Stephen Glass is now a 39-year-old law clerk at a firm in Beverly Hills, California. But more than decade ago, he was a young reporter on the rise. Glass's career in journalism came to an abrupt halt after it was discovered that over 40 of his articles — written for The New Republic, Harpers, Rolling Stone and other well-regarded magazines — were largely fabricated. Glass made up quotes, invented sources, and backed up his work with elaborate fake notes, fake websites, phony email addresses, phone numbers, and voicemail messages. 

Yesterday, we spoke with blogger Seth Godin, who wanted to help his friend and colleague Amit Gupta, who has leukemia, so he offered up a challenge to his readers: the first bone marrow donor match to Gupta who would donate stem cells would receive $10,000. But under the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, better known as NOTA, it’s a federal crime to give or receive "valuable consideration" for any transplantable organ or tissue, specifically including bone marrow." Many Takeaway listeners responded to this story.

So far, the News Corp. phone hacking scandal has led to the shutdown of the British tabloid News of the World, the arrests of 10 people, and the resignations of several News Corp. executives and high ranking police officials. Today, Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, will face a round of questioning before the British Parliament. And it all started with phone hacking. There’s no question that hacking is illegal and unethical. But is it difficult to do?

This week, The Spine Journal, a scientific peer-reviewed journal of the North American Spine Society, came out with a special issue that critically compared clinical reports of products used to foster bone growth, in a case of a major conflict of interest with potentially devastating results. Doctors had been writing positive peer-reviewed research reviews about a product called Infuse, by a medical device company called Medtronic, but failed to mention that their own research showed the product had proven complications, including higher cancer rates and male infertility. The same doctors were also collecting royalties and fees totaling at least $62 million from Medtronic.

Former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk was found guilty of nearly 30,000 counts of accessory to murder in a German prison. At age 91, Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison, but will be released pending a possible appeal. Demjanjuk is accused of being a prison guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi occupied Poland in 1943. Does he deserve an appeal? David Cesarani,  professor of history at Royal Holloway, University of London, joins us for more on the story. 

This week, a presidential bioethics committee met to discuss one of the most shocking violations of medical ethics — a clinical study done back in the 1970s on nearly 400 African American men in Tuskegee Alabama to study the progression of syphilis. The men believed they were receiving free health care from the US government. But just days before the committee met, a new comprehensive investigation by the Associated Press found that for decades, the United States government also knew about and authorized medical experiments on disabled people and prison inmates. Experiments included injecting cancer cells into the chronically ill at a New York hospital and giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut.

A lot of you responded to our conversation Monday about whether or not to go through with pre-natal testing for Down syndrome. One response in particular stood out: mother-to-be Jocelyn commented on our website that her fetus had tested positive for Down syndrome, and she planned to continue the pregnancy. Some of her caregivers, however, had assumed that she would terminate her pregnancy. To respond to Jocelyn's comment, we have Dr. Andrea Price, OB/GYN at the Women's Health Alliance of New Jersey.

All this week we’re talking with our friends from Scientific American about endings: in nature, culture and science. For most of human history the clearest, most black and white ending in our lives was death. However, in recent decades, life support technology has made death a gray area, leading to right-to-life debates, as in the case of Terri Schiavo. But the question of when someone is dead becomes especially important when dealing with the process of organ donation.

We asked you, our listeners: If you are are an organ donor, what made you agree to it? If not, what's your reason against it? Let us know in the comments or call 877-8-MY-TAKE and we'll play the responses on the air.

One in eight babies in the U.S. is born prematurely. In the best case scenarios, these tiny infants grow up to live healthy lives, and maybe even become famous. Stevie Wonder, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton were all born pre-term.

But in the worst case scenarios, their early days are defined less by potential future accomplishments than by the all-out struggle to hold onto life.

In a 40-page statement of charges, a House investigative panel formally charged Rep. Charles Rangel with 13 ethics violations. Among the charges was the improper solicitation of donations for a New York building bearing Rangel's name. The charges against the lifetime New York Democrat come weeks before midterm elections.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) may face the biggest fight of his long political career when he faces a public ethics hearing on Capitol Hill later this afternoon. At the heart of the hearing are allegations that Rangel underreported his rental income on a villa in the Dominican Republic, held multiple rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, and misused congressional stationery to solicit private donations for a City College center that bore his name.

The New England Journal of Medicine has printed the story of an ethical dilemma that doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital grappled with back in 2008. Is it ethical to keep a brain-dead patient on life support to harvest her eggs, in the hopes of allowing her husband to still father her child? 

A local Minneapolis magazine is getting backlash from readers for its decision to run a story about an anti-gay pastor who attended a support group for men grappling with same-sex attraction. Lavender Magazine reported that Rev. Tom Brock, of the Hope Lutheran Church, who publicly criticized the Evangelical Lutheran Church for liberalizing its gay clergy policies, attended Faith in Action, the Minnesota affiliate of the Catholic Church's Courage program. The program, according to its website, claims people can "move beyond the confines of the homosexual identity" by developing an interior life of chastity.

Ten workers at Foxconn, a Taiwanese-owned iPad factory referred to by some as a "sweatshop" have recently committed suicide, prompting tech journalists and industry watchers to ask: is it time for a Fair Trade Tech company? (Apple CEO Steve Jobs says Foxconn is "not a sweatshop," and that the suicides are troubling, but Apple is "trying to understand right now, before we go in and say we know the solution.")

More than 4,300 human genes have been patented by private companies or academics. But yesterday, a Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Myriad, a biopharmaceutical company, could no longer hold the patent on several genes, including two that are closely associated with breast and ovarian cancer. The ruling has reignited an ethical debate over whether a gene - something that exists naturally and in every human - can become intellectual property. 

Governor David Paterson is under investigation for potentially misusing his power. A representative just resigned (after allegations that he groped a male staffer). Another representative has stepped down from his committee post because of an ethics investigation. And to top it all off, the state government seems paralyzed in the face of an upcoming budget deadline. But how bad is it really?

Our contributor Beth Kobliner brings in a new 6-year survey out today from The Ethics Resource Center, which says people are behaving more ethically at work while the economy is slow. Stephen Dubner is a little skeptical, however, that people reliably self-report their own ethics practices.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) is still the chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee, despite the fact that House Republicans voted to oust him from the chair. As expected, the move failed on a near party-line vote. But that doesn't mean Rangel is out of the hot seat. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, has the story.

The famed moralist and writer Samuel Johnson was born 300 years old today. Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine, gives us his take on what the crusty, eminently quotable moralist might have made of some of our present-day dilemmas.

1784. ÆTAT.- And now I am arrived at the last year of the life of Samuel Johnson, a year in which, although passed in severe indisposition, he nevertheless gave many evidences of the continuance of those wondrous powers of mind, which raised him so high in the intellectual world. His conversation and his letters of this year were in no respect inferiour to those of former years.
--James Boswell, "The Life of Samuel Johnson"

infa'usting. The act of making unlucky. An odd and inelegant word.
--Samuel Johnson, in "Johnson's Dictionary"

What are the biggest moral challenges we face today? We're joined by two people who have given a lot of thought to cultural challenges around the world, including poverty, racism, and the systematic oppression of women. Nick Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times, and his wife Sheryl WuDunn a former New York Times correspondent.

They are authors of the new book “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” and wrote the article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, "The Women's Crusade."