, http://www.urbandeathproject.org/tablet/index.html
Katrina Spade, The Urban Death Project: Laying Our Loved Ones to Rest, Kickstarter Campaign, May 2015,
Kickstarter.com, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/546469190/the-urban-death-project-laying-our-loved-onesto-r
51
Sarah Berman, This Nonprofit Wants to Turn Corpses into Compost, Vice, March 18, 2015,
http://www.vice.com/read/this-seattle-non-profit-wants-to-compost-dead-people-263
52
A Mortician Talks Openly About Death, And Wants You To, Too, NPR, October 8, 2014,
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/08/352765943/a-mortician-talks-openly-about-death-and-wants-you-to-too
53
Berman, supra.
54
Leo Hickman, Should I . . . Be Buried or Cremated? The Guardian, October 18, 2005,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/18/ethicalmoney.climatechange
55
Sarah Toce, The Urban Death Project and Human Composting, Windy City Times, June 2, 2015,
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/The-Urban-Death-Project-and-human-composting-/51651.html
50
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disposition, I don’t think the public would find it acceptable.”56 One commenter noted: “A pile
of bodies is usually called a ‘mass grave.’ Please stop what you’re doing.” Indeed, many people
find the thought of composting to be disgusting and repulsive to cultural and religious traditions.
For example, another comment described the plan as “sick.”57 But Spade believes that
composting is a powerful symbol of the cycle of nature: “The deceased are folded back into the
communities where they have lived as the great potential of our bodies to grow new life is
celebrated.”58
Legal barriers are another concern for the project. In many states, bodies are required to be
entombed, buried, cremated, or donated to science. A natural burial or composting is not an
option.59 Interestingly, these regulations are mostly based in tradition and psychology rather than
public health concerns—dead bodies are generally not the biohazards that they are often assumed
to be.60 So there is hope that new methods of disposing of dead bodies can become legal as they
gain acceptance. Indeed, for example, water cremation (a process in which a body is reduced to
ashes through alkaline hydrolysis instead of flames) has been legalized in a handful of states in
recent years.61
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56
Berman, supra.
Catrin Einhorn, A Project to Turn Corpses into Compost, The New York Times, April 13, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/a-project-to-turn-corpses-into-compost.html?_r=0
58
Urban Death Project, urbandeathproject.org
59
!Einhorn, supra; see also Caitlin Doughty, Ask A Mortici …
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