Ethical Question

[Xar]

Let's replace chickenpox with AIDS and see if the logic remains the same.

Aren't stupid comments like "Wayfriend advocates spreading AIDS!" supposed to be in the Tank.

Replace chickenpox with common cold and the logic stays the same. For all the glaringly-obvious-if-you-don't-want-to-be-snide reasons.

Do you stay home everytime you have a cold to protect the world? Do you expect everyone else to?

Wayfriend, the common cold doesn't have a chance to provoke serious complications by itself, and/or birth defects in children whose mothers are infected with it when pregnant. Chickenpox does. The common cold is a nuisance, which you can get rid of in a few days; chickenpox can force you to stay home for a month, is much more annoying, and can literally leave you physically scarred for life. A child infected with a cold loses a week of school; a child infected with chickenpox loses a month or more. You can't compare the two, anymore than you can say that smallpox and chickenpox are of comparable magnitude.

If your wife were pregnant, got chickenpox because one of your co-workers has it and keeps coming to work every day, so you got it (although you display no symptoms because you already had it) and carried it to your wife, and your child were born with birth defects due to your wife's chickenpox, what would you say then? That it was your fault because you were the carrier? That it was your wife's fault for not having had chickenpox when she was a child? Or that it was the woman's fault, since you worked with her for weeks, 10 hours per day, while she was infectious, because she refused to go home and she's your boss, so you can't evade her?

[[Syl]]

As much as I like to root for the underdog and advocate personal rights, I gotta go with the 'send her home' crowd. You can't swim in the pool with an open sore, and you shouldn't force yourself on other peope in close quarters with a highly infectious disease. I mean, you can take antibiotics for a cold, you can get a flu shot, but the only way to be immune to chicken pox is to get it. Heh.

It's like in school, I always thought it was ridiculous to award people for good attendance. Either they're incredibly lucky, have superhuman immune systems, or have no regard for others' wellbeing (or even their own. is it really worth aggravating your illness to possibly save a point or two on homework or tests? Except in the case of my friend Stacy, who claimed that every time he stayed home from school, something bad happened to other people; the Challenger blew up the first time, some kids died in a car wreck the other).

[The Laughing Man]

I would say the singularly most effective tactic in this case is for everyone else to go home and refuse to come in until either she goes home or becomes non-contagious. A message to her, and her/your boss, not to mention a touch of unity. I would also consult with an attorney and just have him call the boss, maybe even his boss, or the Big Boss, but nothing more than call, just to send a strong message.....



it just occurred to me your local news may be interested in this angle? long shot, but worth a thought anyway....something like that, and even some of the others I mentioned have the potential of blowing up in your faces and/or having unintended consequences, but.......hows bads does youse wants its?

[dlbpharmd]

It's like in school, I always thought it was ridiculous to award people for good attendance.

Agreed.

[Xar]

I would say the singularly most effective tactic in this case is for everyone else to go home and refuse to come in until either she goes home or becomes non-contagious. A message to her, and her/your boss, not to mention a touch of unity. I would also consult with an attorney and just have him call the boss, maybe even his boss, or the Big Boss, but nothing more than call, just to send a strong message.....



it just occurred to me your local news may be interested in this angle? long shot, but worth a thought anyway....something like that, and even some of the others I mentioned have the potential of blowing up in your faces and/or having unintended consequences, but.......hows bads does youse wants its?

Well, given that I stopped working in that lab months ago...

The problem for everyone in there is that if they stop going to work, they risk getting fired. And if they complain too loudly, it's pretty much the same. She and her boss are a bit "trigger-happy" with firing people, if you get what I mean, and since the money they pay people with is from their own funds, AND it is very difficult for a biologist to prove how much you've been working, they wouldn't have too many problems firing people to begin with. But, possibly even worse, they do have a reputation in the university and even internationally, which means that if they wanted to, they might make it really difficult for you to find another job after getting fired. And, of course, many of the Ph.D. students wouldn't want to risk it, because they might find themselves out of a Ph.D. after having spent two or three years on it. What I find amazing is that even her boss is not taking (as far as I know) a less compromising stance and pressuring her into staying home; he also has two young children, and unless they both had the chickenpox already and he doesn't care, I'd think he wouldn't want them ill for Christmas. Although, since he's not too keen on the whole idea of Christmas, and since he's the kind of person who takes his little kids to visit the labs and see the mouse facilities in the weekends, it might simply be that he doesn't care too much about whether his kids get chickenpox now or in five years.

[The Laughing Man]

definitely a messed up situation Xar, especially ethically speaking....I'm not sure which disturbs me the most: this inconsiderate mentality that this woman and her boss exudes that may well cause innocent suffering, or the people who might really suffer from this, and what they didn't do to prevent it. I would not want to be that person in that situation, thats for sure.....

[wayfriend]

Wayfriend, the common cold doesn't have a chance to provoke serious complications by itself, and/or birth defects in children whose mothers are infected with it when pregnant. Chickenpox does.

I believe that the number of deaths caused by the common cold exceeds deaths due to chickenpox by several orders of magnitude. How many people die of pneumonia a year, a million? The common cold is more easily transmitted, and you don't develop immunity (in that it is constantly changing).

Heck, when you get in your car and drive, you endanger people.

When you cook something on a stove, you endanger people.

Heck, it looks like when you play on your Xbox, you endanger people.

Ethically (which many people here seem to confuse with being nice, being good for other people, or liking) these things are not "bad". Because there is some sort of very fuzzy line, on one side of which is the risks do not outweigh the benefits. Driving a car is okay; putting Draino in someones Coke is not okay; both can lead to deaths, although one is more probable than another.

The question in this case is, where on the fuzzy line is "going to work with the chicken pox"? Is it more like driving a car or more like putting Draino in their Coke?

You may put it over here, someone else may put it over there. Ethically, you need to allow people room to have different answers to the question, within reason.

Then there is the ethics of recognizing that the riskiness of coming to work with chickenpox needs to be mixed in with other factors -- as you have been discussing. There is the pressure of keeping ones job. There is the importance of the work being done, ones domestic situation, etc. [Edit to add] And there is also the person's awareness of the nature of chicken pox: you consider it just shy of Draino in Coke, but most people (right or wrong) consider it fairly benign and act accordingly. [/edit]

The benefit of the doubt is one of the most ethical imperitives that there is.

[balon!]

There's another aspect yet to have been considered. What is she and her team working on?

If they were on a close breakthrough to a-beat-all cure for cancer or AIDS or something like that, then I say go for it! Work with the pox for a few dyas, if that will make the difference

Otherwise, if you're building a new type of water-proof paint.....just go home for god's sake.

[The Laughing Man]

so who among us can say that after our child is born with defects, or a coworker dies, that keeping our job was more important? That anything could be more important than life itself?

[wayfriend]

That's totally unfare, Esmer. When you make the decision, the odds are millions to one of that happening. If it does happen, of course you feel bad. If you're XBox burns down your house, do you wonder if playing XBox was more important than having a roof over your head?

WebMD says chicken pox is contageous for one to three weeks.

So I counter-ask: Who here would/could take three weeks off of work just because their kid has chicken pox?

[Avatar]

An interesting discussion this has turned out to be. Personally, on common-sense grounds, I agree that she should not be at work unless she is not contaigious.

That said, on purely ethical grounds, does she have a responsibility to not put her co-workers at possible risk of infection...that's a lot tougher...

Although WayFriend makes some good points, I believe that we do have the responsibility of protecting others from harm or risk if we knowingly carry the possibility of increasing such risk.

At the very least, reasonable precautions should be taken to diminish that risk.

--A