This psychological experiment had unforeseen consequences. I do not think that anyone would have predicted that such a sadistic outcome would have occurred. Zimbardo, a sociologist, used the experiment to demonstrate that 'evil' can arise more frequently out of situation rather than existing innately. By choosing the 'good apples' and proving that these people could be corrupted, he demonstrated the power of a situation to dictate outcomes and the inability of one's personality or morals to prevail. But was the experiment wrong? I do not think so. The aim of Zimbardo's experiment was to demonstrate that situations dictate outcomes. He probably foresaw and was hoping that these "good apples" would behave poorly. The extent to which this happened was obviously surprising and scarred many good people, but the data from the experiment outweighs the bad effects. From a sociological lens the experiment proved that situations are just as powerful as morals. But extension of this fact creates important advancements in society. The Stanford Prison Experiment reached the public eye most notably when prisoners were abused at Abu Graib prison a few years ago. Many wanted to blame only the guards for what happened, but we can see that the situation dictated, to some extent, what happened. The way that the Stanford Prison Experiment helped is that it demonstrated a situation that produced bad results. Recognizing that a situation can produce bad results means that one can change the conditions and significantly lessen the chances of the occurrence of 'evil.' What happened at Abu Graib prison was unfortunate and embarrassing for the US Army and attempting to reform prisons or even the layout of the army could help to reduce incidents like this. It is even possible to reduce the chances of these bad acts simply by informing people of the power of situations. In this situation knowledge is power. If people can understand the power a situation could have over them then they are more likely to understand how to combat it. In the case of the Stanford Prison Experiment the knowledge acquired was worth the evil that occurred in that prison in 1971. It was knowledge that needed to be uncovered to prevent future, more heinous crimes from being committed.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 in the basement of Stanford's psychology department, is an controversial psychological study involving human experimentation. In the study Dr. Philip Zimbardo selected a number of students that he considered to be "good apples." They had good grades, came from stable family situations, and had no previous record of violence. Within the experiment he set up a mock prison in which he designated some of the volunteers as prisoners and some of the volunteers as guards. He told them to fully assume their roles and make the prison run as effectively as possible. Within six days of the commencement the experiment had to be shut down. In assuming their roles, these "good apples" and classmates began to abuse each other. The guards acted sadistically towards the prisoners and the prisoners became distressed and anti social. The guards had begun to brutally beat the prisoners.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Fighting Obesity: Are Drugs the Answer?
There are currently about three dozen different obesity drugs under development and three others that are vying for FDA approval. These are in addition to the many anti-obesity drugs that are either on the market now or have been tried in the past. None so far have proven satisfactory.
Anti-obesity drugs fall into both the “enhancement” and the “therapy” categories. They provide cosmetic benefits, just as plastic surgery does, as well as medical benefits.
The questions that arise for me are: what are the risks? And how will widespread use of these drugs influence society as a whole? Anti-obesity drugs in the past have been shown to have little benefit, and some have had considerable risks.
However, even if the new drugs are safer for the patient than the ones in the past, their use may pose risks to society. At the risk of sounding like Caplan in his argument regarding Ashley’s Treatment, I would advocate greater public awareness regarding healthy lifestyles over the use of medications. Even if the obesity drugs do work better than the ones in the past, they will not allow patients to become “healthy” without some effort on their own part to change their lifestyles. Thus, whether society condones the use of anti-obesity drugs or not, attitudes toward healthy living will have to change.
Another risk posed by the widespread use of obesity drugs involves potential “off-label” and abusive uses of the drugs. In a society such as that of the US today where “thinness” is idolized and obsession with weight and body image is rampant, I fear that demand for anti-obesity drugs will come not just from those who are obese but also from those who simply want to “lose a little weight.”
At this point, the anti-obesity drugs will cross the line from being “therapy” to being “enhancement” and the endless road to trying to achieve “perfection” will begin.
