I just read a saddening story on Cnet’s news.com about a girl who committed suicide after a group of adults, one of which was the mother of one of the girl’s friends she had issues with, had befriended the girl and then turned on her.
The parents of the girl want to press charges, but the FBI doesn’t see any laws that the parents hoaxing the girl have broken. Now, if this had happened in real life interaction there would surely be consequences, but I guess because it happened over MySpace - they are in the clear?
Thing like this are always a reminder that we are always excited about advancement and new ideas, technology and new interactions - but we rarely process the implications of those advancements and how to interact with them ethically. The same is true of medicine as we edge closer to DNA sampling and the possibilities surrounding cloning. Would a cloned human have a soul? Would it be ethical to clone a human? Regardless of our answers - we would be fools to think at some point in our future that cloning a human won’t be attempted - and potentially successful.
Anyways, I feel saddened that whenever there are loop holes there are always evil people there to take advantage of it. And yes, the parents that did this to that girl, posing to be a boy, and then turning on her the way they did should be at least guilt of man - slaughter. It was more than irresponsible, it was an evil thing to do.
