SJ Longthorne

Seeing as heart disease causes more than a quarter (26 per cent) of all deaths in the UK; that's over 150,000 deaths each year, its vastly more unethical for food scientists to create and provide for an industry that perpetuates this level of death.

So... you DO think it's unethical? ;)

Well it's all relative, I personally find gambling to be similar to drinking, it's an activity that I have no interest in, so I avoid it, but I dont care of others enjoy it or ruin their lives over it. Its only unethical if they target children or set up games where it's a scam

Interesting. I once worked for a book publisher that didn't read the submissions; they were all put on a pile to be taken out at varying times to seed their hopes with requests for further work (which also wasn't read), waiting until they were hooked before asking for X grand.

This was marketing at people who couldn't (and wouldn't) get traditionally published, many of whom were mentally troubled or disadvantaged. You rarely saw more than £500 in royalties (average was much lower), but the author paid several thousand.

Disregarding the fact that the names on the contracts were all fake, do you believe this to be unethical?

I don't get why someone would pay several thousand to be published. What benefits are they getting out of it? Do these books show up in libraries or bookstores? (I don't know anything about this industry)

They did, yeah. I believe they went to Waterstones (often in the clearance pile) and to Amazon. They were also sent to the Oxford and Cambridge university libraries, which is standard in the industry. You'd be surprised what people will pay to get published.