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KPMG, an international marketing and management company, has published Lawrence Kohlberg's "Heinz Dilemma" for a business ethics course. Answer the questions about the Heinz dilemma. Is it clear to you what the "ethical" response should be? What might influence a person's responses? According to Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning, how might a 10-year-old respond to the dilemma?
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Wow, thats a tough group of questions! Of course my response would have been that the druggist deserves a swift kick in the butt, for his unethical outlook. Anyway, you can probaly guess that I said that the drug should be stolen, because a life is more important than money. But is it ethical to steal even if its for a "good cause". It was such a huge delemia answering these questions because I feel up holding the law is so very important.
Anyway I think your experiences ith things such as illness of a loved one, your dealings with medicine, how you deal with your friends and your dealings with the law will all influence how you answer these questions. (more later)


By the way for Rabina here's my email address again: hawilson@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca
If you could please email me by tommorow that would be great!

This message is to remind every one that I want to write the summary by about noon on sunday, so can you guys input tommorow. Again for Rabina Email me!! if you can't please let us know and post your phone # so we can tlk about the sites. Thanks!

wow...that's one of the most toughest dillemmas I've had to ponder. In all honesty, I picked all the choices that had compassion in them (i.e. setting him free...not report Heinz to the police...etc). I feel taht the world today is run too much on fairness/rules of the law, and not on morals and ethics. Of course, there are those who would say neither of those come into play with the choices I picked, but I would disagree. This story reminds me of many cases around the world today (esp. U.S.A). For example, the woman who spilled McDonald's coffee on herself and burned herself sued the McDonald's franchise for making too hot. The fact that she won the case shows that very little, if any common sense is involved in laws. The saying "Justice is blind" is true in more ways than one. I can understand that and agree up to an extent that the law should be held in many, but not all cases. The lack of compassion and grace shown by the druggist caused all these problems. Personally, I felt torn b/w holding up the law and the desperation Heinz must have felt when he knew that legally, he had no chance of buying the drug, and thus knew that had wife would die. Because Heinz's motives were "pure" in the sense that he was doing it for someone else, not for himself, should have some bearing on the sentence the Judge gives. However, what is condiered "pure" intentions is not always clear, and can be a matter of opinion. As well, I would have done it for a friend as well, not because of obligation, but because that's how close our friendship is.
More later....and Rubina, my Email is dk2@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca so you can email me to if you can.

btw, Angela, I think we should do this one...I really like it.

I tried taking the little "quiz" again, but this time, I tried to answer if I were purely a "robot" so to speak, and not allow my emotions or beliefs get in the way. In short, I tried to follow the law to the extent. The analysis at the end proved interesting in that it sounded very "cold." That is, the analysis for my responses concentrated on how "society" must be placed higher than the individual itself. Which reminds me of a saying in Star Trek, when Spock said that "the needs of the many outway the needs of the few." This brings up another important point in that Spock was a Vulcan (for those of you who are not well versed in the knowledge of Star Trek, A vulcan is a race of people who are similar to humans except in 2 ways: they have pointy ears, and they suppress their emotions to the extent that emotions should not interfere with their decisions; logic should always prevail). I can see how this sort of society would work in their system, but it would be impossible for it to work in ours. The ironice twist is that we look at laws through the eyes of Vulcans, thinking that we should judge without emotion and only with the facts. But the fact of the matter is, we're humans, we don't think logically 100% of the time and are emotions do get inthe way. I guess that's why we have sports, entertainment, music, etc. Its almost like a double-edged sword, emotions make us who we are, yet is also gets us in trouble when it starts bringing in this new factor called ethics and morality...something that shouldn't come into play in laws, but do.

Again, Rubina, on the off chance that your readin this, PLEASE phone me (dave: 436-5940) or email us...both our email addreesses or up on the message board.
Thanks, Daki

I am so sorry, this computers are screwed, I am so happy you gave your telephone number I have been trying to get access to the net, and all but this computer in the study hall have no mouseo it wouldn't click, but I will cal you right now, and discuss this

I found this site to be very interesting, I will call you right now. My number is
432-0014

It was very clear to me about which the ethical responses are. They focussed more on human rights. The last response was the one that always favoured human rights. The first responses mainly answered according to the law, for example Heinz shoudn't steal because he might get caught. There was no ethical or moral reasoning involved.
A person's resposes is influenced by your own moral's. What you believe should be the right answer. Also, I blieve a person's choice can also be made by the way the response is worded. One time it was hard for me to make a decision about which response to chose because there were 2 responses that I agreed with. There is a valid reason for each choice. As I mentioned earlier their own moral reasoning will reflect upon why they chose the answer they did. All the responses are valid, the person should determine if they think the ethical choice is what they believe in, or is it the law that they think is more important.
A 10 year old will respond to dilemma very different from how an adult or an adolescene would respond to it. According to Kohlberg;s theory I think that a 10 year old making this choice would be at stage 3. At such a young age you will do something like that for someone that is important to you, e.g. a parent or a sibling, but not for anyone. For example, I can see a 10 year old stealing the drug fro his mom or dad, but not for some friend. He might say, I'm not stealing the drug for you I don't want to get into trouble. Ethics and morals are not an issue at such a young age. They will see what seems to be right, if their mom is dying and they need the drug they will steal it, but as for someone else, they will be afraid of getting caught.

This is David and Angela's Summary

We really enjoyed dealing with this web site. It gave us cause to think about moral and ethical issues. We did not find that that the
"ethical" responses were clear. For example one of our classmates sd that the ethical response was not to steal the drug, but is it ethical to let
someone die when there is any posibility of saving someone's life? Also one could argue that the clear ethical response would have been for the druggist to sell the drug at cost, and not making a hidious profit on peoples' lives.
All sorts of things influence apersons responses: age, upbringing, culture, socioeconomic class. Also personal experiences such as dealing
with a loved one's illness, dealings with medicine, and your dealings with the law also influence your responses. Kohlberg found that there is a positive correlation between your responses and your moral views, which we know varies from culture to culture. It was also brought up that the law plays a large influence in decisions like these. A parallel to this is cases of assisted suicide. Sue Rodriguez was a Canadian suffering from a deliberating terminal illness who did not have the capability of ending her life on her own. She went to court, but the Supreme court of Canada upheld the law that prohibits assisted suicide (if I remember correctly she died before the result)( you can find some information here: http://www.rights.org/deathnet/rodriguez_en.html ) There have been a few other cases in Canada as well, the Latimer case, but this really brought up the issue of compasion vs law. Did Sue Rodriguez have the right to ask someone help her die?
According to Kolberg's theory a ten year old would have responded according to stages 2 (mostly) and 3. i.e.: Self interest exchanges: you need to bargain to get want you want, understanding that there is a trade off to saving Heinz's wife will influence their desison. and Interpersonal accord and Conformaity: living up to other's expectation, whether the relationship to the wife is more important than the relationship to the community(how they would feel about stealing). It is also interesting to note that most of us (in the class) took into consideration all the things that Kohlberg would have expected us to by our general age group: Stage4 Law and order Morality: duty to wife and duty to society as a whole(Heinz and the cop). Stage 3 (described above) and most took into consideration of Stage 5 :Human rights and social welfare morality ie: most felt that the druggist had the real problem here and that Heinz should steal the drug because of that.