Censorship and Access to Information
While there is much debate about censorship, there is little work in the philosophical literature on the concept itself. In this chapter I try to fill in this gap by providing a definition of censorship. I propose that censorship is "restricting or limiting access to an expression, portion of an expression, or category of expression, which has been made public by its author, based on the belief that it will be a bad thing if people access the content of that expression." With this definition in hand, I consider the sorts of justifications given for censorship and canvass the arguments against censorship.
Vulnerable populations and morally tainted experiments.
This article addresses the dilemma facing an editor when he or she has to decide whether or not to publish a manuscript that describes unethical research. I will explore three options the editor may follow: a) publish the unethical research; b) publish it with an explicit condemnation of the methods used; c) reject the article on moral grounds. I will consider the importance of deterring unethical research, why the deterrence argument has been overlooked and the relevance it has in developing countries which seem to be more exposed to morally tainted experiments. I will suggest a combined policy. For cases in which the ethical problems are serious -- where basic human rights are not respected, where consent has been given without complete or proper information or voluntary participation by subjects, or where deceit has been practised -- I would support the strong policy of rejecting the article on moral grounds. For dubious cases, where the risk assessment can be doubted or where there are suspicions of ethical problems, I argue for a policy under which the article is published along with a serious discussion of the ethical problems suspected, allowing a rebuttal by the authors. In this way, while maintaining a strong deterrent policy, we recognize that sometimes it is not so clear if a research project was unethical, and only in such cases (where the ethical problems are dubious), the article may be published with an editorial.
Medicalized killing in Auschwitz.
Since late 1977 I have been conducting a psychological study of medical behavior in Auschwitz, and of Nazi doctors in general. I have been especially interested in the relationship of doctors, SS doctors in particular, to the killing process--in the transformation from healer to killer. I am concerned with the importance of the medicalized pattern for the overall Nazi project of mass murder and have therefore tried to examine the interaction of biomedical ideology, political ideology, and individual behavior. Finally, the work raises questions of more general significance: for doctors and medicine elsewhere; for scientists, other professionals, and institutions of all kinds; for approaches to "triage" and control over life and death; and for our understanding of human nature and human values. After describing how I did the study, I will discuss what I call the Nazi "biomedical vision" and its relationship to the killing of mental patients as well as to Auschwitz. Next I will suggest features of the Auschwitz atmosphere, particularly in regard to the psychological factors, or mechanisms, that enabled the Nazi doctors to do what they did. Finally, I will turn very briefly to the more general problems raised by the study.