Thin Line Called Ethics
When do you know you’re part of something wrong? Is life ever as simple as good or bad?
When did people who supported the Nazi regime start realizing they weren’t participating in a patriotic movement, but rather in promoting mass genocide? Even after this realization, did they have a choice to openly say it was wrong without facing the wrath of the powerful? How do you even make a choice in that situation?
Take the people working at Theranos — did they realize they were perpetuating a fraud, or did they just think Ms. Elizabeth Holmes was buying time while they fixed their device? At what point did they start realizing something was wrong, and what could they have done? Should they have left the organization to be morally clean at an individual level, or stayed within the system to try and witness or improve it from the inside?
Similarly, how do you know who’s in the right when a war is going on? What does one achieve by taking a side or being part of the war, especially when you’re actually on the ground?
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Why am I talking about this? Because I believe I’m in one of those situations, where there’s no clear line between right and wrong — just people assuring each other that it’s for the greater good. Trust me, no one prepares you for situations like this. At best, it looks gray — leaning toward white on good days, but much darker on bad days. When you’re in such a situation, nothing overtly seems wrong until or unless you have very defined ethical principles or strong gut feelings. It’s incredibly hard to explain why you feel something is off when you have neither.
Here are a few physical and mental symptoms I’ve experienced when everything logically seems okay, but I still felt uneasy:
1. Anger and frustration over silly things
2. Inability to control mood with extremely low days
3. Insomnia coupled with extreme fatigue
4. Distrustfullness
5. Nausea or compulsive binge eating
6. Being Confrontational or Avoidant
7. Questioning and doubting yourself all the time
8. Tendency to overthink and overreact
9. Lingering fear for your safety
10. Hyperattentiveness leading to mental fatigue
When do scientific experimentation stop being a medium to explore answers and instead become a way to quench curiosity with real consequences?
Maybe I am overthinking it? or maybe I am not?
That’s the level of confusion I deal with daily. It’s not as easy as it is in sci-fi movies, where the protagonist quickly concludes that something sinister is going on.
I’d love to leave it by saying it’s a systemic problem, it’s just not one industry that is involved; from companies to government, everyone is equally accountable. But that’s not how the world works, is it?
How do you even measure a “Big picture”?
How do you quantify small consequences leading to a better outcome for the bigger picture? Isn’t it all based on hope that things will turn out well? What if they don’t? Then you have to live with the consequences that you aided in that.
The more I started getting into the system, the more I realized how lenient it is when it comes to critical care products. My first reality check was being asked to promote a critical care portfolio that even I wasn’t sure had gone through proper quality checks. What was even more alarming was discovering that the medical fraternity itself doesn’t always cross-check before recommending them, knowing that there aren’t many strict regulatory rules to limit these kinds of practices.
Another slap in the face was realizing that many of these medications and products are produced by people who don’t even hold basic educational backgrounds in the field. They don’t fully understand the gravity of what they’re dealing with. At the end of the day, it’s about making money — saving lives just seems like a bonus.
When I think about it, I wonder…does leaving the system mean we lose the morally conscious people who can actually make a difference? But then again, there’s always that lingering doubt — can hope alone carry you forward, when you know you’re just giving the problem a side-eye, waiting for change that may never come?
Exposing these issues often jeopardizes whistleblowers and gives those responsible even more motivation to search for loopholes. So, I believe one can only improve the system by being part of it. My only fear is, when does the line blur to the point where you become part of the very system you once questioned?
What would you do if you found yourself in a situation where everything is just different shades of grey?
