Semio- or Semi-ethics: Semioethics for Animals?

By Matthew Cuffaro 

Semiotics (the study of signification) has a deep tradition for universalism. A deeper tradition in thought is the concession that humans hold a special place among lifeforms as “conscious,” and semiotics is no different. In Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective, the authors Petrilli and Ponzio argue that if humans are conscious of the significance of things, then they are responsible for their signification, curtailing polluting or destructive cultures and practices in favor of “planetary semiosis [process of signification]” (the analogue of the “Spaceship Earth” idea you might have heard about). Petrilli and Ponzio define semioethics for us:

“…1) invent a plurality of possible worlds; 2) to reflect upon signs; 3) to be responsible for one’s actions; 4) to gain conscious awareness of our inevitable involvement, of each and every one of us, in the sign network of life over the entire planet; and 5) to be responsibly involved in the destiny of planetary semiosis.” (3-4, Petrilli and Ponzio).

How does semioethics look in our day? For example, if I say “forest”, I denote the complex of trees that scaffold a rich ecosystem, but I can also expect to connote something in the listener that is met with a response. There might be stress: the listener that is familiar with the films Silent Running, Medicine Man, and Avatar is familiar with the disappearing forest—something invaluable, yet mercilessly exploited, yet something distant. There might be interest: the listener may be a logger who equates the forest with their income, or an ecologist who sees the forest as a complex of interdependent lifeforms. There may be religious or existential feelings to the listener that knows the forest to possess supernal power or sagacity, healing benefits, or the basis of their livelihood. Further still, the Puritan coming to the New World sees the endless forests as ripe with resource to be drawn from systematically through their labors. Through cultural and scientific influence, our example paints the forest as something once a symbol of innumerable economic plenty to something of indispensable ecological value. If we follow these trends, we imagine the forest as a “life support system;” something of personal and functional value, Thus, the forest is represented in a way that alters its significance to the people.

Now I believe Petrilli & Ponzio’s project is bioethical because they are both critical and imperative towards environmental practice, but their focus on the human is uncharacteristic of the contemporary trends in semiotics to extend its essentially pre-linguistic domain to lifeforms. If biosemiotics wishes to construct a basis for extending signification to (all) lifeforms, then can we depart from Petrilli and Ponzio to say that animals are in some way semioethical? Prima facie, this is absurd, because the hare does not have the logging companies, the socioreligious campaigns, NIMBY sieges on civic projects, etc.; what the hare has is grassy flatlands, abundant cellulose, and other “critters” that are supposedly significant to it.

The example I like is the “fable” of the Fox and the Hare. In the introduction to Jesper Hoffmeyer’s Biosemiotics (of which I paraphrase): A hare in a field becomes aware of a fox stalking close by. The hare stands up on its hind legs and the fox, seeing this, aborts its foxing and trots away. An ethologist reporting on this claims that the hare stood as a gesture to the fox that chasing it would be a waste of everyone’s time and energy. The meat behind this claim is that it does not argue that the behavior is instinctual. After all, brains are calorically very expensive so the ethologist believes that the hare’s act is an example of signification, or that standing up is a gesture invented by the hare to communicate.

What is possibly semioethical in this account of the fox and the hare is that the creative status of the hare’s gesture leads us to ask the status of consciousness of the hare, which leaves us with open questions. If the hare is communicating something to the fox, then does it recognize the fox as something that can respond or react to the gesture? Do animals of supposed creativity understand their intercommunicants as “animated threats” (how the heck does the fox appear to the hare)? If so, then can we attribute a variant of the semioethical capacity we attribute ourselves to an animal that is cognizant of the capacities of other animals?

Why is this semioethical account useful to us?

If we adopt a biosemiotic strategy of extending semiotics “globally,” then the ideal common system for describing things semiotically allow us to ‘approximate’ ourselves beyond scientific prejudice of an unchecked human exceptionalism—the notion that all “human” qualities are exclusively “human.” If we form through our inquiries the grounds for suspecting the rudiments of consciousness in other lifeforms, then we not only invite scientific interest to explore and validate these suspicions but confirm the deep intuitions of those who advocate for ecocentric (more like un-anthropocentric) thought.

