Responsibility and accountability of CEOs has been a major ethical concern over the past 10 years. Major ethical dilemmas at Enron, Worldcom, AIG, as well as other well-known organizations have been at least partially blamed on CEO malfeasance. Interviews with Ken Lay, CEO of Enron, after his 2006 fraud convictions provides an opportunity to document his perceived role in the demise of Enron. P...

Consumers in the United States are taking advantage of the proliferation of publicly available, internet-based performance reports and quality appraisals of health plans, healthcare organizations, hospitals, and physicians to aid in their healthcare decision making. However, these appraisal practices have given rise to controversy and debate over certain distinctive ethical issues. This article...

In the editorial published in this journal, Daniels and colleagues argue that his and Sabin's accountability for reasonableness (A4R) framework should be used to handle ethical issues in the health technology assessment (HTA)-process, especially concerning fairness. In contrast to this suggestion, it is argued that such an approach risks suffering from the irrrelevance or insufficiency they war...

Childcare robots are being manufactured and developed with the long term aim of creating surrogate carers. While total child-care is not yet being promoted, there are indications that it is „on the cards‟. We examine recent research and developments in childcare robots and speculate on progress over the coming years by extrapolating from other ongoing robotics work. Our main aim is to raise eth...

Although remote-controlled robots flying over the Middle East and Central Asia now dominate reports on new military technologies, robots that are capable of detecting, identifying, and killing enemies on their own are quietly but steadily movingfrom the theoretical to the practical. The enormous difficulty in assigning responsibilities to humans and states for the actions ofthese machines grows...

It is nearly forty years since the first committees were established to review the ethical acceptability of research using animals. Drivers for the establishment of these committees were the recognition that such activities presented ethical challenges and that, given the level of controversy in the wider community, scientists needed to demonstrate responsibility and accountability for their ac...