By John Gavazzi and Samuel Knapp
Submitted to The Pennsylvania Psychologist
Individuals rarely, if ever, enter psychotherapy with the explicit goals of understanding the origins of their morality, their moral reasoning skills, or matching their expressed moral ideals with their everyday behavior. Nonetheless, clients and psychologists always bring their moral values into the psychotherapy session. Although morality and moral values may not be an overt part of the therapeutic dialogue, many psychotherapy sessions are rife with moral issues, value-laden comments, ethical conflicts, and moral reasoning.
If morality is seldom overtly addressed in psychotherapy, what makes morality so important to the practicing psychologist?
The entire article is here.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Talking with Patients about Other Clinicians' Errors
By Thomas H. Gallagher, Michelle M. Mello, and others
The New England Journal of Medicine
Originally published November 6, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
The rationales for disclosing harmful errors to patients are compelling and well described. Nonetheless, multiple barriers, including embarrassment, lack of confidence in one's disclosure skills, and mixed messages from institutions and malpractice insurers, make talking with patients about errors challenging. Several distinctive aspects of disclosing harmful errors involving colleagues intensify the difficulties.
One challenge is determining what happened when a clinician was not directly involved in the event in question. He or she may have little firsthand knowledge about the event, and relevant information in the medical record may be lacking. Beyond this, potential errors exist on a broad spectrum ranging from clinical decisions that are “not what I would have done” but are within the standard of care to blatant errors that might even suggest a problem of professional competence or proficiency.
The entire article is here.
Thanks to Gary Schoener for this information.
The New England Journal of Medicine
Originally published November 6, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
The rationales for disclosing harmful errors to patients are compelling and well described. Nonetheless, multiple barriers, including embarrassment, lack of confidence in one's disclosure skills, and mixed messages from institutions and malpractice insurers, make talking with patients about errors challenging. Several distinctive aspects of disclosing harmful errors involving colleagues intensify the difficulties.
One challenge is determining what happened when a clinician was not directly involved in the event in question. He or she may have little firsthand knowledge about the event, and relevant information in the medical record may be lacking. Beyond this, potential errors exist on a broad spectrum ranging from clinical decisions that are “not what I would have done” but are within the standard of care to blatant errors that might even suggest a problem of professional competence or proficiency.
The entire article is here.
Thanks to Gary Schoener for this information.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Medical, Military, and Ethics Experts Say Health Professionals Designed and Participated in Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment
Press Release
Institute of Medicine as a Profession
An independent panel of military, ethics, medical, public health, and legal experts today charged that U.S. military and intelligence agencies directed doctors and psychologists working in U.S. military detention centers to violate standard ethical principles and medical standards to avoid infliction of harm. The Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers (see attached) concludes that since September 11, 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) and CIA improperly demanded that U.S. military and intelligence agency health professionals collaborate in intelligence gathering and security practices in a way that inflicted severe harm on detainees in U.S. custody.
These practices included “designing, participating in, and enabling torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” of detainees, according to the report. Although the DoD has taken steps to address some of these practices in recent years, including instituting a committee to review medical ethics concerns at Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Task Force says the changed roles for health professionals and anemic ethical standards adopted within the military remain in place.
“The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve,” said Task Force member Dr. Gerald Thomson, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at Columbia University. “It’s clear that in the name of national security the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice. We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”
The entire press release is here.
Thanks for Gary Schoener for this release.
Institute of Medicine as a Profession
An independent panel of military, ethics, medical, public health, and legal experts today charged that U.S. military and intelligence agencies directed doctors and psychologists working in U.S. military detention centers to violate standard ethical principles and medical standards to avoid infliction of harm. The Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers (see attached) concludes that since September 11, 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) and CIA improperly demanded that U.S. military and intelligence agency health professionals collaborate in intelligence gathering and security practices in a way that inflicted severe harm on detainees in U.S. custody.
These practices included “designing, participating in, and enabling torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” of detainees, according to the report. Although the DoD has taken steps to address some of these practices in recent years, including instituting a committee to review medical ethics concerns at Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Task Force says the changed roles for health professionals and anemic ethical standards adopted within the military remain in place.
“The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve,” said Task Force member Dr. Gerald Thomson, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at Columbia University. “It’s clear that in the name of national security the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice. We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”
The entire press release is here.
Thanks for Gary Schoener for this release.