Notwithstanding, it is problematic already for us in the political arena to attribute animal rights in the very least, but if we can extend an ethical basis to animals first, then we have the philosophical freight to carry these arguments further. We may look at the vegetarian pamphlets thobbing the horrors of factory farms through the animal anecdotes and praising soy diets, perhaps with Ryan Gosling’s testament in there for good measure (I’m looking at you, Vegan Outreach.). In these pamphlets chickens named Kevin, pigs named Emily, and fishes named Calvin are celebrated for their ability to solve puzzles, count, communicate and especially escape, yet the semioethical project underlying this is that these animals are worth something by their apparent human attributes. We should treat these arguments by not evaluating the animals by their humanness, but by the attributes that allows us to understand the intentions of the animal (or plant), at the threat that we continue to think “humanness” is superior to “animalness” and is a standard beyond the niche of our circumstances. In a more fundamental way, the semioethical problem I try to convey would, if realized, mark a step in the scholarly imagination: those who could peer into the eyes of the rabbit peering into the fox, or to surject themselves onto the mind of the plant.

Matthew Cuffaro is a philosophy student at the University of South Florida with a concentration in the philosophies of mathematics and religious studies. 

Congratulations Finalists

Thank you to every person who submitted to the Daniel Callahan Young Writers Prize! There were nearly thirty excellent submissions and the five finalists have been chosen. 

Their essays will be read by the following panel of judges:

Daniel Callahan, PhD-- As President Emeritus and co-founder of The Hastings Center, Callahan helped shape the bioethics field. He has written over 47 books and has had hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and op-eds. 

Michael K. Gusmano, PhD-- Gusmano is a a political scientist who holds adjunct appointments at Columbia University and Yale University and is a Research Scholar at The Hastings Center. He has published widely in the areas of health policy, aging, and comparative welfare state analysis.

Laura Haupt, M.A.-- Haupt is the Managing Editor for two peer-reviewed bioethics journals, the Hastings Center Report and IRB: Ethics and Human Research. Her background is in English literature and she has helped edit a number of special reports for the Hastings Center Report, including LGBT Bioethic: Visibility, Disparities, and Dialogue. 

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Daniel Callahan Young Writer's Prize Finalists

Avigile Baehr, MD/MBE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania

"DNR Ebola: Is There a Professional Obligation to Provide Treatment?"

Michelle Bayefsky, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, NIH Department of Bioethics

"Uterine Transplant: Where, If Anywhere, Should We Draw the Line?"

Rachel Conrad, MD Candidate, Baylor College of Medicine

"The Ethical Crisis in Medical Training"

Michael DiStefano, Research Assistant, University of Pennsylvania

"Religious Values and Refusal of Highly Effective Life-Saving Treatment by Minors"

Tim Rubbelke, PhD Candidate, St. Louis University Center for Healthcare Ethics

"The Paradox of Government Vaccine Mandates" 

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We anticipate an announcement of the winner in mid-January. Thank you again to all the participants, we look forward to posting some of the other compelling submissions to this blog in the coming months. There were far more fantastic entries than could be chosen. 

The Daniel Callahan Young Writer's Prize

Prize Summary 
This post is pleased to announce a new award, The Daniel Callahan Young Writer's Prize, sponsored by Daniel Callahan. Submissions will take the form of essays on a bioethics topic that are written as blog posts, designed for this blog, Bioethx Under 25. From all submissions, a group of finalists will be chosen and then an expert panel of bioethicists, including Daniel Callahan, will read the finalists' essays and award one prize amounting to $500. 

All submissions will be considered for publication on the blog and eligibility to be a finalist or receive the prize is dependent on willingness to edit and revise the essay for publication. Submissions will be judged anonymously. Please see guidelines below for further information. 

Prize Submission Guidelines

- Essays must be 500-1000 words and original submissions to Bioethx Under 25 i.e. never posted before on the blog. 

