Sourour is presenting an interesting article of himself as being a young professional, a coder where he found himself in challenging position of trying to make his client happier- in the expense of a young teenage girl’s health. Here, Sourour believes that he participated in deceitful coding practice where the website he developed was actually a drug advertising website rather than a trustful general information site. The website were coded in a way that patients don’t have many options other than the goal that the client want to achieve, recommend everyone the client’s drug, without any exception, other than the status of being allergic or already being on that drug. In his young profession, the time he developed that code, Sourour admitted that he didn’t think about the harm he is inflicting on those young women. He was much concerned about the job he supposed to do and he did it. For this case analysis, where a professional hasn’t practiced good ethics to his profession, I would argue, based on the ethics of care that, Sourour could have shown more care towards those sick young women, who are desperately seeking for an information as an advice from a doctor and demonstrate a better moral and ethical professional on the basis of a caring individual than satisfy his client or boss.

     One interesting central concept of ethics I wanted to talk about in this paper is the National Society of professional engineers, NSPE code of ethics. This is code is crafted from the understanding that engineers play a vital and important role in shaping the quality of human life by the things they design, and implement with the moral and ethical duty of  honesty, impartiality, fairness, and equity. Being an employee, NSPE codes can be practiced towards your employer, your client or the public. NSPE attempts to clarify the role difference of a profession and a job. It differentiates that a profession goes beyond just a job and an obligation of showing up to work. It includes duties and responsibilities to the profession. This is to indicate that profession has an ethical obligation beyond the financial and profitable intent. NSPE also carries the Anshen message in its version that a profession is an organ of a society. It carries with it a load of responsibilities and duties which goes beyond the simple obligation of going to work. 

    Using the concept of NSPE for the case by Sourour, it seems that there is no any ethical procedure used in the case in the first place. This is because it is apparently clear from Sourour’s words “I didn’t think much of it at the time. I had a job to do, and I did it” that no care, even to question the need to any ethical or moral norm is shown. Web designers play a role in how a society works and what it does. Sourour didn’t realize that the profession at his hand can change people’s life for good and bad. Because of Sourour’s direct or indirect involvement, a girl has died, by suicide as a depressing effect of the drug facilitated by seemingly information, prepared with the intent of deceitful coding method. Here Sourour has violated the ethical duty of honesty, impartiality, fairness, and equity towards teenage women, which is included in the NSPE code. In his own words, Sourour also admitted that he had a job to do, and he did it. Here in this context, he clearly cares about the job, and the duty of professionalism, which a job has to include are not considered, which is against this NSPE code of principle. He cared about making his client happy than his professional responsibility. 

      Using the selected ethical tool, the ethics of care, for the action taken on this case, it is apparently clear that the steps Sourour have taken are in many ways against the principle of the ethics of care. The ethics of care places caring about humans before anything else. Monetary and financial benefits are clearly the priority given by Sourour and his client here. The emotional and intuitional elements of ethics of care are not demonstrated on this case. I think it would have been better if Sourour could have thought the duty of his profession to include the care and compassion towards other members of the society as he felt for his sister when he knew she is on the same drug.

      One of the central ideas of Armstrong is that for a profession to flourish, it must include the principle of duty, ethical principles as a duty. Because, for some profession to exist it’s required that some good ethical principles are there. Armstrong is emphasizing the deontological duty is a need for some profession. An example is given that the confidentiality and the care, as not to harm a patient are considered as a duty for Physician as to perform his profession. It is important for a physician to maintain the trust needed for confidential communication of a patient and doctor. Another professional which requires deontological duty is the duty of trust built between a defense attorney and client. Here for example, in a criminal case, even if the lawyer knows that his client is most likely to be charged by the crime, the deontological duty, according to Armstrong is dictating that the lawyer should demonstrate all his capability to free his client from the criminal charges.

     Applying deontological duty for our case, I would say that Sourour is playing two different roles of responsibility towards his client and the teenage girls. Confidential agreement between the client and Sourour or the company Sourour is working for may have been made. An act of deontological duty towards his client, will force Sourour to act as a trusted employee who only has partial obligation to perform his job based on the responsibility given to him, even if he know that will harm the teenage girls. This is the same concept that we saw above,  when we discuss about the defense attorney’s responsibility towards his client even he believes his client has commit the very crime he is trying to defending against. From a perspective of duty towards the teenage girls, sourour fails to maintain a trust between him and the teenage girls. Here the bridge of confidentiality is broken which would create a vacuum of trust between Sourour (Technology in general) and the members of the society (teenage girls). The teenage girls will have a hard time trusting and relying on coders like Sourour, information of medical websites, and technology as a whole which was supposed to be essential to provide reliable and trustful information. For girls to go in to a medical website, to answer questions, in a way to buy the drugs which treats their illness, a trust which is ruined by Sourour was an essential factor.

  Using the selected tool of ethics of care, the action taken in this case is wrong. Here in our case, the ethics of care will prioritize the care of the teenage girls (humans) more than the care of financial benefit, which is an obligation to be found trustful to your client. The right thing to be done was that Sourour could have been more sensitive and caring towards the teenager girls. Especially, when the project manager told him that the website is recommending drugs to girls no matter what the input is, he could have morally acted better rather than sending it to his profit oriented client. 

    As a conclusion, for Sourour’s case, applying the ethics of care, where the deontological duty of professionalism is apparent, I think, Sourour is in a difficult situation of being a professional in duty to the profession he had from childhood. And at the same time I also think that he has failed the responsibility of ethics of care that is expected of his profession which is coded in NSPE. I think he could have done better in conducting his work as a profession, which also has ethical responsibility going with it than just a simple job obligation for salary or profit. This could have confirmed the Anshen’s principle of profession as an organ of a society. Finally it could have been to his best professional posture, if he had developed the website from the position of playing a dynamic part in shaping the quality of human life which incorporates honesty, impartiality, fairness, and equity in the world.