Ethics

This blog is for Friday, February 20, through Sunday, February 22. I am lucky to even be writing this blog right now. My computer froze 4 hours ago. I frantically tried to rescue it because I was working on our powerpoint at that time. Our powerpoint was pretty much finished, but I was just adding last minute pictures to make it look good. An hour later, it crashed completely and I have been trying to revive it ever since. About 1 minute ago, I got it to come back to life after countless restarts/safe modes/system restores/unpluggings/scoldings/
threats/beatings/begging. I learned that patience is the key when working with computers, but when in doubt, smack it really hard! I have the worst luck in the world when homework is combined with computers. Just when I need it the most, my computer dies on me.

Our powerpoint is still not finished, and it is now 3:15 am. I don’t know what I am going to do because I am falling asleep right now and don’t know how much longer I can keep myself awake. If my computer had only decided to cooperate, I would be sleeping right now. If I wasn’t so tired, and if I had saved the powerpoint on a disk BEFORE my computer crashed, this useless piece of junk would be lying at the bottom of Kaneohe Bay right now. Okay, I suppose I’ll stop complaining and start writing about things that are supposed to be in these blogs.

On Friday, our group worked on the powerpoint and interviews. While we were unable to conduct any interviews (and we still haven’t), we were able to leave a message for Father Marc’s secretary. She was in a meeting, so she couldn’t speak with us, so we were given her voicemail, and were assured that she would get back to us as soon as possible. It is now Sunday and she has still not gotten back to us. I guess secretaries don’t work on the weekends. As you can see, we have run into more than our fair share of problems.

Dee was able to find a nice graph for the powerpoint, and I think she also found some other pictures. This is all fine and dandy, but I am the one who is supposed to finish the powerpoint, and she didn’t e-mail me the version of the powerpoint that she was working on. So, I am just fixing up an old version that she had e-mailed me before we made some critical changes. Hopefully, we will have time to combine both of these powerpoints before we present. We did not come across any intriguing or helpful information. At home, I worked on the powerpoint and added a few slides, along with some nice pictures. Actually, I am not done yet, and I hope I can finish soon. Tomorrow, we are supposed to present. I say “supposed to” because I am not sure if we will be able to. I need a new computer.

Sorry for blogging so late. This blog is supposed to be for Wednesday, February 18. I know, it is a whole day late, but I accidentally fell asleep last night before I could blog. I had only planned to take a nap, but the nap lasted longer than I had wanted it to. Then, today, the network was down at school, so there was no way for me to go online to write this. So, Wednesday…what we did was…ah, yes, this was the first day we worked on our powerpoint presentation. The main problem we had was trying to figure out what to put in our biological background section. There is so much biology related to our topic that we had a hard time trying to decide what to include and what to leave out.
Dee asked Mr. Wiggins for his thoughts on our presentation, and he ended up explaining a lot of the biology to us. I was surprised to see how much he knew about this subject. He seems to be very well rounded, because I had him as a Calculus substitute, also. He ended up giving us many helpful suggestions, and as a result, we were able to do a lot more than we could have just by ourselves. A critical part of our presentation that we are still missing is the Catholic Church’s perspective. We are depending on Father Marc’s interview for this information, but we are having an extremely hard time communicating with him. He seems like a very, very busy person. Still no response from Mr. Ho, but I am not too worried yet. Tomorrow, I will be worried.
The helpful information we encountered today was given to use by Mr. Wiggins. He helped us to organize the biology part of our presentation. Tonight, we will probably just spend our time thinking about how to finish our presentation in class. Tomorrow, we will have to really set up an appointment with Father Marc. Our time is running out and I am beginning to wonder if we are ever going to interview him. Tomorrow our plan is to finish our powerpoint and schedule our interview.