- Essays must conform to all other submission guidelines for the Bioethx Under 25 blog and thus, be clearly related to bioethics and be written in an accessible manner. Please refer to the blog's About Page for more information. 

- Essays will be accepted from September 10th, 2014 to November 15th, 2014. 

- Any writer who is also a student in high school, college, or a graduate program is eligible to submit. Any writer who is not a student is eligible so long as he/she has not completed a PhD and/or worked more than 5 years in the bioethics field with a terminal degree (e.g. JD or MD). So long as the other guidelines have been met there is no age limitation or requirement for submission. 

- Writers are not eligible if they currently or have previously worked full time for The Hastings Center or Daniel Callahan. Anyone affiliated with Bioethx Under 25 in an editing capacity is also ineligible. 

- To submit, please email bioethicsunder25@gmail.com with your essay attached in word format. In the body of the email please indicate that you are submitting for The Daniel Callahan Young Writers Prize and include your name, phone number, email address, current occupation and place of occupation (if a student, then your school, potential degree, and expected graduation year), and your highest degree attained with the school and year. 

- For any questions please email bioethicsunder25@gmail.com or comment below. 

About Daniel Callahan

Daniel Callahan is Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of The Hastings Center. He was its cofounder in 1969 and served as Director and President between 1969 and 1996.  Over the years his research and writing have covered a wide range of issues, from the beginning until the end of life. In recent years, he has focused his attention on ethics and health policy.

He has served as a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a PhD in philosophy from Harvard. He has honorary degrees from the Charles University, Prague, the Czech Republic, the University of Colorado, Williams College, Oregon State University, the State University of New York and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Callahan is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences; a former member of the Director’s Advisory Committee, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and of the Advisory Council, Office of Scientific Responsibility, Department of Health and Human Services. He won the 1996 Freedom and Scientific Responsibility Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the editor or author of 47 books. 

Inflicting Harm to Prevent Harm: Creating Policy for Vulnerable Populations Seeking Asylum in Australia

By Amy Louise Constable 

Australian asylum seeker policy is currently riddled with a series of ethical conundrums. Being party to the 1951 United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Australia is obligated to accept those claiming asylum from persecution, violence or fear either who enter into Australian territory and respect the principle of non-refoulment and not send refugees to an environment from which they are fleeing. Detention of asylum seekers has been a bipartisan policy in Australia since 1992 when Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating introduced off-shore detention, with bipartisan support. The zealous implementation of increasingly cruel offshore detention policies has been described as a ‘race to the bottom’.

The 2013 Australian federal government was characterized by the promise of increasingly ‘tough’ and cruel policies seeking to deter asylum seekers entering Australia by boat and protect Australian sovereignty by both major parties. The conservative Government initiated Operation Sovereign Borders, an extension of existing asylum seeker policy. Operation Sovereign Borders is an extension of pre-existing off-shore processing policy which instructs that all asylum seekers arriving by boat, ‘illegal maritime arrivals’, are to be processed off-shore at Manus Island, a northern territory of Papua New Guinea (PNG), and at Nauru with “no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees”. This policy has been justified by both major Australia political parties as preventing further deaths at sea. Between 2008-2013 approximately 1200 people died at sea trying to come to Australia by boat. This begs the question, what is the ethically acceptable cost of preventing death at sea?

The ‘tough’ new stance on asylum seekers has recently inflamed debate surrounding exactly what the ethical, medical and legal responsibility of the Australian Government to the asylum seekers on Australian territory and on international territory in Australian Government funded detention centers is. The logic for this policy is justified by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection as stopping deaths at sea and protecting national security. Consequently, this policy sees the compulsory detention of thousands of adults, minors and children, of whom 91% are declared to be refugees, with higher protection visa rates for specific ethnic groups (i.e., the Afghani’s receiving a protection visa being approximately 99.7%)

Operation Sovereign Borders dictates that all asylum seekers be transferred from Australian sovereign territory within 48 hours, as instructed by Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison. This rapid process involves all medicines, prostheses, and medical equipment being confiscated, and often not returned, and does not provide sufficient time for a comprehensive diagnosis of potential diseases. Consequently the process has seen several healthcare horrors:

--Potential exposure of asylum seekers to tuberculosis following a non-diagnosis while being processed on Christmas Island (remote north-western Australian territory).