Related links:
"Medicine's Elusive Goal: A Safe Weight-Loss Drug." NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/business/17obesity.html?_r=1&ref=health
Anti-obesity drugs fall into both the “enhancement” and the “therapy” categories. They provide cosmetic benefits, just as plastic surgery does, as well as medical benefits.
The questions that arise for me are: what are the risks? And how will widespread use of these drugs influence society as a whole? Anti-obesity drugs in the past have been shown to have little benefit, and some have had considerable risks.
However, even if the new drugs are safer for the patient than the ones in the past, their use may pose risks to society. At the risk of sounding like Caplan in his argument regarding Ashley’s Treatment, I would advocate greater public awareness regarding healthy lifestyles over the use of medications. Even if the obesity drugs do work better than the ones in the past, they will not allow patients to become “healthy” without some effort on their own part to change their lifestyles. Thus, whether society condones the use of anti-obesity drugs or not, attitudes toward healthy living will have to change.
Another risk posed by the widespread use of obesity drugs involves potential “off-label” and abusive uses of the drugs. In a society such as that of the US today where “thinness” is idolized and obsession with weight and body image is rampant, I fear that demand for anti-obesity drugs will come not just from those who are obese but also from those who simply want to “lose a little weight.”
At this point, the anti-obesity drugs will cross the line from being “therapy” to being “enhancement” and the endless road to trying to achieve “perfection” will begin.
Related links:
"Medicine's Elusive Goal: A Safe Weight-Loss Drug." NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/business/17obesity.html?_r=1&ref=health
Cheating Death
We need oxygen to live, but it turns out that we also need it to die.
When death from oxygen deprivation occurs due to blood loss or organ destruction, some oxygen is present in the body, and it is this trace amount that allows the chemical reactions within our cells to occur, resulting ultimately in death.
What if there were no oxygen? What if something like, say, hydrogen sulfide took its place in the body? What would total oxygen deprivation do to a living organism?
Apparently, according to a new series of tests by Mark Roth, a form of suspended animation. Some oxygen leads to death, but no oxygen at all leads to nearly frozen life. In small animals (fish embryos, fruit flies, and rats), Roth has been able to drain their oxygen to 0.1 percent and induce a state of biostasis. What's more, he's been able to bring them out of it with no clear detrimental effects; they simply "pick up where they left off" (qtd. in CNN). While he has yet to be able to reproduce the effects of his experiment in larger animals, specifically pigs, Roth is continuing to work to develop his research for use in emergency medical and military situations.
The implications of the results of this research are astounding. The possibility of nearly unlimited time in treating patients in critical condition is one that cannot be passed up. However, the implications of the research itself may give pause on further reflection. Clinical trials for such a treatment stand to be intensely dangerous. The basis for Roth's hypothesis is that anything short of total oxygen deprivation will result in death. Experimentation on human subjects is a staggering proposition; if the procedure does not perform up to the required standard, the result is almost certainly death. Belmont and Helsinki both deny healthy subjects participation in clinical trials, but how close to death would a patient need to be before he or she is eligible for this very clearly potentially lethal experimental treatment? This new technique stands at the cusp of revolutionizing medical practice, but it must clear significant hurdles before it does.
Relevant Sites:
"Scientists Hope Work With Poison Gas Can Be A Lifesaver" (CNN.com)
When death from oxygen deprivation occurs due to blood loss or organ destruction, some oxygen is present in the body, and it is this trace amount that allows the chemical reactions within our cells to occur, resulting ultimately in death.
What if there were no oxygen? What if something like, say, hydrogen sulfide took its place in the body? What would total oxygen deprivation do to a living organism?
Apparently, according to a new series of tests by Mark Roth, a form of suspended animation. Some oxygen leads to death, but no oxygen at all leads to nearly frozen life. In small animals (fish embryos, fruit flies, and rats), Roth has been able to drain their oxygen to 0.1 percent and induce a state of biostasis. What's more, he's been able to bring them out of it with no clear detrimental effects; they simply "pick up where they left off" (qtd. in CNN). While he has yet to be able to reproduce the effects of his experiment in larger animals, specifically pigs, Roth is continuing to work to develop his research for use in emergency medical and military situations.
