Are You A Decent Person If You Do Harmful Things Because It’s Your Job?
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
The “I Was Just Doing My Job” Defense
Every day, otherwise decent people do harmful, dangerous, unfair, and even dishonest things because doing them is part of their job.
Every day, otherwise decent, moral people do things that they know put innocent people at the risk of illness, bankruptcy, physical injury or death, and they think they’re not doing anything wrong because they’re just doing their job.
Every day, decent, ethical people exempt themselves from any moral responsibility for the damage their actions cause with the excuse, “Yeah, I know it stinks, but it’s my job.”
So, I ask the question:
Is a moral, decent person, still a moral, decent person when, for money, they do things that they know will injure innocent people?
Is “I’m just doing my job” a more valid an excuse than “I was just following orders”? Actually, aren’t they both the same excuse?
Let’s consider some hypothetical situations.
Administrative Director At Auschwitz
It’s 1942 and you’re an upper-level business executive in Germany. The government asks you to take over the management of the Jewish Solution Program at Auschwitz. It will be your job to administer the office that orders and distributes the Zyklon B gas, installs, maintains and repairs the ovens and ancillary equipment, handles the payroll for the civilian employees, and generally keeps the extermination program operating at peak efficiency.
The salary is equivalent to $250,000/year. The recruiter reminds you that killing surplus Jews is perfectly legal and, in fact, encouraged and vital to the war effort.
You don’t personally have anything against Jews. If someone put a gun in your hand and told you to shoot a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in the head, you wouldn’t do it. You’re a Christian who attends church services every Sunday after all.
Nevertheless, you agree to accept a handsome salary to facilitate the killing of tens of thousands of people.
When questioned about the morality of your conduct, your response is, “I wouldn’t personally kill anyone, but killing Jews is legal and making sure the executions are conducted efficiently is my job. So, I’m not doing anything wrong.”
Are you still a decent and moral person? Are you excused from any claim of immoral conduct because killing Jews is legal and facilitating that killing is part of your job?
How about this scenario:
Archbishop Of A Catholic Diocese
You’re the archbishop of a Catholic diocese. You learn that one of your parish priests has been having sex with little boys at the parochial school. You know that if you turn him in the church’s reputation will be damaged and the diocese will likely get sued.
Moreover, the Church’s established policy in situations like this is to transfer the priest to another parish far, far away.
You tell yourself, “Personally, I think what this priest has done is terrible and I would like to make sure he’s never in a position to abuse another child, but it’s my job to protect the church and I have standing orders to send a priest who does something like this to some other parish where nobody will know about what he’s done. When I send him away instead of reporting him to the police I’m just doing my job.”
Are you still a decent and moral person? Are you excused from any moral blame because protecting the church from claims of child molestation is part of your job?
CEO Of A Pharmaceutical Company
How about this:
You’re the CEO of MegaPharma, Inc.
You learn that your new “big” drug, Maximil, that’s in its final stages of human testing, has been discovered to cause total kidney failure in nine percent of the patients who take it for more than nine months.
You’ve halted the clinical trials but you haven’t submitted this new data to the FDA. You realize that you will not be able to get the Maximil approved.
You’ve also learned that Maximil has an unexpected off-label use — it’s effective at treating malaria. The malaria treatment period is from three to twelve months and the kidney failure rate is estimated to fall to four percent over that initial three-month time period, but you haven’t tested the drug on the population that would be taking it for malaria.
Africans might be more or less susceptible to kidney damage than the primarily white U.S. test group.
Your staff tells you that you can get the drug approved for sale in Africa based on the initial human tests already submitted to the FDA, none of which discovered the kidney failure problem. African sales of Maximil are projected to exceed $2 Billion per year.
Now, as a moral and decent person you feel that it would be wrong to go ahead and sell a drug that’s likely going to kill four percent or more of the people who take it, but that’s not your call.
You tell the Board of Directors about the problem with Maximil and you also tell them that the company can gross $2 Billion per year by selling it in Africa as an anti-malaria drug, provided that you either conceal the kidney failure information or you bury it so deeply in so much gobbledygook language that most doctors never see it.
You know that if you say, “Guys, we can make $2 Billion a year for the next five to ten years, almost all of it pure profit because it costs us next to nothing to actually make and ship the pills, but we shouldn’t do that because it would be morally wrong” they’re going to look at you as if you’ve suddenly gone crazy.
You know that one of them would be likely to mumble something like, “Yes, Bill, we need to consider all these issues, but this kidney problem could be a statistical anomaly. After all, the trials were shut down before they were completed. And, as you said, that 9% figure was only after nine months of treatment. The 4% figure is only a projection, a guess, about what would happen for a three-month use. We don’t know for sure that it will be that high. It could be much less than that or even zero.”
