Gorp

A coworker is taking a week off to be with her 6-year-old daughter 24-7 while the little girl fasts for six days—not a total fast, but a diet of fruit, nuts, and water, part of a tradition observed, I’m told, in her native India. The mother is a kind, lovely lady and has been forthright with our bosses about why she needs time off. I know she loves her child but fear that this diet is a form of abuse. Do I report it, or do I respect their tradition?
Anonymous, New Jersey

Obviously, intervention on your part depends on whether your colleague’s little girl is fat.

Donor Secrecy

I am the head of a private investigations company. We have been approached by a woman whose 4-year-old child was conceived through an anonymous sperm donor. She wants us to locate the donor so that when her child turns 18, she can tell her who her biological father is. May we ethically take the case?
S.P., New York

Listen, dick: anonymous sperm donors are either junkies seeking fast cash or perverts seeking cheap thrills, if not perverted junkies seeking both. Women who resort to sperm donors are just old-fashioned ugly. Best bet is for you to take this cow’s cash and tell her the bastard’s pop died a war hero.

Our master’s degree program in public policy requires students to devise solutions to a real-life policy problem—this year, the crisis in military recruitment and retention. The best paper will be forwarded to the Department of Defense. We students oppose the war in Iraq and the military’s rejection of gay recruits and see each as a cause of the recruitment problem. Is it ethical to require us to participate in an exercise aimed at assisting an institution whose policies we morally oppose?
H.V.S., A.K., Cambridge, Mass.

Holy fuck, the D.O.D. really needs to commandeer grad students’ senior theses for help? Oh fuck. We are so fucking fucked.

Dealing with Dealers

I live in a gentrifying neighborhood. Someone on the block is dealing drugs that, I recently learned, are less benign than I’d assumed; he’s dealing crystal meth. I believe that the drug laws are overly punitive, and I’ve never had a problem with the dealer. But I would like to see the block cleaned up and the drug traffic gone. What’s the morality of narcking on the neighbors?
Anonymous, Brooklyn

So … where in Brooklyn exactly? I hear Red Hook is gentrifying these days (“Cobble Hill West” my arse). Is it Red Hook? Whereabouts? That shady bricked-up brownstone on Van Brunt?