Mitch, the buying and selling of body parts continues to turn my stomach. Life is sacred and God-given and I am saddened that fewer and fewer people are willing to respect its origin and meaning. Count me out, whether it’s an effort to buy and sell people and/or their body parts, experiment on innocent embryos, or set arbitrary standards for an acceptable level of “quality of life” among the sick and disabled.
As for the woman profiled in Newsweek, it’s hard not to notice the irony — a woman who devotes her life to exposing unethical behavior in the medical profession has no problem pushing aside the ethics of her own field.
From the story:
Scheper-Hughes acknowledges that in gathering these anecdotes she has frequently bumped up against the ethical boundaries of her own profession. While UC Berkeley (which funds most of her work) granted special permission for her to go undercover, she still takes heat from colleagues: misrepresenting oneself to research subjects violates a cardinal rule of academic research. “I expect my methods to be met with criticism,” she says. “But being an anthropologist should not mean being a bystander to crimes against the vulnerable.”
