On the just finished “Professional Practice in Computer Science” class, my instructor shared us a better example of the difference between ethics and moral.
On the yesterday’s CBC News, he heard that a Manitoba lesbian couple was rejected by a family doctor from Egypt for religious reasons. This matter happens in Winnipeg, the city I’m living in. It is so near for me to feel such a news.
Morally, the Egyptian family doctor can’t accept a lesbian couple. But as a doctor, she has obligation to serve patients. The same-sex-marriage was considered legal since September 16, 2004, and the couple was legally married. A doctor don’t have excuse to refuse such a couple under the law and ethics.
I’ve mentioned a similar example of ethics and moral impact in a previous post. Should a Catholic doctor do an abortion operation for a unmarried girl? When I wrote that post, I was pretty clear that the answer was “yes”. If I were the doctor, I could easily put my moral thought aside and do the operation.
But I found the situation is more complex in the new case. If I were the family doctor, I won’t know if I can serve the lesbian couple normally. The big difference between the two case is, abortion operation is just once, while serve a lesbian couple is a long time job. As an Egyptian, I feel very disgusted to get in touch with gay or lesbian. That will make me unwell during the work. It’s really an obvious dilemma.
Fortunately, doctors have their ethics to follow. Sometimes it much easier if there is rule to follow. On other hand, computer workers don’t have their ethics. Not only a policy vacuum, there’s a definition vacuum about “What is computer ethics”. Hard work to make the law or rules to let computer workers to follow.
What’s worse, there are extremely few people to think about it.