1/27/2017 1 Comment January 27th, 2017Blog 1
medium.freecodecamp.com/the-code-im-still-ashamed-of-e4c021dff55e# I believe that the author of this article has done no wrong, at least from an ethics point of view. The author seems to think that they are the one to blame, that the death of a person who took a powerful drug was somehow his fault. I do not think that this belief is based upon sound reasoning and the author has not taken any unethical actions. Both the programmer and the company are not at fault. The author seems to think that they were the one to tell the girl to take the medicine. A pharmaceutical company is not liable for someone taking a drug, even if it is marketed by that company, without consulting their doctor. For a medicine with such powerful side effects, one being increased suicidal thoughts, a prescription must be obtained from a doctor. There is not a reason for the quiz to be the point to target in this situation, if there is even a person to blame it would the the girl’s attending physician. There are innumerable variables which could have caused this situation to occur, the girl could have been suicidal before taking the drug, she could have been in an abusive situation and saw no way out, she could of had or developed a mental disorder even without taking the drug. In short, her death could have been completely unrelated to the drug but they are linked by whichever media outlet produced the story simply because one of the side effects of the drug in question is increased suicidal thoughts. The author cannot be blamed for creating an advertisement for a pharmaceutical company while working at a marketing solutions company. If the author applied their reasoning to other situations involving marketing then they would essentially be saying that people do not have free will after being subjected to marketing campaigns. The author appears to think marketing is tricking people into making decisions they did not want to make, if this is this case then there should be no marketing as any person will not be able to resist making choices they did not want to make. While the author may not have been at fault in this particular situation, the point raised by the author is a valid one. Due to the inevitable human interaction of the majority of software, a software programmer should be careful about what they develop. This caution should be employed by any person of course; but, as the author stated “we are often one of the last lines of defense against potentially dangerous and unethical practices.” There are many ethical dilemmas produced by any new technology and software has its own unique problem set that must be navigated in the days to come. The only way to ensure the best for humanity is to apply ethical reasoning to the actions we take each day.
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AuthorPearce : CS-SE student Archives
May 2017
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