The implications of the results of this research are astounding. The possibility of nearly unlimited time in treating patients in critical condition is one that cannot be passed up. However, the implications of the research itself may give pause on further reflection. Clinical trials for such a treatment stand to be intensely dangerous. The basis for Roth's hypothesis is that anything short of total oxygen deprivation will result in death. Experimentation on human subjects is a staggering proposition; if the procedure does not perform up to the required standard, the result is almost certainly death. Belmont and Helsinki both deny healthy subjects participation in clinical trials, but how close to death would a patient need to be before he or she is eligible for this very clearly potentially lethal experimental treatment? This new technique stands at the cusp of revolutionizing medical practice, but it must clear significant hurdles before it does.
Relevant Sites:
"Scientists Hope Work With Poison Gas Can Be A Lifesaver" (CNN.com)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Simple Question... Male or Female?
Most people are born male or female. Chromosome 23 contains either an XX pair which is female or an XY pair which is male. Plain and simple, one box is checked on the birth certificate. This is not the case for 18-year-old Caster Semenya of South Africa though. She burst onto the track and field scene this summer at the World Championships in Berlin when she absolutely blew away the field in the women’s 800 meters. The whispering began as the qualifying rounds started, by fans, announcers, and other competitors themselves. The International Association of Athletics Federation noticed too and required Caster to undergo gender testing.
The “gender testing” was always described to outsiders very vaguely and indistinctly because the officials say the situation is very complicated. Does purely DNA determine an individual’s gender? What about sex organs or hormone levels? It most certainly is too, when an 18-year-old is put under international scrutiny for something she can’t control, it definitely requires a delicate handling of the state of affairs. My question is how far should this topic be taken? Fellow 800m finalist Elisa Piccione of Italy has been quoted as saying “These kinds of people should not run with us. For me, she’s not a woman. She’s a man.” Even the announcers during the World Championships commented that in the old days a gender test simply depended on the participant pulling down his or her pants. Now that Caster has been metaphorically thrown under the bus in the heat of the moment of competition, people have had a chance to look back a bit, and reflect on the situation.
In the span of five days, the 18-year-old Semenya underwent required gender, was humiliated by international competitors ho commented on her “maleness”, and was the leading story on headline around the world. In my opinion, this controversy has invaded hr privacy and challenged her dignity. She was born like this, and additional drug testing has not revealed any doping or illegal aids. The results that were leaked to the press indicate that she has both male and female sex organs, including internal testes and elevated levels of testosterone. This would explain why no one in her small rural town in South Africa would think she was a guy. Her external sex organs look female, however, her muscular physique, large hands and feet, deep voice, and facial hair reflect traditional male characteristics.
This is not exactly the same as someone who has specifically undergone a sex change, but it still merits attention. As new technology and procedures become available, where do we draw the line? Renee Richards, a tennis player in the 1970s, underwent a male to female sex operation and wanted to compete with the women. How do we justify this? Is this fair? How do we define which box to check, male or female? Is the gender assigned at birth the key, or in athletics is the exact physical make-up of the person more important? Also important in the Caster Semenya case beyond the gender issue, besides defining the line between male and female, how do we treat these people with dignity? This case highlights the fact that the determination of male and female is biologically concrete. How can privacy, dignity, and athletic fairness exist? Individuals with transgender or hermaphrodite characteristics have a social construction of their male or femaleness that goes beyond the appearance of sex organs or DNA. They can obviously be affected by what other individuals say, but many people seemed to forget that this summer when they saw a tomboy blow open the world championships this summer.
