Maybe you should be protesting
“Professing Ethics at the Universities of Sodom and Gomorrah.” In this provocatively titled talk, Leon Eisenberg, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, posed an equally provocative question: “What is our responsibility as members of the university community when we observe the university engaged in unethical activity?” Universities have multiple goals–like raising money and remaining independent–he pointed out to the 2009 National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference, so there are bound to be conflicts. But if academics avoid rocking the boat, injustices can fester. Eisenberg told five vignettes in which students or faculty took an ethical stand.
1. Students vs. university–students win. He recounted a case where Baylor college was bribing incoming freshmen to retake their SAT scores in order to boost Baylor’s national ranking. A brave reporter from the student newspaper broke this story and the Baylor administration publicly apologized for its actions.
2. Faculty vs. government–faculty win (at least morally). In 1914, at the beginning of WWI, Albert Einstein became politically active by being one of only a few to sign a letter renouncing the war. This action could have ended his scientific career as it was a full six years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. History remembers Einstein’s stand.
3. Students vs. society–society wins (sadly). Eisenberg relayed a personal account of his own work with a student group called AIMS–the Association of Interns and Medical Students–while a student at the University of Pennsylvania school of Medicine in the 1940’s. The group was advocating for better working conditions for medical interns and universal access to healthcare. The group became a target of McCarthyism, depicted as socialists, and buried.
4. Students and faculty vs. society–students and faculty win (and so does society). In the mid 1960’s, there was only one “negro” medical student at the University of Pennsylvania and less than 3 percent of all medical students in the US were black–most of them at the two historically black medical schools Howard and Meharry. In 1968, right after the murder of Martin Luther King, the students and faculty at Harvard Medical School advocated for an affirmative action program to increase black enrollment at the school. A committee of 9, including Eisenberg, radically proposed that Harvard admit no fewer than 15 black students the following year. The fear was whether or not there were even 15 black students in the U.S. qualified to attend Harvard Medical School. The administration got behind the students and faculty and made a concerted effort to recruit. Applications from black students went up 6-fold and by 1973, Harvard more than met its goal. Eisenberg proudly announced that Harvard Medical School has now graduated more than 1000 African Americans. “Harvard Medical School used to be all white and gray,” he said. “Now it’s in technicolor.”
5. Students vs. Big Pharma–stay tuned! Eisenberg talked about the current move among Harvard medical students to take on the conflict of interest that exists because of medical faculty members’ ties to pharmaceutical companies. While this issue has been a priority for the American Association of Medical Colleges for some time, Harvard has lagged behind many of other medical schools in weeding out Big Pharma’s influence over teaching, research, and clinical practice at the university.
Students frequently have more power than they realize to make positive changes to their institutions. Why, for example, do you think that China shut down the universities during the 1989 democratic uprisings? Are you putting your future career at risk if you speak out against injustices within your institutions? Absolutely. But, Dr. Eisenberg ended his talk with a challenge to the students in the audience: “If you don’t do it, it won’t happen.”
What do you think are the ethical issues festering on university campuses? What should students and faculty take a stand on that they are currently keeping quiet about?
–Andrea Kalfoglou
March 17th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Is Leon Eisenberg the last of his breed? Are we training ethicists to be ethical?
March 17th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Here’s one that’s been bugging me. It kind of ties in with the discussions from NUBC about mental health. Depression frequently emerges in the early 20s. Going off to college requires some adjustment, and the university adds to that stress by creating situations that can trigger a depressive episode (think exam week). We all know that universities have been scrambling to assure parents that they have security and won’t have a Virginia Tech situation, but what about all the non-homicidal, depressed and suicidal students. What kind of obligation does the university have to these students? It it just to provide an education, or is there a greater moral obligation to look out for their mental and physical well-being as well?
March 17th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I can think of at least one bioethicist who lost her job for standing up to her institution based on her principles. Mary Faith Marshall was denied tenure at the Medical University of South Carolina for testifying in a case that involved a lack of informed consent. Her testimony was unpopular with the president and board of trustees. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3860/is_199907/ai_n8873141 She settled the case with the help of the American Association of University Professors and moved on to Kansas and now Minnesota. Mary Faith is one of my heroes.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
To comment on Dan Wikler’s question: I think he is one of the last of his breed. It seems to me that most professors or University officials are just trying to hold the masses and not encourage students to stand up for their academic rights. After all, you give us an inch, we’ll take a mile, right? Absolutely. Many students are foaming at the mouth to discharge faculty members who are still sexist or racist… but do they even attempt to stand up for themselves? No way. It is almost as if we are truly still afraid to lose our academic positions (as we are all too aware of the power that the “higher-ups” have)… or we just have that “I don’t care, the class is almost over,” attitude.
