BIOETHICS PROF TALKS ECSTASY, CHEATING

Even professors are not above using drugs to get attention.

Last night, Bioethics Professor Glenn McGee admitted to his audience, "I'll
be blunt, I wanted to pack the house," as his reasoning for choosing
Ecstasy and its medical usage as the focus of his lecture.

McGee's lecture entitled "Ecstasy: A Drug That Will, Er, Won't, Er, Might
Be Bad, Uh, OK For You, Maybe -- Bioethics and the Bungling of MDMA" drew a
crowd of about 80 to the Bodek Lounge of Houston Hall.

McGee's speech touched upon the issue of integrity as a whole, and how the
term "cheating" can be placed into all aspects of people's lives.

"It's puritanism versus 'I want a better me,'" he said of today's society.

McGee said cheating takes on the search for a "higher being" -- and that
whether it be the drugging of athletes, prep courses for the SATs or Prozac
to cure depression --we as a society are looking for a leg up.

Americans do their best to "de-emphasize the rational," McGee said. "People
are constantly looking for signs."

This connection segued into McGee's theory that Ecstasy is used as a
cheating device to help create intimacy in an individual's life.

Though it has not been proven that MDMA -- commonly known as Ecstasy -- can
cause brain damage, the majority of Ecstasy sold on the streets is "made
mostly by college students," McGee said. "Unregulated, it's clearly
dangerous.... You take an Ecstasy tab, you're taking your life in your own
hands."

But McGee added that pure MDMA has been found to create a sense of
happiness, which he compared to people's search for enlightenment through
religion.

"What if a pill actually made you feel that you could turn a corner in your
life?" he said, then asked how taking this pill would be different from
cheating.

Questions such as these made for an engaged audience who peppered McGee
with feedback after the lecture concluded.

"Listening to him speak is like an abundance of just encyclopedic knowledge
that you [are] alternatively drowned in and want to scream at," College
junior Ariel Bieler said, adding, "I personally loved how he tied the drug
to our understanding of happiness."

The lecture served both as the first general body meeting for the Bioethics
Society and as the kick-off lecture to Integrity Week, hosted by the
University Honor Council.

College sophomore Tristen Mosler, who helped organize the event as a member
of the Honor Council, said, "It was amazing, I had no doubt McGee would
bring in a good crowd because of the type of speaker he is. He's Mr.
Bioethics on campus."

While dealing with such a sensitive issue as drug usage, McGee still
managed to keep the atmosphere light, at one point joking that "I don't
actually have pills -- it's Integrity Week, isn't it?"