Bhopal Ethics

In the beginning of this essay I would like to present some facts and figures related to our topic. On December 3, 1984, at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India there was a deadly leak of methyl isocyanate. It caused thousands of people to die and affected generations to come. The leak happened due to a series of human and mechanical failures. The local health officials were neither knowledgeable about the deadly chemical that was being stored there nor were they equipped to handle the tragedy. Another incident happened at the Union Carbide plant in West Virginia. A toxic cloud of the same chemical was leaked into the atmosphere and it was a shocking reminder that such accidents could happen in the both developed and developing countries. The statistics prove that chemical spills occur on a regular basis in different parts of the world. In 1976 there were

War causes a myriad of effects in varying degrees of severity on the land and consequently among humankind. In the scenario of Vietnam with Agent Orange, no one anticipated the birth defects, cancer, and brain damage that would affect the lives of our nation’s veterans, the people of Vietnam, and thousands of unborn children for years to follow. Despite the evidence linking the Agent Orange to these injustices, there has been little done to right these wrongs. There should be more policy protecting the environment and its inhabitants, especially when detrimental effects are exacerbated by war. As mentioned previously, most of society may not even be aware of the effects war has on our environment. This piece is aiming to serve as a bridge for the gap between what science knows and what the people know about war’s effect on the land we

Project MkUltra, a “mind control program” instated by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1953 to 1973, is a prime example of an ethics violation, that is still discussed today and even used as a basis for tv series’ (Stranger Things) due to its immorality. During this time period, the American Central Intelligence Agency conducted tests on human subjects, without their consent or knowledge. This was an effort to control minds and discover a drug that could force prisoners to answer questions truthfully when under interrogation. This program involved the distribution of LSD and other drugs to unsuspecting victims. The agency went to extreme lengths to develop a drug that could be used as a “truth serum.” Project MKUltra was driven by inexcusable

Viewing this article through the lens of the platonic framework is significant because it allows one to judge the acts of the Obama administration versus the acts of Wall Street executives in the aftermath of the previous recession. While the executives that are committing the injustice would be the most evil here for not only committing the unjust acts but for also not seeking their punishment and blaming it on low-level management, the administration is worse than the low-level management for the fact that they are not bringing justice either. This makes clear then why Lynch and Yates are attempting to correct this injustice that’s occurring

Icahn’s article was published in Wall Street Journal in 2009 with a title “The Economy Need Governance Reform.” In this article, Icahn takes a partially similar direction of argument by blaming the greed and irresponsibility. Icahn aims to propose a more practical argument, he begins by appealing to President’s Obama credibility that we must accept hard choices and take responsibility for incorrect decisions. Icahn implies that it is wrong for the government to “subsidize managers that lead their companies into trouble”. Icahn than uses a slippery slope to support the conclusion that enhanced public companies regulation will enable better control and prevention of risky decisions. The slippery slope is reached when Icahn claims manager to be “irresponsible and self-driven” and that their compensation is overvalued, thus the economy failed… Icahn concludes his argument with the following reason, “this change will empower shareholders to exert more influence on management decisions.” (Icahn

Was there no forethought in the decision to use these chemicals? Killing off the food supply for the country you are there to

In 1978, an attentive mother noticed that her son’s health had deteriorated after attending a new school in Niagara Falls, New York. The area within the town is named Love Canal and before this town existed, a chemical company used the land to dump all of its toxic waste. This chemical company then sold the property to the county school board for one dollar; furthermore, when the school board purchased the property a clause in the contract stated that the chemical company could not be held liable for any damages resulting from the toxic waste. The mother learned that the school and a number of homes were built directly on top of the toxic waste dump; eventually, the state sent experts to test for toxic substances, which they found, and immediately began to evacuate some of its citizens. By 1980, the entire town was evacuated under order from President Carter and that the town’s residents could sell their homes to the Federal Government for fair market value.

Both Republicans and Democrats have played their parts in adding fragility into the market and the government that regulates it, leading to a system where a simple housing bubble can bring every facet of a nation’s economic system to its knees overnight—all of this because of ignorance of uncertainty: that illusion of omniscience. The Black Swan posits that the unfortunate events of September 11th never would have happened if the FBI and CIA had cooperated in sharing intelligence data, or had a legislator thought those 900,000 pound missiles might be used by terrorists if we aren’t careful. As with the Arab Spring—by all measures both predictable and overdue per various historians who see the world’s affairs to revolve around a cycle of peace and

Stephen J. A. Ward said in “Ethics in a Nutshel” “The analysis, evaluation, and promotion of correct conduct and/or good character, according to the best available standards is identified as ethics” (Behrens and J. Rosen 264). One of my best friends is an extremely intelligent person who achieves excellent grades in all the subjects except English. He took the full senior project from another friend who graduated last year. We often hang out, and do our projects together. A week before submission, I asked him if he could proof read mine and I would proof read his. As soon as I start reading, I was getting angry and frustrated with the level of vocabulary, sentence formation, and grammar he used, I knew there was no way an ESL student could

Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin is a book documenting the events of the financial crisis of 2008, from the perspective of various Wall Street executives and government officials. The 550-page novel is the product of hundreds of hours of research and interviews with people familiar with the situation. It attempts to be an authoritative as well as extremely detailed account of the events making up the financial crisis. The novel begins in the aftermath of the collapse of the investment firm Bear Stearns, and its subsequent sale to JP Morgan Chase for an astonishingly low price. This low price was subsidized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in order to make it more palatable for the Bear Stearns board. It asserts that the deal was

Three causes of the 1984 Bhopal Chemical Plant disaster in India were long-term financial difficulties, poor safety management and inadequate emergency plans. The disaster occurred when water entered a methyl isocyanate (MIC) storage tank, which led to a runaway reaction and then discharged toxic MIC vapour into the atmosphere. The leak caused the deaths of more than 2,000 people and injured about 200,000 locals in the surrounding shanty towns (Kletz 2009, p. 338).

The parties we believe to be most at fault for the crisis in this case are a) the Audit Firm engaged in the Enron audit (Arthur Andersen); b) Enron Management (Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow; and c) the SEC.

The series of ethical issues that took place leading to the disaster are complex, and other factors such as economic and political issues arose after the catastrophe happened. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical issues that took place before the disaster happened, and investigate the moral obligations, social responsibility and justice at an individual and organizational level. The ethical dilemma is broken down into three categories, which include the company’s management priority to reduce costs and time, neglecting safety issues addressed by staff, human misjudgment and errors in neglecting pressure reading; and finally, overlooking the technical design flaws that were not tested by BP before installing to use. The

As a result, the following came a lot of lawsuits, demanding compensation, and investigations, investigating the cause of the MIC leak, against the plant. During the investigations, both the government of India and the interior of the Union Carbide did research on that incident. We are not surprised at their different answers because the plant wanted to cover the truth that was harmful to themselves and the government as a result could not get the truth on the other hand. However, I can¡¦t deny that the plant really did something such as relief fund, training school, and so on to prove that they really wanted to compensate for that gas leak. In this case, I don¡¦t think that the CEO of Union Carbide should be arrested or be sentenced. But I do think he should be responsible for the whole case. In other words, he should resign for the whole incident.

Here we see a failure of the board to look at management critically. They accepted only the information presented to them by the CEO and did not demand a better picture on the state of RBS’s business in mortgage trading even while the CEO’s story seemed to constantly be changing. The board exists as a watchdog to the executive management yet nothing was done to hold the CEO accountable to the truth.