Sources Relevant to my post:
Dixon, Robyn. "Runner Caster Semenya has heard the gender comments all her life." Los Angeles Times. 21 Aug. 2009. Web..
Malone, Andrew, Stewart Maclean, and Emily Miller. "'She wouldn't wear dresses and sounds like a man on the phone': Caster Semenya's father on his sex-riddle daughter." Mail Online. 22 Aug. 2009. Web..
Marathon Mama. "Op Ed Wed.... Caster Semenya." Web log post. 5 Sept. 2009. Web.
Yaniv, Oren. "Caster Semenya, forced to take gender test, is a woman ... and a man." New York Daily News. 10 Sept. 2009. Web..
The “gender testing” was always described to outsiders very vaguely and indistinctly because the officials say the situation is very complicated. Does purely DNA determine an individual’s gender? What about sex organs or hormone levels? It most certainly is too, when an 18-year-old is put under international scrutiny for something she can’t control, it definitely requires a delicate handling of the state of affairs. My question is how far should this topic be taken? Fellow 800m finalist Elisa Piccione of Italy has been quoted as saying “These kinds of people should not run with us. For me, she’s not a woman. She’s a man.” Even the announcers during the World Championships commented that in the old days a gender test simply depended on the participant pulling down his or her pants. Now that Caster has been metaphorically thrown under the bus in the heat of the moment of competition, people have had a chance to look back a bit, and reflect on the situation.
In the span of five days, the 18-year-old Semenya underwent required gender, was humiliated by international competitors ho commented on her “maleness”, and was the leading story on headline around the world. In my opinion, this controversy has invaded hr privacy and challenged her dignity. She was born like this, and additional drug testing has not revealed any doping or illegal aids. The results that were leaked to the press indicate that she has both male and female sex organs, including internal testes and elevated levels of testosterone. This would explain why no one in her small rural town in South Africa would think she was a guy. Her external sex organs look female, however, her muscular physique, large hands and feet, deep voice, and facial hair reflect traditional male characteristics.
This is not exactly the same as someone who has specifically undergone a sex change, but it still merits attention. As new technology and procedures become available, where do we draw the line? Renee Richards, a tennis player in the 1970s, underwent a male to female sex operation and wanted to compete with the women. How do we justify this? Is this fair? How do we define which box to check, male or female? Is the gender assigned at birth the key, or in athletics is the exact physical make-up of the person more important? Also important in the Caster Semenya case beyond the gender issue, besides defining the line between male and female, how do we treat these people with dignity? This case highlights the fact that the determination of male and female is biologically concrete. How can privacy, dignity, and athletic fairness exist? Individuals with transgender or hermaphrodite characteristics have a social construction of their male or femaleness that goes beyond the appearance of sex organs or DNA. They can obviously be affected by what other individuals say, but many people seemed to forget that this summer when they saw a tomboy blow open the world championships this summer.
Sources Relevant to my post:
Dixon, Robyn. "Runner Caster Semenya has heard the gender comments all her life." Los Angeles Times. 21 Aug. 2009. Web.
Malone, Andrew, Stewart Maclean, and Emily Miller. "'She wouldn't wear dresses and sounds like a man on the phone': Caster Semenya's father on his sex-riddle daughter." Mail Online. 22 Aug. 2009. Web.
Marathon Mama. "Op Ed Wed.... Caster Semenya." Web log post. 5 Sept. 2009. Web.
Yaniv, Oren. "Caster Semenya, forced to take gender test, is a woman ... and a man." New York Daily News. 10 Sept. 2009. Web.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Growth Hormone: It It Crossing the Line?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be unusually short for your age? What if you spent most of your life always being the smallest person in a group of friends? Some people don’t just wonder about this but actually deal with it everyday. A small percentage (2.3%) of children experience what is called Idiopathic Short Stature (ISS). ISS means that a child is very far below the average height for most children of their age and sex. These children are normal in every other way; they do not have any obvious mental or other physical problems. My cousin had a similar experience. He was well under the average height for his age so he started taking growth hormone at the age of four. He continued taking growth hormone until he reached 18 years of age (the approximate age his growth plates might close). Even after taking it, he is not a very tall person (≈5’ 6”), but the growth hormone did help boost his height so he would be closer to the average.