This blog is for Thursday, February 19. Today was not as productive as it could have been, but we were able to work on the things that needed the most work. We stayed in the ethics classroom instead of going to the library. Dee brought her laptop, which was a lifesaver. We were actually supposed to have been practicing our presentation today, but ours is not complete yet, so we had to continue adding to it. In addition to working on our powerpoint, we also contacted Dr. Kipnis and Father Marc’s secretary and attempted to make an appointment. Dr. Kipnis was very nice and quickly agreed to an internet interview. Aileen had talked to him, and she said that he might also want to meet with us face-to-face. At this point, I am just glad that someone responded and agreed to answer our questions.

A problem that we ran into was when Aileen tried to call Father Marc’s secretary. She said that the phone just kept ringing, and no one picked it up. So once again, we have no scheduled interview with him. Also, today, Mr. Wiggins helped us to explain the biological aspects of this issue. There was not any groundbreaking information, though. Tonight at home, Aileen and I looked up pictures and things that we could put in our presentation to make it look more interesting. Tomorrow, we should be done with the text of our presentation, and we will probably run through it to make sure each of us knows what to do. Tomorrow, we also need to e-mail our questions to Dr. Kipnis and schedule an appointment with Father Marc. If we do not do these two things tomorrow, we are not going to have completed binders for Monday.

Today in Ethics class, our group worked on getting organized and doing more research. At the beginning of the period, we encountered a minor problem when Aileen and I found that we were both missing our 9th group research note, so Dee printed out two more copies for us. We had to make sure that each of us had all 9 notes because Mr. Wiggins was going to check our binders later on. After making sure that our binders were up to date, we spent more time reading articles from the internet and ebsco. We also received a reply from Father Marc’s secretary. Apparently, secretaries cannot set up appointments via e-mail, so she asked that we either give her our phone number or call her to make the appointment. I am really starting to worry about this interview. This experience has taught me that I am clueless about proper communication etiquette. It didn’t even occur to me that I should leave a phone number for her to call us at. Oh well – live and learn.
We still have not received a reply from Mr. Ho, but I am confident that he will send it to us soon because I had spoken to him about it on Friday. I am looking forward to reading his reply. We spent the last part of class going over Dr. Kipnis’ essay. He is the UH professor whom Mrs. Brodie told us about. We found that we completed agreed with his viewpoint on the surgical assignment of sex. We have not contacted him, but I think we should because his interview could prove to be very valuable in supporting our final decision. At one point while we were reading, we came across a sentence that echoed what we had said in step 7 of our case study. Reading this was helpful because it was nice to see that our opinions were shared by an expert in this field. At home, I read over the essay again because it is so long and takes a while to absorb. Tomorrow, we will start on our powerpoint presentation and hopefully schedule an interview with Father Marc. There is still so much to do, and the days are flying by.

This is the very end of the three day weekend, and I am having trouble remembering what our group did on Thursday…wait, did I miss a blog?? Oh, wait never mind – there were no classes on Friday. Okay, on Thursday we received a response from Father Marc regarding our interview. In the response, he said that he would not do an interview via e-mail, and that we had to contact another person to schedule and interview. We sent an e-mail to that person, and we are now waiting for a response. We also continued doing research. We completed a few more research notes and found more non-internet sources.
Friday was our Founder’s Day Mass, and although there were no classes, somehow we still managed to do more work on our case study. During the Mass, Mr. Ho came up to me and asked me about the interview, so I know that he received our e-mail, and he plans on answering our questions. After the Mass when we were back at school, Mrs. Brodie found me in the hallway and told me that she had found another person whom we could interview. He is a professor at UH, and spoke at a bioethics conference that she had recently attended. He wrote an essay entitled “Pediatric Ethics and the Surgical Assignment of Sex,” which was difficult to print out, so we read it at home. Thank you Mrs. Brodie, for telling us about this.
The only problem we encountered was the delay with Father Marc’s interview. I am worried about whether or not we will be able to make an appointment before we have to present. The helpful information we found (well, it was actually given to us) was the essay written by the UH professor. Now that I look at it, I realize that I had read about the other author of this essay – Milton Diamond. He spoke out against John Money’s theory that a person who is actually a male could be raised and taught to be a female. The work I did at home was reading this very long essay. In class, our group will have to discuss this essay and write a research note on it. We also need to make sure that we get an appointment set up with Father Marc ASAP! Our presentation day is one week away, so we also need to start on our powerpoint. So much to do and so little time. Why can’t it ever be the other way around?