--A 23 year old Iranian-Kurdish man dragged from a computer room and beaten to death by a G4S security employee.

--Detainees attacked with machetes and throats slashed during attacks by locally-hired security guards.

--A Rohingyan asylum seeker who was identified as having a ‘very high risk’ pregnancy was transferred to Nauru for the purpose of ‘setting an example’.

--a woman being told she should not ‘expect a lot’ of healthcare after miscarrying.

--An Iranian man lapsing into severe epilepsy following a refusal of access to confiscated epilepsy medication.

A 92 page letter from fifteen doctors working at the Christmas Island and Manus Island detention center has highlighted the inadequate resourcing of centers and the degradation of those seeking treatment. They have stated that they are being paid to compromise medical ethics and have explicitly stated that doctors are expected to participate in ‘unethical conduct and in gross departures from clinical standards’.

Issues of reciprocity have further confounded exactly what Australia’s obligations are to people fleeing their home countries. A particularly stark example of this is the employment of Afghan Hazāra, a persecuted ethnic minority in Afghanistan, as interpreters by the Australian Defense Forces during the NATO led military invasion in Afghanistan, many of whom have applied for asylum in Australia. Reports have surfaced that Afghani-Hazāra interpreters who have had their asylum application rejected have been killed by the Pashtun led Taliban due to their ethnic and religious difference to the Taliban and their assistance to the allied NATO forces. While this itself is an issue largely outside the scope of this short essay (what responsibility do we have to those who have offered us assistance?), it highlights the incredible complexity of ethical, moral and legal issues associated with formulating policy that may harm incredibly vulnerable or precarious populations.

These few specific issues among a sea of thousands of complaints and detailed reports by security contractors Serco of self-harm, sexual assault, hunger strikes and the transferal of unaccompanied minors to detention centers for indefinite prolonged periods. Transferal of minors into detention has been criticized for exposing children to distressing situations, children referring to themselves by their client number as opposed to their name (see 46.18-59.12 of attached video) report, confronting developmental delays due to lack of access to education and exposure to environments riddled with self-harm, sexual and physical assault. The ‘tough stance’ taken by the Government highlights the ethical fallacy of invoking a policy causing medical and psychological harm in the name of trying to deter people from taking a dangerous journey.

The ethical mess of Australian detention center medical administration is highlighted by a co-author of the 92 page letter to the Guardian and Minister Morrison says; “there will one day be a royal commission [the highest level of government-sanctioned inquiry in Australia] into what is taking place on Christmas Island. He suggested we document well.” Creation of policy for vulnerable populations is fraught with ethical difficulty and complexity, and is further confounded when the democratic processes, such as the 2013 Australian federal elections, indicate a seeming majority of the population support increased cruelty to vulnerable persons. Perhaps the easiest way to condense this ethically compromised ‘humanitarian’ policy is to ask: what is the cost of this policy? Is it justifiable to inflict harm onto those individuals in the aim of preventing harm to others?

Amy Constable is an Honours degree candidate at the Australian National University, and was a 2013 summer fellow of the Yale University Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Organ Donations: It is Time to “Opt-Out” of Our Current Policy

By: Michael DiBello

In bioethics today, there is a wide array of fiercely contested topics such as abortion, euthanasia and novel fertility treatments, which have made the front pages of newspapers around the globe. While these undoubtedly important issues demand a thorough dialogue, some equally important policy issues seem to slip under the radar. 

One of these issues is our policy for organ transplantation.

On average, approximately 18 U.S. residents die per day awaiting a transplant, totaling over 6,500 per year. Only about 45% of the adult U.S. population are registered as donors. Many lives could be saved and significantly enhanced if more people were registered as organ donors. The question becomes: how do we increase the donor pool in a fair, ethically responsible manner?