My cousin is not the only person who has taken growth hormone. Many healthy individuals who are drastically under average height do. Growth hormone is usually given for social or psychological reasons since it is difficult for children and especially adults to be so much shorter than the rest of their peers. This is the big question: is it ethically correct to be giving growth hormone to children when it is not for a medical reason? Is it really any different than getting cosmetic surgery, since that also makes a person feel better about themselves around their peers? A half-inch in height will even cost between $18,000 and $36,000. If some children are allowed to receive the hormone injections, then why couldn’t a parent use it to make their child taller to be better at basketball or volleyball? I think that, regardless of its lack of medical reasoning, it should be allowed under certain circumstances. I fully support its use for children who are far under the average height for their age and sex. I don’t think it is appropriate or ethical to use it just for the benefit of gaining an advantage in a given activity. Using the growth hormone to help children, like my cousin, attempt to reach a normal height is completely ethical and should be an accepted use.
Websites relevant to my post:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/78129.php
http://www.hormone.org/Resources/Growth/upload/Idiopathic_Short_Stature_factsheet.pdf
A New Breed of Humans
As I began my search for possible blog post topics, I typed “bioethics” into the Google search bar. The first few sites that came up were ones that I had already visited for my last blog post or Wikipedia sites. I was about to type in a new search when something caught my eye in the corner of the screen. “Transhumanism,” it said, “the ethical use of technology to transcend limits of the human body.” Thinking it looked interesting, although not quite sure what I was going to find, I decided to see what humanityplus.org had to say.
When the page finally loaded, I was somewhat shocked by what I found. Besides the quote about using innovation to “radically benefit the human condition,” I found blogs on artificial intelligence and virtual realities, links to their projects on life extension and preparation for the future, and an advertisement for H+ Magazine with a caption that read “YOU are the doll—tweaking your neurons” next to a picture of a woman and some mannequins. After poking around a little more and finding phrases like “send us your thoughts, we aren’t getting any younger… yet”, I stumbled across the Transhumanist Declaration. The first line of it read “We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.” This was shortly followed by their belief that our potential is still mostly undiscovered. But I began to wonder, once technology enters, is it really our potential that we are uncovering? When we are full of artificial enhancers, can we really say that it is the fulfillment of human potential that is making us live longer? As soon as we try to artificially and technologically enhance our natural state of being, we become something that is not quite human. Transhuman, I guess.
The website contains a diagram of the capabilities the “modes of being” accessible to first animals, then humans, then transhumanists, and finally the entire square, which is accessible to post-humans. These post humans are no longer constrained by death or the physical or mental limitations that we face today; transhumanists argue that if we could live for centuries, we could continue to mature and reach unheard of intelligence.
While this idea seems pretty amazing in theory, it feels like walking into a sci-fi movie—fun to watch, but I am definitely glad it isn’t real. In transhumanism, the Benjamin Buttons actually exist, humans live forever, and we are more like machines than animals. We do not need to live for centuries or have brains like computers. Although we are now more advanced than we once were, we still have physical and cognitive limitations that are only natural. Humans should remain humans, not evolve from transhumans to immortal, superhuman beings.
Website Relevant to my Post:
http://humanityplus.org/
When the page finally loaded, I was somewhat shocked by what I found. Besides the quote about using innovation to “radically benefit the human condition,” I found blogs on artificial intelligence and virtual realities, links to their projects on life extension and preparation for the future, and an advertisement for H+ Magazine with a caption that read “YOU are the doll—tweaking your neurons” next to a picture of a woman and some mannequins. After poking around a little more and finding phrases like “send us your thoughts, we aren’t getting any younger… yet”, I stumbled across the Transhumanist Declaration. The first line of it read “We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.” This was shortly followed by their belief that our potential is still mostly undiscovered. But I began to wonder, once technology enters, is it really our potential that we are uncovering? When we are full of artificial enhancers, can we really say that it is the fulfillment of human potential that is making us live longer? As soon as we try to artificially and technologically enhance our natural state of being, we become something that is not quite human. Transhuman, I guess.