The time we spent today in the library was used very efficiently. There were no distractions and each of us was able to do what we needed to do in order to meet our deadlines. Today at the end of class, our steps 1-7 were due, so we spent most of our time finishing that. We also finished typing and revising our interview questions for Mr. Ho and Father Marc. We showed them to Mrs. Brodie and she gave us some suggestions on how to improve them. As soon as we finished fixing them, we e-mailed them to Mr. Ho and Father Marc. Hopefully, they will have time to answer them. I am looking forward to reading Father Marc’s answer as to the viewpoint of the Catholic Church. We are still having difficulty with this part, so we are really counting on his interview.
Today a couple people in our class commented on how interesting they thought our topic was. They told me that they were really going to pay attention during our presentation. This comment was helpful and rewarding for me because it made me feel like we are doing something good here by increasing awareness on this issue. When we were making our final decision (step 7), we had a hard time trying to explain to each other exactly what we wanted. At first, it sounded like we each wanted to make a different decision because we described them in different ways. After a few minutes of discussion and explanation, we realized that we all had actually wanted the same thing, but had said it in different ways. I learned that we really have to be careful with what we say regarding this issue because it could be interpreted the wrong way by other people.
Tonight at home, there was not much to do since we have finished our steps and most of our research. The only thing I was able to do was to read over articles that I had already printed out so that I could think of what to put in the group research notes. Our research is still incomplete, so tomorrow we will have to return to Ebsco to try to find articles in periodicals. We can also use some of the other encyclopedias in the library. Tomorrow’s work will consist mainly of more research and research notes.

Today we did not finish everything we had planned to do. We were able to do work on our interview, which was our number one priority for today. We typed out all of the questions that we wanted to send to our interviewees. We also continued our research by searching on Ebsco for articles in periodicals. Aileen was having trouble with Ebsco, so she asked Ms. Devlin how she could view the actual article after she found a citation of it on Ebsco. Instead of just telling Aileen how to get to the article, she gave her a 20 minute lecture on how to find information in the library. I can understand why Ms. Devlin wants to educate people about the library, but today was not a very good time for it because our group really had a lot of work to do, and without Aileen, we were not able to do as much as we could have.
Mrs. Brodie met with us at the end of the period to go over our questions, check our binders, and give us suggestions. Her suggestions were very helpful, and were similar to what I had been thinking. She said that we should be more thorough when explaining hermaphroditism in our powerpoint presentation. I agree with her. She also noted that we would probably go over the 20 minute time limit. I was thinking the same thing because this issue is so large and complicated that it would take a very long time to explain it to the point where other people would be able to understand it. What I have noticed so far with our questions is that the more we research, the more questions we must ask. Our research just leads us to more information that no one knows about because this issue is rarely discussed. I have also been able to find many precedents, some shocking, some sad, and some happy. I think that we should also use many precedents in our powerpoint presentation so that the class can have a better understanding of how real people are dealing with this condition.
One problem we still have not overcome is finding the Catholic Church’s view on this issue. When we typed out our interview questions for Father Marc, we included one that asked for the Church’s standpoint on what should be done. Hopefully he will be able to help us with this crucial aspect of our case study. Tonight at home, we all came online and worked on our steps 3 and 4, which are the stakeholders and values. Tomorrow we will continue working on our steps and hopefully finish them by the end of the class. Although we have done so much research already, what we have learned has just led us to ask even more questions. I feel that much more research must still be done before we can present our case study to the class.