The future looks bleak for students to stand up for their side of ethical dilemmas – at least at my University.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
In response to Dr. Wikler…I don’t think so. I think that we are in a bit of a dark, damp tunnel at present, but there is a bit of light shining right at the end. I think that the current youth movement has the potential to revive this type of thinking into society.
I had the opportunity to attend Powershift this year. 12,000 students from around the nation came together to engage with one another and their representatives about climate change litigation. It was inspiring to meet Native Americans who were saying “no more” to nuclear waste being put on their reservations and students of prestigious universities come together and really have a conversation. To me, that is what ethics is about. We are living in contractarian society and the only way to make change is to alter the contract. I think that the best way to achieve this change is to have both parties communicate. Technology has given us such wonderful tools for global communication. My generation now just needs a bit of a push out of our apathetic bubbles so that we can use these tools. I’ll tell ya’…when you get us fired up…we’re fired up. I’m ready for my generation to take the world by storm as a global community…we totally have it in us.
And just as a quick response to Ashley…I think every school is like that. It’s so frustrating! But as a I said…our generation has the opportunity to “be ethical” more than those before have, I think (because of the reasons I mentioned above), the game is now to open our eyes.
March 18th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Do we train ethicists to be ethical? Yes we do, but I don’t think it is enough to be ethical.
I feel that discussions regarding ethics often neglect a very important subject: how should ethicists protest unethical practices? While ethicists’ training allows them recognize unethical practices, I don’t think we train ethicists how to protest effectively. Many of the devices that have worked in the past (letter writing campaigns, strikes, marches) are far less effective in our modern climate. I think radical actions of a few individuals often cause the greatest self-reflection amongst the public. When Socrates was sentenced to death, he drank hemlock poison because he thought that people should obey the law. When the British oppressed Indians, Gandhi persuaded his fellow citizens to endure the beatings of the British on faith alone. Are actions like these what are necessary in order to overcome unethical practices? What methods can we use now in order to cause the changes we would like to see in universities?
March 19th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Your entry is interesting, and it’s also interesting to see the various directions that the comments have taken.
Because of your veganism, I was immediately spurred by your blog entry to think of a concern I have in how medical students are trained. Namely, by forcing medical students to experiment on animals, in ways that euphemistically are called “sacrificing” the animals, the medical establishment itself selectively screens out the very same potential physicians who are most concerned with life. I know this happened in my own case. I was wildly enthusiastic about biology right up to the point where my next class was going to require that little animals be “sacrificed”. I never could bring myself to take that class. By eliminating me from the “gene pool of future physicians,” so to speak, Medicine eliminated someone who placed such a high value on life that I could not degrade it.
When I was young and lacked perspective, I made the mistake of thinking it was just personal to me. However, since that time I’ve become aware of this happening in a more systematic way, as I’ve become aware of many people thwarted from medical education because of these concerns. For example, I once knew a promising premed student who obtained a prestigious internship / fellowship to work for a neuroscientist. Part of the plum was that the student’s name would be included in a research publication.
Part of this students’ job was to prep animals for surgery. The surgery was not supposed to proceed until the animals were fully anesthetized. Well, you can guess right here what happened. The surgeries would proceed before the animals were anesthetized. When the student objected, the neuroscientist grew irate. The student had to make the choice whether to take her concerns to the university ethics committee, which would cause severe stigma, or whether to do nothing. The student could not bring herself to do either. She didn’t just quit her internship. She thought this was the tip of the iceberg and decided to quit premed altogether. I’ve since heard of more, similar kinds of decisions.
How many students have pulled themselves out of the premed or medical school track on account of ethical qualms about medical education? As a result, the entire “pool” of future physicians is skewed toward those who are less concerned with ethics, who are less concerned about life and the very values that a medical education is supposed to protect. As a result, our physicians are those who don’t mind tolerating “animal sacrifice” and pain. We shouldn’t be surprised when our physicans are more like that neuroscientist who got so mad at my friend — willing to overlook ethical qualms, to cut corners, to marginalize those who disagree.
Talking about ethics is a good first start. Too many physicians have spent all their time in a biology lab, dismiss the humanities as irrelevant, and lack the fundamental liberal education that conveys an appreciation for philosophical ethics. But no amount of “training” in ethics can impart that foundational, fundamental respect for life. Until medical education is fundamentally altered by finding ways to include those who are most concerned with the sanctity of all life, it will always be skewed toward the unethical among us.