Responsible Conduct in Research
So last week was “Bioethics” week, and though the lectures were interesting, I left the week with the same opinions about bioethics that I’ve always had: that you can’t teach people to be ethical (past a certain point). I mean, if you’re an ethical researcher, you’re not going to make up data. If you’re unethical, as one of my grad student mentor says, you’re just getting even more ideas from these seminars. 
Though my opinions haven’t changed, I still think the seminars were really thought provoking. I mean, there are some ethical questions that simply can’t be answered. It’s situations like those that really help put ethics into perspective. I also think that both the lecturers (both McClay and Denny) did a good job of characterizing what ethics in medicine and research actually is.
We also watched a movie (And the Band Played On, 1993) about the AIDS situation in the 1980s and the ethical questions surrounding the whole case. Basically, it comes down to what the cost of saving a life is, whether that’s measured in prominence (Dr. Robert Gallo) or money (corporations, etc.). It could be argued that sometimes a life isn’t worth saving, given the costs. Is it responsible to allow one person to die, in order to save 2 more?
Ethics is an interesting issue, and it definitely plays a part in our everyday decisions, in both our professional and personal lives. Still, I strongly believe that ethics isn’t something that can be acquired. Once you’ve been trained to be (un)ethical, you can’t really change. That’s just my opinion. Any comments?