Today our group worked on compiling the answers for our questions and making more group research notes. We were worried about not being able to find anything relating to the Church’s opinion on intersexuality, so we asked Mrs. Brodie about it. She said to look online at Ethics and Medics or to look in the Catechism for surgeries that would benefit people. We didn’t have enough time to look for that today, so we will have to work on it tomorrow. Aileen had to leave early to go practice for tonight’s ceremony, so Dee and I worked together on another research note. We pretty much already knew everything that was in the article because we had already answered all of our questions. We just needed to pick out the most important information so that we could put it in our binders. We still do not have enough research notes done, so that is another thing we are going to work on tomorrow. We can’t do any at home on our own because it is supposed to be a combination of everyone’s input, so I did not do any tonight. Instead, I just read more of the articles that we had already printed out so that I would have an idea of what to suggest to include in the research notes.
Another important thing that we need to get is our interview. We are still unsure about the who/what/when/where. We are running out of time, so that is the top priority tomorrow. I wanted to do it today, but I forgot about it after Aileen left because I was helping Dee finish a research note. We did not come across any shocking or helpful information today because we were basically reading about things we had already researched for our questions. I think our group has definitely found our fair share of shocking information, mainly because this topic is hardly ever addressed. No one knows the truth about what happens to these children, and it is saddening to me because they are human beings, but are being treated like they do not belong in this world. Their condition may be shocking, but it is our duty as responsible citizens to educate ourselves so that we can understand what they are going through and show acceptance towards them.

Thursday, our group went over our information to prepare for answering our questions. We also revised our team proposal. We decided to change out Essential Question to: “In the event of an intersex birth, should there be immediate correctional surgery?” We decided to cut our two-part question down to just a one-part question because it would be too difficult to answer a question with two different parts. As we looked over our research, we realized that we were having a hard time finding the Catholic Church’s view on this topic. I looked in the catechism book, but found nothing that really related to intersex or hermaphroditism. We might need some help in this area. Aileen suggested that we use our interview with Father Marc to learn the Catholic Church’s view.
An interesting fact that I learned today while doing research at home was that some experts compare the treatment of intersex with sexual abuse. I never thought of it that way before. The reason for this comparison was that parents and doctors were always examining the child, and the emotional effects were often similar to those of sexual abuse. This weekend we had planned to meet at the library to do more research in books instead of the internet, but it did not work out as we had planned. Instead, we kept in contact through e-mail and AOL instant messenger. We divided the questions between the three of us and decided to answer them separately, and then share answers when we got back to school. This was the only way we would have been able to finish all of the questions by tomorrow. I furthered this project at home by doing more online research. In fact, I was able to find many good internet articles with interesting and useful information. Tomorrow, we plan on sharing our answers with each other so that we can all understand what each person researched. This will be important for our presentation because each person will need to know what she is talking about.

Today, our group was missing one member. Aileen had to leave during lunch to go to a doctor’s appointment, so Dee and I started on our group’s research notes. Aileen took a print-out of a web page home so that she could do a research note, also. Dee and I did two research notes, so we now have three research notes. For my senior project, I had written research notes in paragraph form, but for this case study, I decided to use bullets instead because it organizes the information much better. Dee and I were reading through one article when we came across some surprising information. After a “vaginoplasty,” where the vagina is lengthened using skin, parents must perform at home follow-up care. This includes regularly using a lubricated device to “dilate” the vagina and keep it from closing up. When we read this, we were both shocked. The article said that some mothers felt uncomfortable doing this, and if they had known they would have to do this, they would have waited until their daughters were older and could do the dilations themselves.
After reading through two articles, I realized that doctors and parents find it more important to have the child’s genitals appear normal from the beginning, than to have the surgery later on in the child’s life, when it would be more effective. All of this information is completely new to me, and it has shown me that there are things in this world that people would rather not talk about and deal with. Because this issue is not being addressed, people who have not been exposed to it do not realize just how common it actually is. This is unjust for those who have to suffer with the effects of being intersex, because other “normal” people see them as strange, different, and scary. Society has created such strict standards to conform to, that doctors and parents will go to any lengths to make sure that these children fit in with everyone else. Tomorrow, we will answer as many questions as we can. What we do not finish tomorrow we will finish at home over the weekend.