In the United States, individuals must opt-in to become a donor by checking a box on a driver’s license application or by signing up online. This “opt-in” system of organ donation is inadequate not only from an efficiency perspective, but from a moral perspective as well. Many countries have adopted an alternative system to the opt-in policy, where the default position for adults is set to being a donor, with an option to opt-out. This system is generally referred to as an opt-out policy. Countries with an opt-out style policy like France, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Portugal display donor consent rates of over 99%. Countries with an opt-in style policy like the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands and Denmark display rates drastically lower donor consent rates under 30%. 

Why is it exactly that people do not give consent to become an organ donor? One possible reason may be the immediate and intimidating nature of the decision for an individual. Organ transplantation may evoke images of dismemberment, drastic surgery and death, instilling apprehension and anxiety in the individual, resulting in a decision to not actively volunteer to become a donor. While the emotional responses regarding organ transplantation are understandable, they do not make the decision to decline becoming an organ donor morally correct. 

It intuitively seems fair that if one is willing to receive a transplant (I assume the vast majority of people are), then one should also be willing to donate their own organs, especially in the situation of scarcity involved in organ availability. This is exactly why it is the state’s responsibility to provide the guidance of an opt-out system. Part of the reason for the existence of the state is to encourage individual decisions which are beneficial to the overall public, especially when those decisions involve little to no significant sacrifice for the individual. The opt-out system donor pool would include all donors that currently actively choose to be donors under the opt-in system, those who would become donors with a little more consideration and/or state guidance and also those who are simply indifferent to what happens to their organs. This could likely mean a very significant increase in the donor pool with no coercion, injustice or unfairness done. 

 

What if an individual really does have strong feeling against being a donor? In the opt-out system one can imagine, they are entirely free opt-out without consequence. A possible mechanism for the action of opting out could involve checking a box on an application for a government ID. A whole separate debate may be necessary for the issue of automatically registering children as donors, as they may not possess a sufficient degree of autonomy to make a fully informed decision about organ donation. Should the default donor position apply to children, with the decision to opt-out left up to the parents? Should the default donor position simply not apply to children at all? These are difficult but important questions, especially considering the clear physical constraints of other children in need of organs.

One possible objection to the opt-out policy is that is a coercive state policy, since it defaults to an individual giving up something they may consider valuable (the right to an intact body after death). As mentioned previously, the opt-out policy still affords the individual this right. All that is required is simply more conscious consideration about exactly what they are doing.

Adding quality years to as many lives as possible is more important than the temporary preservation of the physical integrity of a corpse. This is the attitude necessary in order to be on track to a policy change. Our current organ donation system is failing, and an opt-out policy would bring about greater fairness in a society where increased access to healthcare is a goal that should be pursued to the highest possible degree. 

Mike graduated from Northeastern University in January 2014 with a major in biology and a minor in ethics. He is interested in a wide range of issues in bioethics and how they are applied in today's world.  

Thoughts on NUBC: Learning What It Means to "Do" Bioethics

By: Dr. Tiffany Cvrkel

A few weeks ago a group of my undergrad students and I returned from our very first National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference (NUBC). I thought I’d write down a few thoughts about our experiences, and (hopefully) make a case for why attending this conference is a uniquely worthwhile experience.

We have a pretty thriving group of undergraduate bioethicists at UCLA. Most are pre-med students who do independent research in bioethics as a compliment to their intensive lab work and hard science curriculum. They are a passionate (and inspiring!) bunch, and they are always looking for ways to connect with their peers at other institutions.

And that’s the story of how they – not me, their faculty mentor! – found out about NUBC. As they were browsing this “Bioethx Under 25” blog, they found a listing for a conference aimed especially at them. I got an email pitching a trip to Chicago.

It was fitting start. While faculty members are involved in the orchestration of NUBC, much of it is run by undergrads for undergrads. A few of my students decided to submit papers to the conference, and Jessica Kriksciun (one of our seniors) had her paper accepted. They also decided to form a Bioethics Bowl team and compete during the tournament. None of us had any idea what a “Bioethics Bowl” looked like, but it sounded like a decent way to spend a Saturday.