The website contains a diagram of the capabilities the “modes of being” accessible to first animals, then humans, then transhumanists, and finally the entire square, which is accessible to post-humans. These post humans are no longer constrained by death or the physical or mental limitations that we face today; transhumanists argue that if we could live for centuries, we could continue to mature and reach unheard of intelligence.
While this idea seems pretty amazing in theory, it feels like walking into a sci-fi movie—fun to watch, but I am definitely glad it isn’t real. In transhumanism, the Benjamin Buttons actually exist, humans live forever, and we are more like machines than animals. We do not need to live for centuries or have brains like computers. Although we are now more advanced than we once were, we still have physical and cognitive limitations that are only natural. Humans should remain humans, not evolve from transhumans to immortal, superhuman beings.
Website Relevant to my Post:
http://humanityplus.org/
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Colorblind No More
I was sitting in the nurse’s office, trying to figure out what the numbers were. Card after card of these random dots of color were put in front of me. Everyone else thought it was the easiest test they had ever taken, but I was lost. More than being lost, I was and still am colorblind. Yes, I see colors. One of the most common misunderstandings is that people with colorblindness see in black and white. But, that is not the case. I am able to see colors but have a hard time differentiating between them especially when they are put in the random jumble as they are at the doctor’s office.
Now, I have hope that one day I could be free of this colorblindness. Doctors at the University of Washington have enabled two colorblind monkeys to see red and green for the first time. After injecting the monkeys’ eyes with viruses carrying a gene which makes L-opsin, one of three proteins which are released when color-detecting cones are hit by different wavelengths of light, the monkeys were able to distinguish between red and green colors. Though it took the monkeys five months to stop banging randomly on the screen and instead distinguish between the colors, the results are incredibly promising. While this development is exciting it could even lead to curing blindness and other manipulations of the retina.
More than just being able to enhance the eye, this successful experiment demonstrates that gene therapy is ready to push itself to the forefront of the medical world. Though we must always be careful when balancing the risks and the rewards and also always keeping the patients’ best interest at heart, there is cause for hope with continued successes such as these with gene therapy.
Though I am not willing to go into a clinical trial at this moment for this treatment because I am not that adversely affected by being colorblind, it would be very interesting to see colors as everyone else does. Even with all of the problems gene therapy has had over the last few years with extremely unfortunate deaths, there does appear to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Website relevant to my post:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/
Now, I have hope that one day I could be free of this colorblindness. Doctors at the University of Washington have enabled two colorblind monkeys to see red and green for the first time. After injecting the monkeys’ eyes with viruses carrying a gene which makes L-opsin, one of three proteins which are released when color-detecting cones are hit by different wavelengths of light, the monkeys were able to distinguish between red and green colors. Though it took the monkeys five months to stop banging randomly on the screen and instead distinguish between the colors, the results are incredibly promising. While this development is exciting it could even lead to curing blindness and other manipulations of the retina.
More than just being able to enhance the eye, this successful experiment demonstrates that gene therapy is ready to push itself to the forefront of the medical world. Though we must always be careful when balancing the risks and the rewards and also always keeping the patients’ best interest at heart, there is cause for hope with continued successes such as these with gene therapy.
Though I am not willing to go into a clinical trial at this moment for this treatment because I am not that adversely affected by being colorblind, it would be very interesting to see colors as everyone else does. Even with all of the problems gene therapy has had over the last few years with extremely unfortunate deaths, there does appear to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Website relevant to my post:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/
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