Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Acceptable Risk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Acceptable Risk. Show all posts

Sunday, January 26, 2020

Why Boards Should Worry about Executives’ Off-the-Job Behavior

Harvard Business Review

January-February Issues 2020

Here is an excerpt:

In their most recent paper, the researchers looked at whether executives’ personal legal records—everything from traffic tickets to driving under the influence and assault—had any relation to their tendency to execute trades on the basis of confidential inside information. Using U.S. federal and state crime databases, criminal background checks, and private investigators, they identified firms that had simultaneously employed at least one executive with a record and at least one without a record during the period from 1986 to 2017. This yielded a sample of nearly 1,500 executives, including 503 CEOs. Examining executive trades of company stock, they found that those were more profitable for executives with a record than for others, suggesting that the former had made use of privileged information. The effect was greatest among executives with multiple offenses and those with serious violations (anything worse than a traffic ticket).

Could governance measures curb such activity? Many firms have “blackout” policies to deter improper trading. Because the existence of those policies is hard to determine (few companies publish data on them), the researchers used a common proxy: whether the bulk of trades by a firm’s officers occurred within 21 days after an earnings announcement (generally considered an allowable window). They compared the trades of executives with a record at companies with and without blackout policies, with sobering results: Although the policies mitigated abnormally profitable trades among traffic violators, they had no effect on the trades of serious offenders. The latter were likelier than others to trade during blackouts and to miss SEC reporting deadlines. They were also likelier to buy or sell before major announcements, such as of earnings or M&A, and in the three years before their companies went bankrupt—evidence similarly suggesting they had profited from inside information. “While strong governance can discipline minor offenders, it appears to be largely ineffective for executives with more-serious criminal infractions,” the researchers write.

The info is here.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Ethics for healthcare data is obsessed with risk – not public benefits

Tim Spector and Barbara Prainsack
The Conversation
Originally published January 5, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Health researchers working with human participants – or their identifiable information – need to jump through lots of ethical and bureaucratic hoops. The underlying rationale is that health research poses particularly high risks to people, and that these risks need to be minimised. But does the same rationale apply to non-invasive research using digital health data? Setting aside physically invasive research, which absolutely should maintain the most stringent of safeguards, is data-based health research really riskier than other research that analyses people's information?

Many corporations can use data from their customers for a wide range of purposes without needing research ethics approval, because their users have already "agreed" to this (by ticking a box), or the activity itself isn't qualified as health research. But is the assumptions that it is less risky justified?

Facebook and Google hold voluminous and fine-grained datasets on people. They analyse pictures and text posted by users. But they also study behavioural information, such as whether or not users "like" something or support political causes. They do this to profile users and discern new patterns connecting previously unconnected traits and behaviours. These findings are used for marketing; but they also contribute to knowledge about human behaviour.

The information is here.

Monday, December 25, 2017

First Baby Born To U.S. Uterus Transplant Patient Raises Ethics Questions

Greta Jochem
NPR.org
Originally published December 5, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

We mention that not everyone is celebrating this. It raises some ethical questions. Is it possible with a procedure that is so experimental, so risky, to get informed consent from women who desperately want to have a baby?

Dr. Testa: I doubt it is possible for lay people to have informed consent about anything we do in medicine, if you ask me. This is even more complicated because we are going into uncharted waters. ... I think that we go through years of studying to understand what we do, and to achieve mastering the things we do. And then we pretend that in ten minutes we can explain something to anybody. ... I don't think it's really possible.

... We try to use the simplest terms we can think about and then we leave it to the autonomy of the patients, in this case not even patients, these women, to make the decisions. I think we really refrain, and it was really important for us, from any pressure of any kind from our side but then of course, the inner pressure of this woman to have a child I think drove the entire process and their decision at the end.

The article is here.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Lawsuit Over a Suicide Points to a Risk of Antidepressants

Roni Caryn Rabin
The New York Times
Originally published September 11, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

The case is a rare instance in which a lawsuit over a suicide involving antidepressants actually went to trial; many such cases are either dismissed or settled out of court, said Brent Wisner, of the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, which represented Ms. Dolin.

The verdict is also unusual because Glaxo, which has asked the court to overturn the verdict or to grant a new trial, no longer sells Paxil in the United States and did not manufacture the generic form of the medication Mr. Dolin was taking. The company argues that it should not be held liable for a pill it did not make.

