SAQ1-1

This is a narrower definition of ethics and the focus is religious or spiritual. Unlawful, unethical and immoral acts and forbearances are considered as elements of sins that contaminate the otherwise virtuous soul.

Example:

John and James logged onto computer chat rooms and believed that they were exchanging messages of an explicit nature with 13-14 year old girls. The fact is that they were chatting with law enforcement officials who were patrolling the internet posing as teenage girls. As a result, John and James were charged with felony offenses. John was charged with child solicitation and James with child exploitation.

The two law enforcement officials were involved in internet policing efforts. In John’s case, one of the law enforcement official logged onto Yahoo Messenger using an undercover screen name and posted a photograph he borrowed from a female police officer when she was 13 years old. He received an instant message from John about sexual topics, exposed himself on his webcam and performed a sexual act.

The acts of John and James, i.e. child solicitation and child exploitation on the internet are unethical that contaminate the virtuous souls of children and/or teenagers.

Human conduct manifested through human actions may either be right/ethical or wrong/unethical.

Example:

Cristine, a computer instructor, uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of one of her students. She got the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that Cristine was the student's advisor.

Cristine acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his/her advisor. The question here is why would the instructor wanted the information. If Cristine wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, then such use was acceptable.

The person in the Record’s Office who gave the restricted password acted wrongly because he/she should have verified if Cristine is really the advisor of the student.

There is a growing need to address moral issues and unethical practices within the boundaries of various areas of study. While there is no universal definition of ethics, a relative perception of what is correct or not, right or wrong, is usually adopted and used to guide people’s actions in various human concerns – Applied Ethics.

Example:

SUMMARY OF MEDICAL ETHICS

Medical Ethics in general is the obligations of a moral nature which govern the practice of medicine. It is a systematic effort to illumine the ethos and to elaborate the perspective and norms of the medical profession. It intends to strengthen the morality, the moral discernment and decisions of the physicians and patient. One cannot expect that every single concrete moral issue will be immediately resolved by reference to a medical ethics text book. There are certain situations with clear moral answers and conflict situations with no clear-cut answers. A doctor, consultant or nurse has to act in accordance with one’s conscience; a conscience well formed by the principles of Medical Ethics – going on the fact at one’s disposal. There can even be cases where a Christian health professional will ask the Lord for guidance in prayer and leave things in God’s hands, commending both his successes and failures to the Lord’s mercy.

There is a widespread tendency nowadays to avoid systematic moral reasoning and resort to Situation Ethic, a mere subjectivity, i.e. “Do whatever you think is right in the circumstances. You have to make up your own mind about ethical issues”. This attitude may be grounded in a moral agnosticism (non-belief), but the lack of any moral or ethical ground rules is unhelpful to someone facing crucial moral choices especially in life and death situation.

Not all has been progress because even the technological power of modern medicine brings regrettable tendency to treat human beings as merely a physical organism or interesting pathological specimen, without much regard for his spiritual and social well-being. The holistic dimension of aiming to heal the spirit and personality as well as the body has frequently been neglected in an eagerness to cure the physical ailment. Modern medicine is more powerful and specialized than before but sometimes lacks an overall vision of the human personality. Medical Ethics situate medical expertise with the overall perspective of what is good for the human person. It aims to humanize medicine, helps to right the balance between the physical and technical on one side and the spiritual, social and psychological dimensions of the human personality on the other.

The Code of Medical Ethics enables the doctor and other healthcare professionals understand how systematic knowledge and technical skills and training are to be used in the service of others and how they should not be abused. Healthcare professionals have the responsibility to be competent, skilled and updated in their specialty, as well as having a clear perception of valid moral principles founded upon human nature and purpose of human life.

What would be your judgment?

Rona is guilty of transgressing the law of community B.

Supporting Details:

Definition of Ethics: Ethics is the study and philosophy of human conduct with emphasis on the determination of right and wrong.

Explanations: Rona failed to abide by the provisions of this code of ethics, her act of transgression will be considered unethical. The right human conduct is for Rona to ask permission from Jojo that she wanted to copy and reproduce his computer software. With this act, she will then know that a law on infringement of intellectual property rights is being enforced in Jojo’s community.

In your opinion, when does an act become ethical or unethical?

In my opinion, an act becomes ethical or unethical when it elicits a positive or negative response to all applicable primary questions (is the act honorable, honest, avoid conflict of interest, fair, considerate and others) and a negative/positive response to clarifications (will the act do harm to an individual, group of persons, community or society) depending on the situation or circumstance.

Explanations. We cannot totally rely on Standard of Ethics/Professional Conduct because not all can be legislated or defined. Education must also be relied upon to improve human behavior. An action might be prudent and legal but may well be unethical in some respect. Thus, it is still necessary that vital questions be answered depending on the given situation or circumstance for an act to become ethical or unethical.

Example:

A software company is working on an integrated inventory control system for a garment manufacturer. The system will gather sales information daily from garment stores nationwide. The information will be used by the accounting, shipping, and ordering departments to control all of the functions of the manufacturer. The inventory functions are critical to the smooth operation of this system. 

Julie, a quality assurance engineer with the software company, suspects that the inventory functions of the system are not sufficiently tested, although it passed all their contracted tests.  She is being pressured by her employers to sign off on the software. 

On legal grounds, she is only required to perform the tests which had been agreed to in the original contract. However, her extensive experience in software testing has led her to be concerned over risks of the system.  Her employers say they will go out of business if they do not deliver the software on time.  Julie contends if the inventory subsystem fails, it will significantly harm their client and its employees.  If the potential failure were to threaten lives, it would be clear to Julie that she should refuse to sign off. But since the degree of threatened harm is less, Julie is faced by a difficult moral/ethical decision.