Debating the Ethics of Real Life

Dartmouth placed twelfth out of 14 in the Third Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. That doesn't mean Dartmouth students are less ethical than the competition. "It's hard for anyone to answer completely unethically," says Kevin Walsh '98, a member of the four-person team. Each team gets the questions in advance, then are judged by how well they formulate answers.

"Moral reasoning is not supposed to be your gut reaction," explains philosophy professor Bernard Gert, who has served as a judge in previous years. "It is supposed to be a well thought out response."

This year's questions were taken from real-life dilemmas in medicine, pornography, and plagiarism. One question cast the team as a physician with a terminally ill adult patient. Both the physician and the patient believe that the patient will die shortly without medical intervention. The patient, articulate and lucid, says life with the tube feeding is unendurable, and asks that the treatment be stopped. The patient's closest relatives are opposed to the request. Should the doctor follow the patient's orders?

After first deciding about moral rules or ideals (such as don't kill), the team cut to the chase. "What's important here is what the patient wants," said Walsh. "It isn't a matter of assisted suicide, just a cessation of treatment. The opinions of his family are not directly relevant. vant. As long as it is clear that the patient made up his own mind, there's no compelling reason to override his refusal."

How would Brendan O'Neill '72, left, fare against Ambrose Garcia '97?