Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 ETHICS?
Since when were ethics part of the equation of success in this country? We don't teach ethics in schools, we don't report on it in the news, and unless the Dalai Lama is speaking somewhere (usually with protests from attending scientists, by the way), the word "ethics" hardly ever enters the minds of most Americans.
Ethics? Are you kidding me? Carl Rove would be flabbergasted. That our lawmakers are even surprised at a corporation's sacrificing of principles for profits is astonishing. And if they're really so concerned, where's the outcry against Big Tobacco? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 That's a whole different topic, and it deserves treatment in a separate essay concerning the education of ethics in American society, because we have worshipped the dollar and economic growth for so long that we have forgotten to teach basic ethics to our children. And as they grow up, they become adults without ethics. And that ultimately leads to situations like Enron, or drug companies knowingly selling dangerous drugs, or FDA bureaucrats who seem to put public safety as their lowest priority. It all starts with what we teach our children. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| We don't teach ethics in schools, we don't report on it in the news, and unless the Dalai Lama is speaking somewhere (usually with protests from attending scientists, by the way), the word "ethics" hardly ever enters the minds of most Americans.
Ethics? Are you kidding me? Carl Rove would be flabbergasted. That our lawmakers are even surprised at a corporation's sacrificing of principles for profits is astonishing. And if they're really so concerned, where's the outcry against Big Tobacco? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Unfortunately, they were doing so without any sense of ethics, because most of those orders never should have been carried out -- and they wouldn't have been carried out if the individuals had the presence of mind, the personal ethics, and the courage to stand up and say, "No!"
In a very real sense, the drug reps, drug scientists, drug marketing experts and others involved in the massive pharmaceutical racket playing out in America today are also just "following orders" to keep their jobs. They're not looking at the big picture... |
| Ethics education, in fact, may be the ultimate solution to this problem, because without ethics, we are a soulless economy. We may be very good at manufacturing drugs, marketing those drugs and selling electricity futures (as in the case of Enron), but we're not very good at propagating an honest, ethical business model that creates a positive effect not just for employees and shareholders, but also the customers and the public at large.
And if you ever meet someone who works for Merck, don't expect to find a dark, sinister figure shrouded in evil intent. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I find it astonishing that even in our public schools, children can go through 12 years of so-called "education" and not receive a single class on ethics. Unless they happen to have gifted teachers, they're never told about honesty or the power of doing good deeds for others. They're never taught to value another human life. This is simply not part of the official curriculum. In fact, most of the messages children receive teach them the opposite of ethics. |
| All that medical technology, you see, is worthless if you don't have ethics guiding you in its use.
Now this isn't to say, by the way, that all doctors are unethical. Most doctors that I have met personally, even if they are followers of conventional medicine, are themselves ethical people. But they've arrived at that through personal experience, not through any formal education. |
| For example, if you were the CEO of a drug company selling a prescription drug, and you found out that your drug tripled or quadrupled the risk of heart attacks in people who took it, would you have the ethics and the courage to say, "Hey, maybe we should take this drug off the market?" That's not what happens in the pharmaceutical industry. Rather than taking the drug off the market and protecting patients, companies routinely seek to hide the negative studies, distort the truth, cover up the truth and keep selling the drug to generate profits. |
| It's because ethics aren't black and white. There's no direct, easy answer when you start asking ethical questions. What medical schools want is one answer for one symptom. They want a clear-cut solution for every problem. It must be compartmentalized or framed in a reductionistic mindset in order to appeal to medical schools. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Examine your own life and ethics: who do you work for?
Here's a question for those people reading this who actually work for drug companies, hospitals, medical clinics or federal regulators: maybe it's time you looked at the bigger picture here. What system are you contributing to? If you were a German citizen living in the time of Nazi rule, would you have accepted a job managing a bullet factory? Would you have taken a job as an accountant for the Nazi party? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| In fact, most of the messages children receive teach them the opposite of ethics. Messages from the media, video games, television programs, and movies are largely about violence, trauma and killing other people in order to accomplish your goals. That's what you see in the action shows and a lot of Hollywood movies where it's all about taking out your enemy rather than finding ways to cooperate. The media engenders conflict, not compassion.
I suggest we initiate a fundamental change in our medical schools and public schools. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Most people who have these jobs are intelligent, have good ethics and try to do a good job. But at the top of these organizations, you often find a few decision makers who guide the company into actions and decisions that are ultimately destructive to society.
I believe this is true at the FDA, where the bureaucrats make decisions that override the good sense of the FDA's drug safety scientists. This was true at Enron, where a few greedy executives padded their pockets at the expense of investors and workers. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Perhaps we should stop trying to be such virtuoso technicians and, instead, learn to apply ethics to these technical skills. Because if you're not making the right decision from a moral, ethical viewpoint, then what good is all the technology in the world?
With sufficient technology, for example, you can grow organs for human transplants inside the bodies of living, breathing mammals (like pigs). We have the technology to do that right now. |
Ann N. Martin
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 DVM, Bring Life to Ethics; Global Bioethics for a Humane Society, New York, NewYork: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Goldstein, M., DVM, The Nature of Animal Healing, NewYork, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Houston, L, Nobody's Best Friend, Chester, New Jersey: MCE Press, 1998.
