Ethics Headlines            


Volume 1, Number 14
                            Friday, April 8, 2005


Ethics Headlines is an ethics-in-the-news clippling 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. You may also visit the ethics course web site.

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--click on the headline to read the full article
    • Labs turn DNA into personal health forecasts. Private companies are making predictions about what someone's health might be in five, 10, 20 or more years. Other testing facilities around the country offer genetic assessments of what they claim is people's future propensity towards diabetes, liver disease, blood clots, dementia -- even alcoholism and gambling.
    • Britons may cotton on to ethical fashion.  Fashion writers say that "ethical chic" is all the rage, enabling people to "look good while doing good". An award-winning British charity that promotes ethical coffee, chocolate and bananas is planning a fashion label that gives shoppers a guarantee that cotton farmers in West Africa and India are getting a better deal.
    • Pupils must be taught a cleaner side of France's 'dirty war.' French historians are protesting against a new law that obliges schools to present the country’s colonial exploits in a favorable light, especially in Algeria, where hundreds of thousands were killed in the fight for independence.
    • Is it ethical to visit 'outpost of tyranny'? Travelers face a more difficult decision: Is it ethical to vacation in a country where tourist dollars help fund repressive leaders? A traveler might pay the hotel, but Zimbabwe's government collects taxes from tourism-related business.
    • Contraception bill not constitutional. Hospitals ought to tell rape victims about emergency contraception... (But) for those who believe human life begins when an egg is fertilized, preventing implantation is not morally distinguishable from abortion, and therefore it is profoundly wrong to advise people on how to go about doing it.
    • Shariah: Rethinking the use of Muslim law. The imposition of corporal punishment, stoning and execution in the name of religious texts on an entire society is unacceptable...Should one call on the entire Muslim world to condemn these practices?
    • National flag and anthem. Tokyo's Board of Education took disciplinary action against staff members of public schools for not rising during graduation ceremonies when the "Kimigayo'' national anthem was sung...A graduating student received his diploma on stage, then turned to the audience and said: ``I have a request for the people at the education board. Please don't bully our teachers anymore.'
    • Steroid use reported in pro football. The steroid controversy spread last week from the baseball diamond to the gridiron, following a report from CBS that two football players with the Carolina Panthers received a banned substance shortly before the 2004 Super Bowl.
    • Berger admits document theft. Former U.S. security advisor Samuel Berger last week admitted taking and destroying documents from the National Archives, agreeing to pay a $10,000 fine and have his security clearance suspended for three years.
    • A 3rd DeLay travel controversy. A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements. DeLay reported that the trip was sponsored by a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
    • Whose child is this? Anna Mae, 6, is in the midst of a custody dispute between two sets of parents. Anna lives in the home of Jerry and Louise Baker, who have raised her since she was 3 weeks old...The Hes, the biological parents who are illegal immigrants, could be deported, and either the American family or the Chinese one will be separated from her forever.
    • Ordinary man, extraordinary courage.  The death of Fred Korematsu, the Japanese American whose challenge of World War II incarcerations in the U.S. went to the Supreme Court, provides an occasion to recall an ordinary man with extraordinary courage.
    • Middle East politics roil a US campus. At Columbia University, pro-Israel students and pro-Palestine faculty each charge academic freedom is at risk.





Previous Weeks' Headlines