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ô Responsibility
ô Trustworthiness
ô Cases Studies
CONTENTS
Ý Introduction
Ý Practical Ethics ² Responsibility and Trustworthiness
Ý Practicing Ethics in a Profession ² Professional Codes
Ý Case Studies
ô 3
O vs GlaxoSmithKline
ô Citicorp vs 3illiam LeMessurier
ô Morton vs Marshall Space Centre(Challenger Disaster·86)
Introduction
Ý Professional Ethics is a problem solving
Discipline
Ý They aim at safety standards respective to
any organization or industry
Ý They are just suggestions yet practiced as
a law
Ý Ethical values never change irrespective
of place, time and people
 Practical Ethics
Ý Responsibility
ô Duty assigned or accepted for a purpose
ô Obligations to follow as an individual, employee,
citizen
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Ý Trustworthiness
ô Moral value considered to be a virtue
ô One can prove to be trustworthy by fulfilling his
responsibility
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Practicing Ethics in a Profession
Professional Codes
Ý They represent the consensus of a professional
community about the standards that should govern
their Conduct
Ý It is a mantle of responsibility
Ý Determine the actions of an engineer and how they
affect the lives and well beings of others
ô  

 

 
  
 

 

      
Ý daption of Ethical standards, for instance we have
ô 
 
ô   
   
! " 
#
Case Studies
Ý3
O vs GlaxoSmithKline
Ý Citicorp vs 3illiam LeMessurier
Ý Morten Thiokol vs Marshall Space
Centre(Challenger Disaster)
 Ú 

3
O vs GlaxoSmithKline
3
O influenced the
N
virus?
Ý t a hearing here at the Council of Europe, a
European Union human rights watchdog, the 3orld

ealth Organization (3
O) denied on Tuesday that it
was unduly influenced by drug companies to
exaggerate the dangers of the
N flu virus
Ý Pharmaceutical firms picked up multi-million dollar
vaccination contracts when the United Nations
health agency declared the flu a pandemic last
June
Ý lthough many millions around the world have been
infected with
N, and many thousands have died,
the pandemic proved milder than health experts
had originally feared
Irresponsibility leading to
consequences
Ý ccusations from some politicians and media
that the 3
O relied too much on advice from
experts in the pay of the pharmaceutical
industry ³ who could have a vested interest
in dramatizing the crisis ³ have triggered an
internal review by the 3
O and an inquiry by
the Council of Europe
Ý SGE gave decisive technical advice to 3
O
Director General Margaret Chan last year on
whether to produce a special
N vaccine,
production timing and vaccine needs
The Rage !!
Ý But parliamentarians conducting a Council
of Europe probe criticized the transparency of
the decision-process making during the
pandemic and especially the potential
influence of drug makers on vaccination
Ý Recently, several governments have tried to
cancel orders of hundreds of millions of dollars
worth of swiftly developed special pandemic
vaccines after fears about the severity of
swine flu died down
 Ú 

Citicorp vs 3illiam LeMessurier

3illiam Le·Messurier
Ý  prominent merican structural engineer
Ý Established himself as the one of the
trustworthy, responsible engineers in the city
of New York during the construction of
Citicorp building
Ý 3ith his keen observation and open-mind, he
could find the problem during the
construction and act as a responsible
engineer thus serving his duty towards the
safety and benefit of the people
ctions of Messurrier
Ý The northwest corner of the proposed building site
was occupied by St Peter's Lutheran Church
Ý The church allowed Citicorp to demolish the old
church and build the skyscraper under one
condition:    
  

   $
   
  


 


 
     
   


Ý The church wanted to remain on the site of the
new development, near one of the intersections
rchitects wondered at the time if this demand
was too much, and if the proposal could even
work
Proposed Design
Ý  59-story tower on four massive -foot (35-
m)-high columns, positioned at the center of
each side,       
Ý This design allowed the northwest corner of
the building to cantilever 72 feet (22 m) over
the new church
Ý To accomplish these goals  




   

 

 , in the form of inverted chevrons %  
   


  

 
 
$ 
 

   

     
&  


  
The Engineering Crisis :
Ý Changes during construction led to a finished
product that was structurally unsound
Ý m 
 m
 '


,
LeMessurier recalculated the wind loads on the
building
Ý
e found that in the original design, the engineer
calculated for wind loads that hit the building
straight-on, but he did not calculate for quartering
wind loads, which hit the building at a 5 degree
angle
Ý This oversight revealed that quartering wind loads
resulted in a  increase in wind loads and a
6 increase in the load at all connection joints
Messurier·s Solution
Ý Upon the discovery of such a crisis the
engineer readily took the decision to
reconstruction a certain portion of the
building
Ý This would act as a reinforcement to
withstand the increase in load thus save the
building from collapsing on the church below
Ý This operation cost him millions of dollars yet
he stood by his principles as a responsible
engineer
 Ú 

Morten Thiokol vs Marshall Space

Centre(Challenger Disaster)
Roger M Boisjoly
 responsible mechanical engineer, fluid
dynamicist and an aerodynamicist who
worked for Morton Thiokol, the
manufacturer of the solid rocket
boosters for the Space Shuttle program

e is best known for raising objections to
the launch of the Space Shuttle
Challenger the day before the loss of the
spacecraft and its crew
The Problem
Ý The O-Rings were two rubber rings that formed a seal
between two sections of the Solid Rocket Boosters
Ý The sections of the boosters were joined using tang
and clevis joints and the rings were intended to seal
the joint, while allowing for the inevitable movement
between the sections under flight conditions
Ý The pressure from within the booster pushed a fillet of
putty into the joint, which forced the O-Ring into its
seat
Ý The rings never functioned according to design
Ý The pressure of the burning rocket fuel caused the
joints in the SRB's to flex during launch, opening a
gap through which rocket exhaust could escape
ctions of Boisjoly
Ý Boisjoly wrote a memo in July 985 to his
superiors concerning the faulty design of
the solid rocket boosters that, if left
unaddressed, could lead to a
catastrophic event during launch of the
Space Shuttle
Ý Such a catastrophic event did occur less
than a year later during the Space Shuttle
Challenger disaster
Boisjoly·s Concern
Ý 3hat Boisjoly's investigation showed was that the
amount of damage to the O-Ring depended on
the length of time it took for the ring to move out
of its groove and make the seal
Ý lso that the amount of time depended on the
temperature of the rings
Ý The cold weather made the rubber hard and less
flexible, meaning that extrusion took more time
and more blow-by took place
Ý
e determined that if the O-rings were damaged
enough they could fail
erdict
Ý The catastrophic event did occur less than a
year later leading to the failure of O-rings and
caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
Ý ollowing several further memos, a "task force"
was set up ² including Boisjoly ² to investigate
the matter
Ý But after a month Boisjoly realized that the
task force had no power, no resources and
no management support
Bibliography
Ý Down to Earth
ô rticle ´ 3
O influenced the
N virus
purchase?µ
Ý The New Yorker
ô The ifty Nine Storey crisis
Ý 3ikipedia
ô NS Challenger Space Disaster
T
E END