The Acceptance of Ethical Responsibility

During a lifetime, an individual may take on many roles that change with time and circumstances. However, we all have an experience of an identity that 

MacIntyre s J seems to have forgotten that he was a person. He seems not to have asked himself a question of the type, How is it best for a person in my circumstances to live . He has rather considered his closely defined professional role in isolation. In MacIntyre s analysis, this compartmentalisation of J s life is not simply an error of omission but an active refusal on J s part. He has arbitrarily closed his mind to certain types of knowledge and possibilities of action. Indeed, it could be said that he has failed as a person, as a human being, for he has sought to fulfil a closely specified role rather than to lead an accomplished life. 

If J had enjoyed the benefit of Davis s knowledge of the professional ethics literature, he could have suggested a more comprehensive list of why he had not failed his responsibilities. However, this would not have much helped his defence, especially if he was an engineer. The comments on the seven arguments against the personal responsibility of engineers have shown that each of the arguments is flawed in a serious manner. This was also Davis s conclusion. 

There is a reason why J might have had a weak sense of personhood and a weak sense of his ability to make practical and rational judgements. He lived in a society in which the importance of dutiful fulfilment of role was greatly emphasised and in 

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The Lucas Plan arose from a social setting, the trade union movement, which promoted imaginative ethical discourse. The events at Lucas Aerospace have two important lessons for the acceptance of ethical responsibility by engineers ... 

Ways in which the acceptance and expression of the ethical nature of engineering can be promoted will be considered the acceptance of personal responsibility and participation in supporting social structures and convincing others through human rights approaches and the elucidation of engineering... 

Many individuals have identified additional characteristics and responsibilities of a professional. For instance, Abraham Flexner first idenhfied the attributes of a profession in 1915, on which Isidor Thorner elaborated in 1942 (Buerki and Vottero, 1996). One of the attributes identified by Flexner and Thorner is that the profession provides a relahvely specific funchon that its practitioners depend on for their livelihood and social status. Professionals perform the necessary functions for society that society cannot provide for itself. In return for this service, society grants professionals special privileges, such as internal control and autonomy in decision making within their realms of experhse. In accepting this responsibility, professionals generally rely on a code of ethics (see Appendix A for the Code of Ethics for Pharma-... 

The content of this Guide is addressed to the manufacturers of ethical and proprietary medicines. The Guide has, however, no legal standing. The responsibility for GMP lies with the individual company to comply with Act 101 of 1965 as amended and to satisfy the Medicines Control Council during plant inspections. Nevertheless, companies may impose stricter in-house standards. Alternative measures capable of achieving the requirements are also acceptable. 

However, a fuller account of the ethical challenges and ethical opportunities of engineering needs also to consider why and how desirable actions should be accomplished. Such considerations are especially important if there is to be real innovation in the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility by engineers. For example, it is not uncommon for an engineer s work to affect primarily people who are distant in place and/or distant in time from where the work is conceived and planned, far from the place where engineered artefacts are constructed, and even far from the place where completed engineered artefacts are located. An... 

This book aims to address the greatest challenge to contemporary engineers can the great technical innovation of engineering be matched by a corresponding innovation in the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility This challenge will be addressed in four ways ... 

Future prospects for the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility will... 

Future Perspectives The final chapter will be concerned with the future prospects for increasing the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility by engineers, particularly in an extended time frame. Each of the themes of the preceding chapters will be addressed followed by consideration of some underlying issues. The key suggestions will include ... 

Nevertheless, engineers are subjected to pressures in their professional life that can make this ethical task difficult. It is therefore of benefit if engineers participate in what was described in Chap. 1 as a base community—a community in which ethical discourse is promoted and in which generous ethical action is stimulated. The present chapter will consider two examples of such base communities trade unions and faith communities. Specific cases will be described to show that such base communities can greatly enhance innovation in the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility in engineering. 

EDgineers who wish to promote imaginative innovation in the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility in their profession need to convince others, especially their fellow engineers and decision makers, of the validity and practicality of their ethical vision. The preceding chapter showed how participation in base communities, such as trade unions and faith communities, can promote innovative ethical discourse and generous ethical action. Such participation might be termed a bottom-up approach. 

Risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty are inherendy cross disciplinary. Risk is primarily concerned with measuring the probability and severity of potentially negative outcomes. Risk is a scientific concept that can be qualitative or quantitative or both. By contrast, decision making, which is about the acceptability of risk, has political, ethical, and personal dimensions (Lowrance, 1976). Some will argue that risk is primarily subjective, that the notion of risk is a response to the human need to cope with uncertainty and that we develop models whose structures and uses are riddled with subjective judgments (Slovic, 1999). We must acknowledge that all models have an element of subjectivity but the key difference between the scientific and subjective views of risk is the extent of this subjectivity. For the purposes of this paper, I... 

The more classical approach to assess the presence of marine biotoxins in seafood is the in vivo mouse bioassay. It is based on the administration of suspicious extracted shellfish samples to mice, the evaluation of the lethal dose and the toxicity calculation according to reference dose response curves, established with reference material. It provides an indication about the overall toxicity of the sample, as it is not able to differentiate among individual toxins. This is a laborious and time-consuming procedure the accuracy is poor, it is nonspecific and generally not acceptably robust. Moreover, the mouse bioassay suffers from ethical implications and it is in conflict with the EU Directive 86/609 on the Protection of Laboratory Animals. Despite the drawbacks, this bioassay is still the method of reference for almost all types of marine toxins, and is the official method for PSP toxins. 

However, if the use of a placebo is impractical, or inappropriate for ethical or technical reasons, a multiple fixed-dose study without a placebo arm may be an acceptable option. This approach involves comparison of responses to a range of doses of the test drug in comparison with a standard compound. When significant differences between treatment groups are observed, some positive conclusions regarding efficacy can be derived from the data. However, a multiple fixed-dose study design also has some disadvantages ... 

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