The Morality of Sport-Hatred
By Joshua Shepherd
Practical Ethics
Published on November 7, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
The question: is sport-hatred morally permissible?
Obviously Updyke’s crime crossed moral boundaries. I am not asking about the moral permissibility of all actions motivated by sport-hatred. I am asking whether sport-hatred itself is morally permissible: do those of us who frequently undergo strong bouts of sport-hatred exhibit a moral defect? Am I morally blameworthy because I hate (citing teams here to avoid naming names) Arsenal, Duke University’s basketball team, or the Philadelphia Eagles?
Hatred itself is rarely if ever praiseworthy. Hate-crimes are taken to be especially odious crimes, and come with increased sentences. And hatred in daily life is frequently an overreaction, based on biased or otherwise mistaken judgments about the nature of some agent, some agent’s character, some action.
The entire story is here.
Practical Ethics
Published on November 7, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
The question: is sport-hatred morally permissible?
Obviously Updyke’s crime crossed moral boundaries. I am not asking about the moral permissibility of all actions motivated by sport-hatred. I am asking whether sport-hatred itself is morally permissible: do those of us who frequently undergo strong bouts of sport-hatred exhibit a moral defect? Am I morally blameworthy because I hate (citing teams here to avoid naming names) Arsenal, Duke University’s basketball team, or the Philadelphia Eagles?
Hatred itself is rarely if ever praiseworthy. Hate-crimes are taken to be especially odious crimes, and come with increased sentences. And hatred in daily life is frequently an overreaction, based on biased or otherwise mistaken judgments about the nature of some agent, some agent’s character, some action.
The entire story is here.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
You Can't Learn about Morality from Brain Scans
By Thomas Nagel
New Republic
Originally posted November 1, 2013
This story includes information from Joshua Green's book: Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Here is an excerpt:
Morality evolved to enable cooperation, but this conclusion comes with an important caveat. Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people. Our moral brains evolved for cooperation within groups, and perhaps only within the context of personal relationships. Our moral brains did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).... As with the evolution of faster carnivores, competition is essential for the evolution of cooperation.
The tragedy of commonsense morality is conceived by analogy with the familiar tragedy of the commons, to which commonsense morality does provide a solution. In the tragedy of the commons, the pursuit of private self-interest leads a collection of individuals to a result that is contrary to the interest of all of them (like over-grazing the commons or over-fishing the ocean). If they learn to limit their individual self-interest by agreeing to follow certain rules and sticking to them, the commons will not be destroyed and they will all do well.
The entire article is here.
New Republic
Originally posted November 1, 2013
This story includes information from Joshua Green's book: Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Here is an excerpt:
Morality evolved to enable cooperation, but this conclusion comes with an important caveat. Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people. Our moral brains evolved for cooperation within groups, and perhaps only within the context of personal relationships. Our moral brains did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).... As with the evolution of faster carnivores, competition is essential for the evolution of cooperation.
The tragedy of commonsense morality is conceived by analogy with the familiar tragedy of the commons, to which commonsense morality does provide a solution. In the tragedy of the commons, the pursuit of private self-interest leads a collection of individuals to a result that is contrary to the interest of all of them (like over-grazing the commons or over-fishing the ocean). If they learn to limit their individual self-interest by agreeing to follow certain rules and sticking to them, the commons will not be destroyed and they will all do well.
The entire article is here.
Internet forums can have a positive influence on self-harmers, say researchers
By Jochan Embley
The Independent
Originally published October 31, 2013
Internet forums and chatrooms can have a positive influence on young people at risk from self-harm or suicide, researchers have found.
The review, which comes from researchers at Oxford University, does admit that there are also negative, potentially dangerous aspects to forums, however.
The entire story is here.
The Independent
Originally published October 31, 2013
Internet forums and chatrooms can have a positive influence on young people at risk from self-harm or suicide, researchers have found.
The review, which comes from researchers at Oxford University, does admit that there are also negative, potentially dangerous aspects to forums, however.
The entire story is here.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Inside the Cheater's Mind
By Maria Konnikova
The New Yorker
Originally published October 31, 2013
A few years ago, acting on a tip, school administrators at Great Neck North High School, a prominent, academically competitive public school in Long Island, took a closer look at students’ standardized test scores. Some of them seemed suspiciously high. What’s more, some of the high scorers had registered to take the test well outside their home district. When the Educational Testing Service conducted a handwriting analysis on the suspect exams, they concluded that the same person had taken multiple tests, registering each time under a different name. In November, 2011, twenty students from schools in Nassau County were arrested and accused of cheating. The arrests, combined with the social prominence of the school and its students, made the case one of the most prominent cheating scandals in recent history.