Concerns about safety have long dogged antidepressants, though many doctors and patients consider the medications lifesavers.

Ever since they were linked to an increase in suicidal behaviors in young people more than a decade ago, all antidepressants, including Paxil, have carried a “black box” warning label, reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, saying that they increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, teens and young adults under age 25.

The warning labels also stipulate that the suicide risk has not been seen in short-term studies in anyone over age 24, but urges close monitoring of all patients initiating drug treatment.

The article is here.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Mercedes-Benz’s Self-Driving Cars Would Choose Passenger Lives Over Bystanders

David Z. Morris
Fortune
Originally published Oct 15, 2016

In comments published last week by Car and Driver, Mercedes-Benz executive Christoph von Hugo said that the carmaker’s future autonomous cars will save the car’s driver and passengers, even if that means sacrificing the lives of pedestrians, in a situation where those are the only two options.

“If you know you can save at least one person, at least save that one,” von Hugo said at the Paris Motor Show. “Save the one in the car. If all you know for sure is that one death can be prevented, then that’s your first priority.”

This doesn't mean Mercedes' robotic cars will neglect the safety of bystanders. Von Hugo, who is the carmaker’s manager of driver assistance and safety systems, is addressing the so-called “Trolley Problem”—an ethical thought experiment that applies to human drivers just as much as artificial intelligences.

The article is here.

The big moral dilemma facing self-driving cars

Steven Overly
The Washington Post
Originally published February 27, 2017

How many people could self-driving cars kill before we would no longer tolerate them?

This once-hypothetical question is now taking on greater urgency, particularly among policymakers in Washington. The promise of autonomous vehicles is that they will make our roads safer and more efficient, but no technology is without its shortcomings and unintended consequences — in this instance, potentially fatal consequences.

“What if we can build a car that’s 10 times as safe, which means 3,500 people die on the roads each year. Would we accept that?” asks John Hanson, a spokesman for the Toyota Research Institute, which is developing the automaker’s self-driving technology.

“A lot of people say if, ‘I could save one life it would be worth it.’ But in a practical manner, though, we don’t think that would be acceptable,” Hanson added.

The article is here.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

The Moral and Legal Permissibility of Placebo-Controlled Trials

Mina Henaen
Princeton Journal of Bioethics
Princeton University
Originally posted August 15, 2016

Leaders of research ethics organizations have made placebo-controlled trials illegal whenever placebo groups would not receive currently existing treatment for their ailment, slowing down research for cheaper and more effective treatments. In this essay, I argue that placebo-controlled trials (PCTs) are both morally and legally permissible whenever they provide care that is better than the local standard of care. Contrary to what the anti-PCT often put forth, I argue that researchers conducting PCTs are not exploiting other developing nations, or subjects from these nations, when they conduct their research there. I then show how these researchers are also not especially legally required to provide treatment to their placebo-group subjects. I present some of the benefits of such research to the placebo groups as well and consider the moral impermissibility of making such research illegal.

The article is here.

Friday, April 15, 2016

An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage

By John Elder Robison
The New York Times
Originally published March 16, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Several T.M.S. devices have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of severe depression, and others are under study for different conditions. (It’s still in the experimental phase for autism.) The doctors wondered if changing activity in a particular part of the autistic brain could change the way we sense emotions. That sounded exciting. I hoped it would help me read people a little better.

They say, be careful what you wish for. The intervention succeeded beyond my wildest dreams — and it turned my life upside down. After one of my first T.M.S. sessions, in 2008, I thought nothing had happened. But when I got home and closed my eyes, I felt as if I were on a ship at sea. And there were dreams — so real they felt like hallucinations. It sounds like a fairy tale, but the next morning when I went to work, everything was different. Emotions came at me from all directions, so fast that I didn’t have a moment to process them.

The article is here.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Antidepressants Make it Harder to Empathize, Harder to Climax, and Harder to Cry

Big Think
Published on Apr 7, 2015

Dr. Julie Holland argues that women are designed by nature to be dynamic and sensitive – women are moody and that is a good thing. Yet millions of women are medicating away their emotions because we are out of sync with our own bodies and we are told that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. One in four women takes a psychiatric drug. If you add sleeping pills to the mix the statistics become higher. Overprescribed medications can have far-reaching consequences for women in many areas of our lives: sex, relationships, sleep, eating, focus, balance, and aging. Dr. Holland's newest book is titled Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy.