Second research

The dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, August 1945.

In August 1945 President Harry S. Truman took the decision to drop an atom bomb on Japan. On August 6, Hiroshima was hit, followed by Nagasaki on August 9.

Many people then and since have criticised the use of such a drastic measure which killed thousands of non-combatant men, women & children. The destruction was on an unparalleled scale and the first, and still only, time in history that nuclear weapons have been used in war. Many would argue that the killing of so many civilians was unjustified, even barbaric, that the war was effectively won and it was just a matter of time before the Japanese surrendered. Was the US guilty of overkill (compare the criticism that allied 1,000 bomber raids on German cities had caused needless loss of civilian lives)?

That it was a drastic and awful act cannot be denied. However, there is a moral case which can be made out in favour of President Truman. First, the Japanese were fully prepared to fight to the last man and US casualties were very high. Capturing Japanese-occupied Pacific islands, as in the bloody battles of Okinawa & Iwo Jima, was very costly in terms of US casualties. In addition, the Japanese were prepared to use desperate, suicidal tactics to defend their homeland, e.g. the kamikaze (divine wind) air attacks on US naval vessels. Second, a full-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland would have resulted in enormous casualties on both sides. Nobody can say how many US servicemen would have been killed but conservative estimates suggest at least half a million. The US president would have argued that his first duty was to minimise US casualties. Whatever the total would have been, the deaths, on both sides, would surely have been well in excess if 1 million. So it could be argued that, by ending the war quickly, Truman saved countless lives. It is worth remembering that even after Nagasaki, the Japanese refused to formally surrender for fully 6 days.

Mandatory drug testing

The majority of employers have adopted mandatory random drug testing on their employees, arguing that the enormous damage caused by the pervasive use of drugs in our society carries over into the workplace. Typically the tests involve taking urine or blood samples under close observation, thereby raising questions about personal privacy as well as privacy issues regarding drug use away from the workplace that is revealed by the tests. 

Present & defend your view concerning mandatory drug tests at the workplace.

In your answer, take account of the argument that, except where safety is a clear & present danger, as in the work of pilots, police & the military, such tests are unjustified. Employers have a right to the level of performance for which they pay employees, a level typically  specified in contracts & job descriptions. When a particular employee fails to meet that level of performance, then employers will take appropriate disciplinary action based on observable behaviour. Either way, it is employee performance that is relevant in evaluating employees, not drug use per se.

What do you think?

Mike W. Martin & Roland Schinzinger, Introduction to Engineering Ethics, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, Noew York, 2010, p. 156

Ethical behaviour?

Who owns your knowledge?

Ken is a process engineer for Stardust Chemical Corp., and he has signed a secrecy agreement with the firm that prohibits his divulging information that the company considers proprietary.

Stardust has developed an adaptation of a standard piece of equipment that makes it highly efficient for cooling a viscous plastics slurry. (Stardust decides not to patent the idea but to keep it as a trade secret.)

Eventually, Ken leaves Stardust and goes to work for a candy-processing company that is not in any way in competition. He soon realises that a modification similar to Stardust's trade secret could be applied to a different machine used for cooling fudge and, at once, has the change made.

Has Ken acted unethically?

Mike W. Martin & Roland Schinzinger, Introduction to Engineering Ethics, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, Noew York, 2010, p. 156

Case Study 1

2013 Savar building collapse

On 24 April 2013 an 8-storey commercial building collapsed in Savar, a sub-district of the Greater Dhaka area, the capital of Bangladesh. Casualties: 1,129 dead, 2,515 injured. It has been called the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern human history.

The building contained clothing factories, a bank, apartments a& several other shops. The shops & the bank on the lower floors immediately closed after cracks were discovered in the building. Warnings to avoid using the building after cracks appeared the day before were ignored. Garment  workers were ordered to return & the building collapsed during the morning rush-hour.

Ethical issues:

a)     Engineering: The upper floors were built without permission. The building was not strong enough to withstand the weight & vibration of heavy machinery.

b)    Administrative: the upper storeys were built without a permit. How then was the building able to go ahead.

c)     Political: the building, Rana Plaza, was owned by Sohel Rana, apparently  a leading member of the Jubo League, the youth wing of the ruling Awami League political party.

d)    Employers: the garment workers were ordered back into an unsafe building by employers keen to maximize production & profit. Some workers were threatened with loss of a month’s pay if they refused. Further investigation revealed also the low pay & poor working conditions inside the garment factories.

e)    Building & factory inspectors: were they guilty of negligence for renewing the licenses of garment factories in the building that collapsed?

f)      International brands/companies: the garment factories produced clothing for brands such as Benetton, Mango, Primark & Walmart. Do these companies have an ethical responsibility to ensure that their goods are produced in safe factories where workers’ rights are respected? What of corporate social responsibility across global supply chains?

The day after the collapse, the Dhaka city development authority filed a case against the owners of the building & the 5 garment factories operating inside it. Sohel Rana, the owner, was arrested  4 days after the collapse on the Indo-Bangladeshi border.

Human rights

The American Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration was largely the work of Thomas Jefferson, who later became the 3rd President of the United States. It is really the basis of what we call rights ethics.
This basically rests on the view that all human beings have human rights. Human rights are not legal rights. They are universal and so democratic. They fit in with what Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address (November 1864) described as 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'.
Human rights rely on the belief that other people have a duty to respect our rights.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" That was the first sentence of Rousseau's "The Social Contract."

This was the concept of ‘the noble savage’.

Thomas Hobbes:

"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Design, production & ethical issues

Aluminium cans

Approximately 1 billion are produced in the USA each year. The first can was designed in 1958 by Kaiser Aluminium. This metal proved ideal as it was a lightweight, flexible material that allowed manufacturing of the bottom & sides of the can from a single sheet, leaving the top to be added after the can was filled.

The first cans were opened with a separate opener but this was inconvenient so Ermal Fraze designed a small lever attached to the can which was removed as the can was opened.

The design was workable but after a while it created an ethical dilemma:

 

So in 1976 Daniel F. Cudzik invented a simple, stay-attached opener of the sort familiar today.

As improvements were made in the design & production of aluminium cans, various  ethical problems arose concerning:

a.      Human safety:

b.     Environmental pollution:

c.      Convenience:

d.     Money:

Ethical issues

Ethics is about morality; it involves right and wrong but there are many grey areas.

I don't think that because an issue is  difficult a moral judgement should be avoided.

I trivial matters such as expressing an opinion on your wife's new hat it may be advisable to recourse to white lies, whether as a matter of self-preservation or to avoid  hurting feelings unnecessarily. White lies can be a way of applying a sort of social grease which allows people to rub along together more easily.

On more serious matters. I would also take a clear stand. President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, could not have been easy, especially as the result was a massive loss of civilian life.Truman would have preferred to avoid this but he saw that a full-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland would have resulted in a loss of life, both Japanese and American, on an even more massive scale. As Commander-in-Chief of the US armed forces he saw it as his duty to minimise US casualties and end the war as quickly as possible.
However difficult, he faced up to the challenge and made a clear decision.