When a student sits down at a test, he knows how to cheat, in principle. But how does he decide whether or not he’ll actually do it? Is it logic? An impulse? A subconscious reaction to the adrenaline in his blood and the dopamine in his brain? People cheat all the time. But why, exactly, do they decide to do it in the first place?
The entire story is here.
The New Yorker
Originally published October 31, 2013
A few years ago, acting on a tip, school administrators at Great Neck North High School, a prominent, academically competitive public school in Long Island, took a closer look at students’ standardized test scores. Some of them seemed suspiciously high. What’s more, some of the high scorers had registered to take the test well outside their home district. When the Educational Testing Service conducted a handwriting analysis on the suspect exams, they concluded that the same person had taken multiple tests, registering each time under a different name. In November, 2011, twenty students from schools in Nassau County were arrested and accused of cheating. The arrests, combined with the social prominence of the school and its students, made the case one of the most prominent cheating scandals in recent history.
When a student sits down at a test, he knows how to cheat, in principle. But how does he decide whether or not he’ll actually do it? Is it logic? An impulse? A subconscious reaction to the adrenaline in his blood and the dopamine in his brain? People cheat all the time. But why, exactly, do they decide to do it in the first place?
The entire story is here.
Psyching Us Out: The Promises of ‘Priming’
By GARY GUTTING
The New York Times - Opinionator
Originally published October 31, 2013
Reports of psychological experiments are journalistic favorites. This is especially true of experiments revealing the often surprising effects of “priming” on human behavior. Priming occurs when a seemingly trivial alteration in an experimental situation produces major changes in the behavior of the subjects.
The classic priming experiment was one in which college students had been asked to form various sentences from a given set of words. Those in one group were given words that included several associated with older people (like bingo, gray and Florida). Those in a second group were given words with no such associations. After the linguistic exercise, each participant was instructed to leave the building by walking down a hallway. Without letting the participants know what was going on, the experimenters timed their walks down the hall. They found that those in the group given words associated with old people walked significantly slower than those in the other group. The first group had been primed to walk more slowly.
The entire story is here.
The New York Times - Opinionator
Originally published October 31, 2013
Reports of psychological experiments are journalistic favorites. This is especially true of experiments revealing the often surprising effects of “priming” on human behavior. Priming occurs when a seemingly trivial alteration in an experimental situation produces major changes in the behavior of the subjects.
The classic priming experiment was one in which college students had been asked to form various sentences from a given set of words. Those in one group were given words that included several associated with older people (like bingo, gray and Florida). Those in a second group were given words with no such associations. After the linguistic exercise, each participant was instructed to leave the building by walking down a hallway. Without letting the participants know what was going on, the experimenters timed their walks down the hall. They found that those in the group given words associated with old people walked significantly slower than those in the other group. The first group had been primed to walk more slowly.
The entire story is here.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Ethical dilemmas surround those willing to sell, buy kidneys on black market
By Michelle Castillo
CBS News
Originally published November 1, 2013
There's no denying that there is a shortage of organ donations in the United States. Government estimates show 18 people die each day waiting for a transplant, and every 10 minutes someone is added to the transplant list.
The need for kidneys is especially high. As of October 25, 98,463 people were waiting for a new kidney in the U.S., the most requested organ by far. Thus far this year, only 9,708 kidney transplants have been completed.
The beauty of kidney donation compared to other organs is that people are born with two of them, making possible donation from a living person. Other organs, like hearts, can only be donated from recently-deceased individuals. But, the fact that people can live a normal life with one kidney has helped the black market kidney trade flourish.
The entire story is here.
CBS News
Originally published November 1, 2013
There's no denying that there is a shortage of organ donations in the United States. Government estimates show 18 people die each day waiting for a transplant, and every 10 minutes someone is added to the transplant list.
The need for kidneys is especially high. As of October 25, 98,463 people were waiting for a new kidney in the U.S., the most requested organ by far. Thus far this year, only 9,708 kidney transplants have been completed.
The beauty of kidney donation compared to other organs is that people are born with two of them, making possible donation from a living person. Other organs, like hearts, can only be donated from recently-deceased individuals. But, the fact that people can live a normal life with one kidney has helped the black market kidney trade flourish.
The entire story is here.
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