Merwick, K., People Food for Dogs, Seattle, Washington: Elfin Cove Press,
Messonnier, S., DVM, The Allergy Solution for Dogs: Natural and Conventional Therapies to Ease Discomfort and Enhance Your Dog's Quality of Life, Roseville, California: Prima Publishing, 2000.
Messonnier, S. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Sometimes hospital staffers themselves want to consult the ethics committee—for example, if a recommendation by the hospital's oncology team to aggressively treat an end-stage cancer patient doesn't sit well with the patient's primary care team. But often, family members disagree about treatment issues, which may trigger an ethics committee consultation.
•What would a typical family scenario be? Unexpected end-of-life decisions are the most common. The medical system is not equipped to make such judgments in acute emergencies. |
| Coping with Health-Care Conflicts
Abraham Verghese, MD, director, Center for Medical Humanities and ethics, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is author of My Own Country: A Doctor's Story. Simon & Schuster.
Many hospital patients and their families don't realize that at every hospital, in addition to all the advanced drugs and technical procedures, there's also a group of people—doctors and others—who spend a great deal of time focusing on the personal, human and moral issues of medicine—an ethics committee. |
| If there's any such conflict, especially in this type of critical situation, the ethics committee will be called in to hear all sides and then make a recommendation to the health-care team.
•But ethics issues aren't only about dying or incompetent patients, are they?
You're right—and it's important for us as doctors to recognize our boundaries. For a long time, medicine tended to be very paternalistic. Doctors acted as though they alone knew what was in the best interest of their patients.
That era is gone. Today, it's an era of patient autonomy. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Nowhere on the agenda was new funding for teaching ethics, by the way. ethics courses are nowhere to be seen in the U.S. education agenda, which is one reason why U.S. schools keep churning out a few really smart people with really bad ethics. People like the guys who ran Enron, who still don't admit they did anything wrong. |
Ann N. Martin
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| Procter and Gamble (P&G) purchased lams in September 1999 and issued a code of ethics. Animal People, an on-line organization devoted to the health and welfare of pets, reported in June 2001 that P&G stated its intention to phase out animal testing as fast as alternatives can be developed and approved by regulators. According to P&G, "The new code of ethics reflects the decision made two years ago by lams to start no further studies which required euthanasia of cats and dogs. |
Bill Sardi
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 The ethics of cancer care
I'm continually puzzled over the ethics of the medical profession. In the backwards world of cancer care, an alternative medicine practitioner will be labeled a health quack for offering an unproven remedy for cancer, but a Mayo Clinic-trained doctor who performs disproven care will not be sanctioned by the state medical board.
Patients are bewildered, overwhelmed, and often too ill to make decisions for themselves. They must rely upon their doctors to make decisions for them. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Nowhere on the agenda was new funding for teaching ethics, by the way. ethics courses are nowhere to be seen in the U.S. education agenda, which is one reason why U.S. schools keep churning out a few really smart people with really bad ethics. People like the guys who ran Enron, who still don't admit they did anything wrong. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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 This strategy is not about the ethics of eating animals, being the highest carnivore on the food chain, or deforestation of the Amazon to raise cattle. Rather, it is about finding the balance of animal protein to green plants in your diet that is right for you. You may transition to a near total vegephile existence in your Diet Evolution, or you may decide that all you are comfortable with is one meatless day a week. The choice is yours. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Corporations will only do the right thing after they are sufficiently convinced that doing so will be more profitable than simply ignoring the issue. ethics has nothing to do with the decision, and people who suffer under the illusion that for-profit corporations take ethics into account in any way whatsoever are living in la-la land. In the real world, like here in the USA, corporations are willing to make money at any cost. Including your health.
Don't believe me? Go read the ingredients on the thousands of food products found in your local grocery store. |
Dr Ron Roberts
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 You should ensure the acupuncturist has received formal training and educational qualifications and adheres to a strict professional code of ethics and practice. Needles inserted incorrectly can cause serious harm. Under no circumstances should you allow an unqualified person to administer acupuncture to you.
Stringent licensing conditions now ensure that acupuncture treatments' hygiene and cleanliness meet with the approval of appropriate health authorities. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Ethics has nothing to do with the decision, and people who suffer under the illusion that for-profit corporations take ethics into account in any way whatsoever are living in la-la land. In the real world, like here in the USA, corporations are willing to make money at any cost. Including your health.
Don't believe me? Go read the ingredients on the thousands of food products found in your local grocery store. |
Ann N. Martin
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| According to P&G, "The new code of ethics reflects the decision made two years ago by lams to start no further studies which required euthanasia of cats and dogs. It applies to all lams research in the development of pet food, regardless of whether it is conducted by universiries, our own scientists, or others."6
In its report, "lams—The Suffering Behind the Science," Uncaged Campaigns reported, "Dr. Dan Cary, Director of Technical Communications for lams said that his company cared about the welfare of animals. |
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