the Soviet legacy. Glasnost and perestroika have also encouraged a more vivid
awareness and disclosure of Soviet history. So, the war and the increased awareness
and acknowledgement of abuses in Soviet history intensify the fear of future abuses.12
There is a concern that the weak, old, and dying could again be treated as expendable.
This approach to human life (as highly expendable) is stringently avoided if the value of
life is held to be infinite.
2-4.
ETHICAL VALUES CAN CHANGE OVER TIME
a. Changing Views on Euthanasia in the United States. Henk Rigter,
Executive Director of the Health Council of the Netherlands says, "Five years ago,
[1984] every established medical organization in the world condemned the Netherlands
for our stand on euthanasia--our Nazi policies, and they called them. Today Britain,
Canada, the United States, and others are talking seriously about whether the need
exists for it in their own medical systems..."13
b. Changing Views on the Right to Privacy. An example from the world of
journalistic ethics will show how ethics can evolve. Years ago, journalists did not
expose the private lives of public officials. It was considered unethical to pry into their
private lives. Therefore, in the '60s, President Kennedy's womanizing was kept out of
the press. Now, with the publication of biographies and articles on the subject, we learn
that Kennedy had numerous romantic liaisons during his White House years. (This
information is documented in Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) records of his
whereabouts, kept as part of standard security procedures.) 14
(1) If this behavior had come out in the '60s, it would have seriously
damaged President Kennedy's political career. But the prevailing ethic at that time was
that the morality of the public figure and the private individual were separate, and that
public figures had a right to privacy.
(2) Compare this with today's prevailing ethic. Journalists now have a field
day exposing the personal misconduct of public figures. Why? It is because Americans
now believe that the private figure and the public figure cannot be judged independently
from one another, that one's unethical behavior in private life will inevitably contaminate
the conduct of one's public business.
2-5.
PERSONAL ETHICS CAN AFFECT PROFESSIONAL OR SOCIETAL ETHICS
OVER TIME
a. The Debate Over the "Debbie Letter." If you ask physicians informally in
the US, you will find that some hold euthanasia to be justified, in certain cases. In
January 1988, The Journal of the American Medical Association printed its now
notorious letter, "It's Over Debbie." In it, an anonymous physician-in-training claims to
have given a lethal injection of morphine to a 20-year-old woman dying of ovarian
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