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fandomhigh2007-08-17 05:02 pm
idontlooktired.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2007-08-17 05:02 pm
Applied Ethics A & B: Fourth Period [17.08]
Harriet had sent out a handwavy email, telling the students that the two classes would once again be combined. Once everyone had arrived, she smiled and stood up. "We'll be together again next week, and since we'll be fairly busy, I thought we'd have an easy day today. So I'm going to tell you a story.
In a small town, in a country with no public health system, a man was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save him, a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what it cost him to make the drug. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
The sick woman's wife, Joan, went to everyone she knew to borrow the money, but she could only get together about $1,000, which is half of what it costs. She told the druggist that her husband was dying and asked him to sell it a lower price or let her pay it later.
But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Joan got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for her husband.*
Now, that's the story. It's a rather unfortunate situation, that, thankfully, never happened, but it does raise some interesting issues." She passed around some questions--
(1) Should Joan have done that? Was it actually wrong or right? Why?
(2) Is it a wife's duty to steal the drug if she can get it no other way? Would a good wife do it?
(3) Did the druggist have the right to charge that much when there was no law actually setting a limit to the price? Why?
(4) If you were Joan, what would you have done?
(5) If you were the druggist, would you have sold the drug for half-price?
--then returned to sit behind her desk. "I'd like you to answer those, either individually or you can pair up and discuss them. Next week is our last week, and we'll be taking what we've learned and putting it into practice. I hope you'll enjoy it."
[*This scenario was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist who studies moral development. See his The Philosophy of Moral Development (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), although I swapped the sexes around.]
[OOC: Just a simple class this week, as I'm AFK much of the day, and not much explanation needed, I think...and I can't believe I just used a footnote.]
[ETA: Now with mistakes fixed. *facepalm* Thank you to the sharp eyed person who pointed them out. Sorry about that.]
In a small town, in a country with no public health system, a man was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save him, a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what it cost him to make the drug. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
The sick woman's wife, Joan, went to everyone she knew to borrow the money, but she could only get together about $1,000, which is half of what it costs. She told the druggist that her husband was dying and asked him to sell it a lower price or let her pay it later.
But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Joan got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for her husband.*
Now, that's the story. It's a rather unfortunate situation, that, thankfully, never happened, but it does raise some interesting issues." She passed around some questions--
(1) Should Joan have done that? Was it actually wrong or right? Why?
(2) Is it a wife's duty to steal the drug if she can get it no other way? Would a good wife do it?
(3) Did the druggist have the right to charge that much when there was no law actually setting a limit to the price? Why?
(4) If you were Joan, what would you have done?
(5) If you were the druggist, would you have sold the drug for half-price?
--then returned to sit behind her desk. "I'd like you to answer those, either individually or you can pair up and discuss them. Next week is our last week, and we'll be taking what we've learned and putting it into practice. I hope you'll enjoy it."
[*This scenario was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist who studies moral development. See his The Philosophy of Moral Development (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), although I swapped the sexes around.]
[OOC: Just a simple class this week, as I'm AFK much of the day, and not much explanation needed, I think...and I can't believe I just used a footnote.]
[ETA: Now with mistakes fixed. *facepalm* Thank you to the sharp eyed person who pointed them out. Sorry about that.]
Re: Talk to Harriet