Then another board member will add, “We’ve spent half a billion dollars developing Maximil and if we don’t pursue the alternative market that’s a dead loss. I wish we had the luxury of just writing it off but we have an obligation to our shareholders. I don’t think we can just throw away half billion dollars in costs and two billion dollars a year in revenue because of an untested theory that some tiny percentage of patients might have an adverse reaction.”
You know you’re not going to say, “We shouldn’t ship Maximil, but if we do decide to go ahead we’ll need to make a full and prominent disclosure of the preliminary results from the uncompleted test to the licensing authorities and include prominent warnings to all potential patients, assuming that the authorities will allow its sale at all”
Instead, you say, “I’ll have my staff begin working on the regulatory approvals for sales in the African market.”
Making the company billions of dollars while still complying with the applicable laws is totally legal. It’s your job to make the company as much money as possible.
So, is selling that drug to all those people in Africa OK because making as much money for the company as possible is part of doing your job?
Criminal Defense Attorney
What about this:
You’re a criminal defense attorney. A very wealthy man has hired you to defend his son who is accused of a particularly vicious rape and murder. In questioning your client he tells you that he has kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered three young women and it was only a freak accident that caused him to be caught for the last one.
You cash daddy’s check and proceed to do everything in your power to have the charges dismissed and, failing that, to obtain the killer’s acquittal at trial.
When a secretary typing your evidence-suppression motion tells you that she thinks you’re a bad person because you’ve chosen to accept money to keep a serial killer free to torture and kill again, you say that you aren’t doing anything wrong because defending killers is a key component of our legal system and you’re only doing your job when you do everything you can to get this murderer back out on the street.
So, is this defense attorney doing anything morally wrong?
My Personal Opinion
By now, my opinion on the validity of the excuse “I was just doing my job” is probably pretty clear, but in case it isn’t, here’s an excerpt from my novel, The Wrong Side Of A Gun:
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
“Marshal,” Fitch muttered, taking a step forward.
“You son of a bitch!” Virgil shouted and blocked his way.
“What?” Fitch took two hurried steps back. “You can’t–”
“You bastard! You knew Crocker was killing those girls and you let him. You helped him!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I resent the implication that I helped anyone commit–”
“You got Crocker out of jail so that he could keep on killing.”
Behind Fitch a small crowd had gathered, but seeing the rage on Quinn’s face they scattered like a flock of frightened birds.
“Everyone has the right to a defense, Marshal,” Fitch said, stiffening his back and straightening his lapels. “It’s in the constitution.”
“You did more than just defend him. You knew that he had raped and kidnapped Carrie. You knew he had killed two other girls. You knew he was a psychopath who was going to kill again, but you hid that from the judge so that he could get out of jail and make a run for it.”
“He never told me that he was going to run,” Fitch said and tried to move around the marshal but Quinn blocked his way.
“It’s interesting that you put it that way. You said ‘He never told me’ but you didn’t say ‘I didn’t know’ because you did know. You knew he’d killed those girls. You knew the cops in Nevada were coming for him. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he was going to do once you got him out. How much did he pay you to spring him? A hundred thousand? A quarter of a million?”
“How much a client pays me is none of your business. I have to go to court. Please let me pass,” Fitch said and leaned forward.
“More than a quarter of million, then?” Vigil replied, taking a step closer, forcing Fitch back. “You helped a psychopath get away so that he could kill and then kill again!”
“I’m a defense attorney. I was just doing my job,” Fitch whined and made an end run for the elevator, but Quinn blocked him again.
“That’s your excuse? You were just doing your job? That’s what the Nazis at Dachau and Auschwitz said. ‘Yes, I shoved those Jews into the ovens, but I was just following orders. I was just doing my job.’ Listen up, asshole, ‘Just doing my job’ is not an excuse!”
“Under the constitution–”
“A hit man takes money to kill people. You took money to help a vicious killer get free so that he could kill again!” Virgil shouted and Fitch cringed back. “You took money from a psychopath so that he could rape and murder young girls. ‘I was just doing my job’ is not a defense. . . .”
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Well, I guess there’s not much doubt about where I stand.
The rest of you are free to tell yourselves that whatever you’re doing is perfectly fine because you were just doing your job, or following orders. Or both.
After all, you didn’t personally kill those Jews, molest those kids, poison people with those drugs, or rape and murder those girls, did you?
On the other hand, you might consider this idea:
“It’s always the right time to do the right thing.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
–David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
