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The Code

April 10, 2018

The Code is a three-part video series investigating the roots of today’s most promising genetic technologies

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The Code

Tuesday, April 10th, 2018

The race to sequence the human genome was also billed as a race to end disease. So what happened?

Does the ability to more easily change the blueprint of life mean we’re on the path to repairing the broken bits in our genetic inheritance? Or have we tried this before and failed?

PART 3 – COMING APRIL 17

A Code of Ethics to Get Scientists Talking

February 27, 2018

A set of guidelines could trigger positive action

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A Code of Ethics to Get Scientists Talking

Tuesday, February 27th, 2018

You are an early-career scientist poised to publish a paper that you think will be your big break. It describes your imaginative hypothesis — a potential scientific insight with substantial implications — along with the experiments you designed and constructed, and the carefully documented data that support your initial insight. It’s a genuine advance for the field and will be widely cited. Your lab head will be satisfied. Job done!

Then, disaster. You wake in the small hours and realize a possible flaw: another way in which the data could be interpreted, that would throw the conclusion into doubt. No one else will spot the problem — the lab head is too busy and no editor or reviewer will realize — and further experiments to settle the issue will take time. Worse, fresh results could sink the hypothesis (and subsequent grants). So, do you publish anyway?

Of course not! Science puts the pursuit of truth above all else, right? Well, not always. The dilemma above is a real one faced by real scientists, and not all of them jump the right way. What can help them to make the right decision? Some scientists think it might help to discuss this idea: “Pursuing the truth means following the research where it leads, rather than confirming an already formed opinion.”

Image: By Urcomunicacion – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4591577

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Nature

Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

June 21, 2017

Revelations about the C.I.A. practices, which were a radical departure for the United States, set off global denunciations and bitter divisions at home. They led to an eventual ban on the techniques and a prohibition by the American Psychological Association against members’ participation in national security interrogations

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Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

Wednesday, June 21st, 2017

Fifteen years after he helped devise the brutal interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects in secret C.I.A. prisons, John Bruce Jessen, a former military psychologist, expressed ambivalence about the program.

He described himself and a fellow military psychologist, James Mitchell, as reluctant participants in using the techniques, some of which are widely viewed as torture, but also justified the practices as effective in getting resistant detainees to cooperate.

“I think any normal, conscionable man would have to consider carefully doing something like this,” Dr. Jessen said in a newly disclosed deposition. “I deliberated with great, soulful torment about this, and obviously I concluded that it could be done safely or I wouldn’t have done it.”

Image: By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy – (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=774059

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NYTimes

Nurses Must Know What’s In the Revised Code of Ethics To Use It

October 20, 2015

“The kinds of quandaries nurses face are broad and far reaching,” said Cynda Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Anne and George L. Bunting professor of Clinical Ethics at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore. “Because of their proximity to patients, they see in an intimate way the consequences of the therapies and often the suffering of their patients.”

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Nurses Must Know What’s In the Revised Code of Ethics To Use It

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

Every day, nurses face ethical challenges. The recently revised Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements provides a framework for addressing concerns inherent in the profession.

“The kinds of quandaries nurses face are broad and far reaching,” said Cynda Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, a professor of nursing and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and the Anne and George L. Bunting professor of Clinical Ethics at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore. “Because of their proximity to patients, they see in an intimate way the consequences of the therapies and often the suffering of their patients.”

That can lead to moral distress. Futility of treatment is the No. 1 reason for ethical consults, said Carol R. Taylor, PhD, RN, professor of nursing and health studies and medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a founding member of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown.

Rushton explained that people often like to reduce ethics to black and white, when issues are gray. That’s where judgment comes in and a realization of a range of ethically permissible options in complex and value-laden situations.

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Nurse.com

The Code

The Code

PART 3 – COMING APRIL 17

A Code of Ethics to Get Scientists Talking

A Code of Ethics to Get Scientists Talking

Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

Nurses Must Know What’s In the Revised Code of Ethics To Use It

Nurses Must Know What’s In the Revised Code of Ethics To Use It

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