Perils of using Hurricane Katrina to teach engineering ethics

Hurricane Katrina seems to be not a good case for teaching engineering ethics. There are three distinct reasons for these: first, there was the question of what happened, about who made the crucial decisions, what were the consequences or what was thought to justify them; second, there was the question of what part the engineers had in what happened, which decisions were theirs and which belonged to elected or appointed officials who were not engineers; and third, there was also the question of what part of engineering ethics had in the decisions engineers did make. For many engineering decisions, the ethical standard is clear and uncontroversial that there is no ethical problem. Presenting a hypothetical case as if it were an actual case is deceptive, an unethical way to teach engineering ethics.