Our group continued our research today in class. Instead of focusing on finding more resources, we spent some time going over what we had already found. We did this so that we could gain a better understanding of our topic and so that we could find out what we needed to do more research on. We had found many internet articles last week, and we hadn’t completely read any of them yet. I was surprised to read that the decision on the sex of a hermaphroditic child is based mostly on the reconstructive possibilities, not the child’s genes. We also read that it is easier for doctors to reconstruct female genitalia. We have a basic understanding of why this is true, but we are planning to do more research on this topic in order to be able to fully understand it and explain it to others. I like the way that our research is going with this case study because we are looking through our sources as a whole group and discussing it with each other, instead of assigning certain parts to different group members. The way we are doing it now allows each group member to understand all aspects of our case study.
Today we did not encounter any real problems. Each of us was very tired, which affected our concentration, but we were still able to get our work done. Tomorrow, we plan on completing three group notes on our research. We will just type out the things we discussed today. Our research has been very fascinating so far, and our group notes will be a collection of the most informative and interesting facts we have found. I was surprised to find how much information was available online on this subject. We were also able to find good encyclopedia articles on this topic. I hope that there will also be a great deal of information available in newspaper and magazine articles. I am afraid that we might have some trouble finding articles in periodicals, however, since this is not a topic that many people want to discuss.

Today in Ethics class, our group only worked on our team proposal. We were able to finish most of it in class. We decided to ask: should corrective surgery should be done immediately after birth, and if it is, who should decide on the sex? We said that we chose this topic because we were very surprised to learn how common intersex babies are. We also did not know very much about this topic, so we would be learning a lot of interesting facts while we did our research. We cited everything we found in the encyclopedias and the best articles we found on the internet. We did not cite everything we found on the internet because there was too much. We just picked the articles that we thought would be the most informative for us at this stage of our research. Once we learn more about the basics of hermaphroditism, we can continue our research and look more deeply into the issue using the other web sites we found.
We ran into a problem today that cost us a lot of class time. Last week Thursday, we had cited all of the sources we had used in our research so far. We wrote it all on a piece of paper that we planned to use today for our proposal. Today, when it was time to write down all of our sources, we could not find the paper, so we had to go back to the sources where we found our information and rewrite all of the citation information. It was not very difficult, it was just very time consuming. We were not able to finish the entire proposal during class. We got up to the section where we wrote down the facts that we know so far. When we got home, we continued working on it by writing down the facts that we needed to find out. We found this part very simple because it is the same thing as Step 2 in our previous case studies. Tomorrow, we plan on continuing our research and finding more information on the choices available to families who have intersex children.

Our group got a lot done on Thursday in Ethics class. Mrs. Brodie told us that Ms. Loftus was very interested in our topic. She suggested that our question be something like: “Should adults who were born as hermaphrodites and whose sex was wrongfully determined undergo sex changes in order to correct this mistake?” We liked this question more than our first one because it presents a larger ethical dilemma. It is also more interesting because it will allow us to research how a person can show behavior that is characteristic of one sex, even though he or she has the physical qualities of the opposite sex.
On Thursday, instead of doing research in books and encyclopedias like yesterday, we went to the computer lab and started doing research on the internet. We encountered a problem immediately when we started searching on Google. Every time we typed in “hermaphrodites” on Google, the results were mostly inappropriate sites that had nothing to do with our research. In fact, Dee unknowingly went to one of them, and was horrified by what she saw. We learned our lesson quickly and agreed to only search for “hermaphroditism” or “intersex” (another term for hermaphroditism) while doing research on the internet.
We were able to find many good websites describing hermaphroditism and the consequences when the wrong sex is chosen. One bit of information that shocked us was the fact that 1 in every 2,000 births is intersex. This means that 1 out of every 2,000 babies will be born with both male and female features. This rate was higher than we expected, and we admitted to each other that all of the research we have done on genetic disorders and birth defects has caused us to become scared of having children. Although we ran into one problem, Thursday was very productive. I did not do anything at home yet, but I plan on continuing our research tomorrow night. Tomorrow, we plan on finding more articles on adults who have been affected by a wrong gender choice.