If you’ve never been to a NUBC before, you should know it is an odd marriage of two very different events. The first is the conference itself, run in a mostly traditional way -- paper presentations along with brief Q&As. The second is a tournament event called the “Bioethics Bowl,” where student teams compete by giving well developed/supported arguments and objections regarding bioethics cases. The team with the better arguments wins.

I’ll give you a few moments here to quip about competitive bioethics. Many of my colleagues found this whole set-up an endless source of hilarity. And to be honest, I was a little wary. Some of my colleagues were worried that this kind of thing just reinforces combative relationships between bioethicists – a problematic dynamic that already exists in some places of our discipline. It’s hard enough to work in a cross-discipline space. Shouldn’t we all be trying to get along, not score points against each other?

I had another, slightly different worry. When I paged through the cases that the Bioethics Bowl would be using, I noticed the “ripped from the headlines” format. But the fact that these are real cases involving real people adds an additional burden for our students. I am close with some of the ethicists who worked on one of the cases in this year’s packet. I saw first-hand the devastation and anguish that this case caused for everyone involved. I feared real people’s stories might be turned into nothing more than rhetoric-laden debate fodder, cheapened to score points.

I am not against debate as an intellectual exercise. I was on my school’s debate team as a student, and once upon a time, I coached it. But the goals of debate are not always to find the most subtle, respectful, and nuanced lines of reasoning. The people from these cases? They deserve nothing less.

And when the Bioethics Bowl came around, there was indeed some debate-style rhetoric and hyperbole. But happily, this was not the norm. Most of the teams we saw weren’t trying to be cut-throat in point scoring. They were trying to work through the issues in genuine and sincere ways. There was a lot of “we agree with our opponents on their position, but we’d like to raise an issue that might have been overlooked” kind of dialogue – the kind of dialogue that happens in professional ethics committee meetings. And with a few exceptions, my students left each round feeling like they both made new friends and got to practice articulating true, difficult positions.

But the Bioethics Bowl – by far – was not the highlight of the conference, which you would never know by looking at the attendance numbers. It quickly became clear that there are also two demographics at NUBC, the people who were there for the conference and the people who were there only for the Bioethics Bowl. And the vast majority of people fell into the second category.

This was such a shame. The conference part of the NUBC was amazing. Sitting around the breakfast table before a day of presentations, all of us huddled together, the following conversation happened. One of my students asked, “Um, Dr. Cvrkel? What kinds of questions should we ask the presenters? I’ve been to lots of conferences where I’m not really supposed to ask questions, and this is the first time I’ve been at a conference where I’m the intended audience! What does a good question look like?”

And that’s when we discussed the difference between being a student and being a colleague. We talked about the art of asking useful and supportive questions instead of “gotchas.” We talked about when follow-up questions are appropriate and when they’re not. We talked about how to approach someone to discuss related projects. We talked about how to do bioethics in the real world.

I teach two large lecture classes every quarter; that’s hundreds of students, multiple times a year. And while I try to teach each of my students some of the finer points of bioethics, the famous authors, the important arguments, I can never offer them the experience of doing bioethics with their peers. We always have a power differential in traditional learning environments, and this means students never get to practice wielding their knowledge as equals. But at NUBC, they present their ideas not as students looking for approval, but as scholars looking to advance an idea. And they sit in the audience not merely to learn, but to engage.

The NUBC has been the one environment where my students experienced what it is like to be bioethicists. And that’s not easy to teach. But of all the things I’ve tried to teach my students, I can’t think of any that are more valuable.

The folks at Loyola University of Chicago put on a wonderful conference, and though it was our first, it won’t be our last. We’ll be in Florida for NUBC 2015—you should join us.

Dr. Tiffany Cvrkel is a philosopher, bioethicist, and lecturer in UCLA’s Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology department. She is also the faculty adviser for UCLA’s Undergraduate Bioethics Club (aka: The Bioethics Brigade) and runs the UCLA Bioethics Lab, where students do advanced/independent bioethics research.