The a2ethics.org Year in Ethics: Take the 2008 Quiz

1. Women athletes are increasingly plagued by ACL injuries. In this college softball game, after the batter hit a home run, and then blew out her knee getting to first base, what happened?:

a. her team's base coach got another player to run for her so she could be credited with a home run, the only home run of her senior season.

b. the umpires allowed her as much time as it took to crawl around the bases so she could get the home run.

c. two members of the opposing team carried her around the bases to give her the home run. By giving the injured batter's team a home run, they lost the game.

2a. In the fall elections, several states included ballot initiatives where ethics dominated. In which state did voters approve doctor-assisted suicide?:

a. Oregon

b. Massachusetts

c. Washington

2b. In which state did voters approve a Humane Farms measure, but voted against same sex marriage?:

a. New York

b. Vermont

c. California

2c. In which state did voters decide to restrict campaign contributions for groups who received government contracts over $100,000?:

a. Illinois

b. Colorado

c. Florida

3. Who is the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, an influential book which advocates drastic change in American agriculture policy? :

a. Barbara Kingsolver

b. Earl Butz

c. Michael Pollan

d. Farmer Green Jeans

4. Harriet McBryde Johnson, lawyer and public spokesperson for Not Dead Yet, a disability rights organization, died this year at age 51. Ms. Johnson, born with a muscle-wasting disease, engaged in a well-publicized philosophical dispute with a well-known philosophy professor over the rights of others to determine the life and happiness of individuals with disabilities. The well-known philosophy professor is::

a. Kwame Anthony Appiah

b. David Hume

c. Peter Singer

d. John Rawls

5. This is only the fourth time doctors have performed this controversial transplant. What kind of transplant is it? :

a. baboon heart to newborn heart

b. face

c. kidney

6. What country's leaders refused to allow foreign aid workers into the affected region when a cyclone devastated it? :

a. Myanmar

b. North Korea

c. Zimbabwe

d. Sri Lanka

7. Fabricated memoirs have fooled editors, publishers and Oprah Winfrey. This author was on her way to a best seller when her family made her fess up. Her book was about: :

a. being abandoned and put out to sea in a boat, then rescued and brought up by Somali pirates.

b. escaping from a cellar where she had been kept by her father for several years,then finding herself and happiness in a community of religious polygamists.

c. what it was like to be a white girl, raised by a black family and in her teen years, joining a Los Angeles gang and living the gang life.

8. Which museum had to give up its claims to a famous vase by January 2008 because of evidence it had been acquired through looting?:

a. J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles

b. Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC

c. The British Museum in London

d. The Metropolitan Museum in New York

9. Which CEO was arrested for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of $50B over 20 years? :

a. Lehman Brothers, CEO Richard Fuld, Jr.

b. General Motors, CEO Rick Wagoner

c. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, CEO Bernard Madoff

d. Samsung, Chairman Lee Kun Kee

10. The Vatican's doctrinal office issued a comprehensive bioethics document, its first in 20 years. All of the following are prohibited except::