ETHICS: FOUNDATIONS OF MORAL VALUATION
ACTIVITIES CHAPTER 8: SYNTHESIS: MAKING INFORMED DECISIONS (THE
MORAL AGENTS AND CONTEXT)
Directions: Please do the activities below.

1. Why we must engage thyself in ethical thoughts and decision-making? Explain briefly.
2. Kindly explain your thought about “Who one is”.

3. Give your opinion about the flora and fauna.
4. Explain the relationship between Religion and Ethics also Culture and Ethics.

5. What are the Filipino ways that you have known? Make a list and explain and compare to
the present /modern Filipino way of culture.

6. Examine your feelings or emotions regarding the issue of organ trafficking.

Did you feel
sympathetic to the woman who was about to sell her kidney to her Saudi Arabian husband?
Or were you morally repulsed by what she was planning to do?

Apply Ramon C. Reyes’s
idea of the five cross-points that contribute to the formation of who you are in order to
understand your feelings about this particular moral issue. List below the elements that make
up each of your cross-points.

a. Physical Cross-Point:

b. Interpersonal Cross-Point:
c. Social Cross-Points:
d. Historical Cross-Point:
e. Existential Cross-Point:

READ FIRST!!

Organ Trafficking and Human Needs

The many developments in the past few decades in both the life sciences and in
biotechnology have given rise to the recognition of a host of ethical issues that are concerned
with the physical survival and welfare of living creatures including, of course, human beings.

These ethical discussions have been gathered under the name of bioethics, a rapidly
emerging field of applied ethics.

Both medical ethics and animal ethics can actually be
classified as subfields within the larger sphere of bioethics, while environmental ethics can
have a lot of concerns that are tied up with bioethics.

Given that animal ethics, in the form of
the topic of animal rights, has already been covered in Chapter Il and environmental ethics
treated earlier in this chapter, let us now concentrate on medical ethics.

This field focuses on

moral issues in medical practice and research. One such issue that has given rise to much
debate is the phenomenon of organ trafficking, which is defined as the trade in human organs
(whether from living or nonliving people) for the purpose of transplantation.

The trade can
happen through the sale of organs or through any other means including coercive force. In
2009, the Philippine government halted a planned kidney transplant from a Filipina wife to her
Saudi Arabian husband.

It was discovered that the couple had only been married for a short
time and that the man did not know how to speak in English or Filipino, while the wife could
not speak Arabic-a situation that raised a lot of suspicion on the part of the authorities.

The government’s allegation was that the planned transplant was not really an organ donation,
which Philippine law allows, but was, in actuality, a case of an organ sale, which is
tantamount to organ trafficking prohibited by law.

One possible reason for the woman’s
consent to this alleged deal is the widespread poverty among Filipinos.

Although organ
trafficking is patently illegal in the Philippines and in many other nations, it continues to be a
tempting possibility, especially for impoverished individuals, to earn some much-needed cash.

Most people are born with two kidneys, and an individual can live on a single kidney.

Supposing that the transplant will be done under strict medical supervision, that there is a
shortage of available kidney donors, and setting aside the clear illegal status of organ
trafficking, is it really wrong for a person in great financial need to sell one of her kidneys to
someone who requires a transplant to survive and who is willing and able to offer a generous
amount of cash.

A. This chapter identified and explained the steps in making informed decisions when
confronted with moral problems.

The steps can be summarized as follows:
1. Determine your involvement in the moral situation.
2. Gather all the necessary facts.
3. Identify the stakeholders.

4. Name all the alternative choices possible and their potential effects on all stakeholders.
5. Identify the type of ethical issue at hand.
6. Make your ethical conclusion or decision.

Apply now all six steps to the question, “Is selling one of my kidneys to a paying customer
morally defensible?” Write down your application below: