Ethics Newsline®

“There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes, it will be from failure of human wisdom.”

– (Andrew) Bonar Law (British (Canadian-born) statesman, 1858-1923)

From the Gallup News Service:

“The United States marks the anniversaries this week of two of the nation’s most highly publicized environmental disasters. Ten years ago this week, the Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of Alaskan North Slope crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. Twenty years ago this week (March 28), an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sent a plume of radiation into the air. . . .

“Even after ten years, the Exxon Valdez accident appears to remain alive in the minds of many Americans, with images of oil-soaked birds and marine mammals washing up on the once-pristine shores of Alaska’s Prince William Sound. When Gallup interviewers asked Americans whether the spill has mostly been cleaned up or whether there is still oil in the water and on the beaches, 66 percent say they believe Prince William Sound is still contaminated, despite the estimated $2 billion dollars Exxon has spent on a massive cleanup effort. Additionally, when asked to identify the name of the company that owned the tanker, 62 percent of Americans are able to correctly name Exxon.

“The 1989 spill has been followed by a number of smaller spills, and 91 percent of Americans believe another accident comparable to the one involving the Exxon Valdez is likely to occur again in the future. . . .

“Since 1989 [the year of the Exxon Valdez oil spill], Gallup has been asking Americans to choose between protecting the environment, even at the risk of curbing the economy, and economic growth, even if the environment suffers to some extent. The public has always come down strongly in favor of the environmental alternative, with only relatively slight variations from year to year. In 1990 and 1991, for example, 71 percent of the public chose the environmental alternative. In the recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of March 12-14, 65 percent selected the environmental position, compared to 30 percent who favored economic growth.

“There are differences on this growth versus the environment question by age and political persuasion. Seventy-one percent of those aged 18-49 favor environmental protection over economic growth, but the support for environmental protection drops to just 51 percent of those over 65. In addition, just a bare majority, 51 percent, of conservatives said they would be willing to protect the environment over economics, while 81 percent of those who consider themselves politically liberal support environmental protections.”

PONTIAC, Michigan
A Michigan jury last week found Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder and the illegal delivery of a controlled substance, dealing a blow to Kevorkian’s crusade to legalize assisted suicide.

Last September, Kevorkian delivered a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a terminally ill Michigan man who had asked for Kevorkian’s help in ending his life.

Kevorkian videotaped Youk’s death, and excerpts of the tape were shown on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last September, igniting a firestorm of debate over media ethics and Kevorkian’s actions.

Kevorkian, who sought the trial in order to push for a legal decision regarding assisted suicide, argued that his lethal injection was not murder, but a merciful medical service.

Kevorkian, who had previously been tried four times for murder, with three trials ending in acquittal and one in mistrial, has reportedly assisted in the deaths of more than 130 terminally ill people, CNN reported.

Sentencing is scheduled for April 14.

When President Clinton justified NATO’s military intervention in Serbia as "a moral imperative," what did he mean?

An "imperative," says my dictionary, is a command, an order, something "not to be avoided or evaded; urgent; obligatory; binding; compulsory." Imperatives can arise in many ways. Dad says "Mow the lawn!" Nature says "You can’t stay awake another minute!" The bank says, "Pay now or else!" These sorts of imperatives involve the authority of power, or physiology, or economics. They can be potent. But they may or may not lead us to act up to our highest standard of right.

So what’s a moral imperative?

The word "moral" has to do with that standard of right. It speaks to our capacity to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, virtue from vice — and, more specifically, to do what is good, right, and virtuous. A moral imperative, then, is an unavoidable demand to do the right thing. It is not a military, or political, or strategic imperative — though any of those could also be moral. Nor is it a legal imperative, since that which is moral is not necessarily that which is legally binding or enforced by legislation.

A moral imperative, instead, imposes on us a requirement to act according to our highest sense of ethics and values. If we fail, we will not necessarily be driven from office, defeated in battle, cast into poverty, or thrown into jail. We will simply have violated our core moral values.

And what are those values? Among the ones most important to people of all races and cultures, two seem particularly relevant to the Serbian crisis: compassion and responsibility.

It is compassion, after all, that leads us to recoil in horror from televised images of women and children fleeing the torched villages of Kosovo through snowy mountain passes. The need to care for others in need, to respond to human suffering, to comfort the oppressed — this is surely a fundamental moral value. Driven by such feelings, we’re ready to commit military forces to stop the bullying and protect the innocent.

Responsibility also urges us to act — to take a stand, to step forward when needed, to exercise our duty toward humanity. But it has a flip side. It also urges us to engage responsibly, with a clear set of objectives and a defined strategy. A moral imperative to begin carries with it a responsibility to end. It demands a concern for outcomes — a concern as relevant for military planners as for teenagers falling in love, hospitals approving risky procedures, and investors setting up a new venture.

It is on this issue of responsibility that the NATO intervention has faced the most serious questions. Does the Alliance have a responsibility to intervene? If so, does it have a clearly defined exit strategy? If this is truly a moral imperative, then why does that imperative not operate just as strongly in other humanitarian crises where the bullying and killing may be even more severe — in the Congo, or Chechnya, or Kashmir? Is it possible to have a selective moral imperative? Or does a moral argument carry with it a responsibility for consistent application, lest there be different standards of "moral" applied to different situations or parts of the world? If we’re not sending in our forces elsewhere, is it only because we haven’t yet seen the humanitarian tragedies on television? And if that’s the case, is Kosovo a moral or a televisual imperative — or, to put it more politically, is this imperative based more on the clamor of domestic opinion than on the rightness of international intervention?

These are not simple questions. But they reveal a simple truth, which is the difficulty of claiming a moral imperative suddenly. By its very nature, a moral imperative is a long-term demand. It doesn’t blossom out of nowhere. True, it may have lain dormant, brought to notice only when the mix of compassion and responsibility swirls together in a reaction so powerful that we say, "Somebody ought to do something!" But if it’s really a moral imperative, it’s always been there. And it’s most valid if the individuals claiming it have long histories of moral concern, and have been making the moral case, even if unheeded, for years.

In the eyes of many, President Clinton lacks that kind of history — which makes this a difficult argument for him to make. Oddly enough, however, today’s military does have such a history. The post-Cold War trend in Western nations has been to shift military capacities away from an aggressive-deterrent mode and toward a peacekeeping-humanitarian mode. In that mode, compassion and responsibility — rather than national interest, economic gain, or political exigencies — are increasingly viable reasons for military action.

Is this a healthy trend? Is the world better served by military interventions based on moral rather than other imperatives? That depends very much on how the compassion and responsibility are exercised — and whether, in the end, the motive is to be genuinely moral or simply moralizing.

(c)1999 by Rushworth M. Kidder

The information age brings with it some new wrinkles on old problems, and this week’s edition of Business Ethics Newsline highlights some ethical dilemmas relating to issues at least a century old.

We begin with antitrust, a concern since the late 19th century. As we report, Microsoft has tendered a settlement in its hot-issue case, but the government is cool to the offer.

Our next story deals with an age-old problem — swindling — and the government’s response to an increase in high-tech fraud on the Internet.

We follow with a report of interest to anyone involved in administration in the corporate or institutional world: MIT’s self-discovered discrimination against its female faculty.

This is a busy international news week. In addition to the NATO intervention in Serbia discussed in Rush Kidder’s column and our statistics report, we have several international stories: Argentina’s promise to put the brakes on software piracy; a price-fixing case against Argentina’s largest company; and a Brazilian TV host who got personally involved in a kidnapping story and may have ruined negotiations.

On the subject of media ethics, we have a fascinating story out of Washington, where the Supreme Court is hearing testimony about the rights of suspects caught in the media spotlight when reporters and TV crews ride along with police.

Also, we have two stories about global ethics and economics: Nike’s pay raise for Indonesian workers, and a report claiming that economic sanctions are counterproductive.

And we conclude our wrap of the week’s news with a report about a new law that will prohibit nursing homes from moving out Medicaid recipients and replacing them with higher-paying private customers.

Our Canadian correspondent files two analyses this week, one about another ethics allegation made against the prime minister, and the other concerning a Montreal firm blacklisted by the World Bank as that body cracks down on alleged fraud.

We examine some interesting ethics-related stories in the news in our “Trendlines” and “Research Report” features: the apparent necessity to “tip” for good medical care in Poland; the advantages of sleeping on the job; and the U.S. public’s apparent willingness to put the environment before the economy.

There are several follow-up stories this week in our “Whatever Happened to…” department: a verdict in the Pinochet case; more on the tariff spat between the United States and the European Union; the Bre-X mining scandal; and the outcome of the Kevorkian case.

Have a productive, ethical week.

–Carl Hausman

WASHINGTON
Microsoft Corp. last week offered to settle the government’s antitrust case against the software giant, but said it would not accept any restrictions on features it can add to new releases of its software — a stipulation that is receiving a cool reception from the government.

Nineteen states and the U.S. government sued Microsoft last year, charging the company with a variety of anticompetitive practices.

California attorney general Bill Lockyer called Microsoft’s proposal a “minimalist opening offer,” the Associated Press reported.

Microsoft reportedly has offered to amend its contracts with computer and software manufacturers, freeing them to incorporate other companies’ Internet software into their products.

But Microsoft refuses to accept government-imposed limits on integrating future Microsoft software with its Windows operating system, which runs on nearly 90 percent of the world’s personal computers, according to the AP.

Face-to-face meetings between the government and Microsoft are scheduled for this week. The trial, currently in recess, is scheduled to resume in April.

WASHINGTON
The increase in online securities fraud will soon outpace regulators’ efforts to stop scams from bilking online investors of millions of dollars, according to a new study released last week by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO).

The GAO report says the government lacks sufficient personnel, equipment, and money to adequately fight the boom in online securities fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which recently launched a taskforce to fight internet scams, notes that its e-mail hotline pulls in more than 300 fraud complaints a day — up from just 15 a day two years ago, according to the Journal.

Sen. Susan Collins (R.-Maine), whose Senate panel commissioned the GAO study, told the Journal that the government must do more to keep online traders informed and aware of the often erroneous or misleading information propagated over the Internet.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unintentionally discriminated against its female faculty for over a decade, giving them less funding, office space, career advancement, and leadership opportunities than their male counterparts, according to a report prepared and released last week by the college.

Robert Birgineau, dean of MIT’s School of Science, spearheaded the five-year investigation after being approached by the school’s 15 female faculty members in 1994, the Associated Press reported.

While the discrimination was usually “unconscious and unknowing,” Birgineau concluded in his report, its “effects were real.”

Birgineau said he has moved to correct inequities in female faculty members’ salaries, tenure, research funding, office space, and representation on department boards, as well as boosting the pensions of retired female faculty.

Birgineau also recommended a university-wide investigation into discrimination against minority faculty.

MIAMI
Argentine president Carlos Menem last week pledged to crack down on software piracy in Argentina.

Menem made his promise at a Miami meeting of Latin American executives. Latin America is a hotbed of software piracy, the Reuters news agency reported.

The Software Business Alliance, an organization created to fight the $11 billion trade in pirated software, estimates that $68 of every $100 spent on software in Latin America goes to pirates, according to Reuters.

Menem’s announcement came as part of Argentina’s pact with Microsoft Corp., which has agreed to donate software to Argentine schools and help the country develop a lead in providing computer programs to Spanish-speaking markets in exchange for help in hunting down pirates of Microsoft software.

BUENOS AIRES
The Argentine government last week ordered oil giant YPF to pay more than $109.6 million for abusing its market power and forcing domestic customers to pay inflated prices for liquid petroleum gas (LPG).

YPF was charged with illegally barring foreign customers from reselling LPG to Argentine buyers, who were then forced to pay inflated rates for LPG between January 1993 and October 1997, the Reuters news agency reported.

During that time, YPF’s domestic price was as much as 44 percent higher than its export price, Industry secretary Alieto Guadagni said.

The government ordered the company to stop its “clear interference in the free workings of the market,” end its resale restrictions on foreign customers, and submit quarterly reports detailing its prices and sales practices, according to Reuters.

YPF, Argentina’s largest company, denied any wrongdoing and said that it would appeal the ruling.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil
A Brazilian television personality last week sparked a fierce debate over media ethics after his televised efforts to help a kidnapped man incited the man’s abductors to raise their ransom demand and cut off part of the man’s ear.

Controversial personality Carlos Massa asked viewers to send in money to pay the $300,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers of Wellington Camargo, the brother of a popular Brazilian musician.

After Massa’s on-air appeal, the kidnappers upped the ransom to $2 million and cut off a piece of Camargo’s ear, the Associated Press reported.

Camargo’s family and government officials angrily condemned Massa’s interference, claiming he ruined nearly completed negotiations between the kidnappers and Camargo’s family.

Officials in Brazil are now considering toughening media regulations and punishing Massa, who told a radio interviewer that he had made an “involuntary” mistake, according to the AP.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard arguments over whether the growing collaboration between police and media during “ride-alongs” may be violating the privacy rights of police suspects, especially when photos are taken of the arrests.

The debate stems from two separate ride-alongs on which reporters from CNN and the Washington Post joined police to document an attempted arrest and a raid on private property.

Plaintiffs have charged the police with violating their Fourth Amendment rights, which protect U.S. citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, the Associated Press reported.

Police attorneys argued that the ride-alongs educate the public, deter crime, and protect police suspects from police brutality.

But Justice David Souter characterized that argument as “fluff.”

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case by the end of June.

In a related development, the Los Angeles Police Department last week barred ride-along television crews from accompanying police onto private property without the property owner’s permission, according to the AP.

BEAVERTON, Oregon
Nike Inc. last week announced that it would boost entry-level wages for its 70,000 Indonesian workers as part of Nike chairman Phil Knight’s plan to improve factory conditions in Third World countries.

The wage hike affects 25 percent of Nike’s Indonesian workers, who will now earn roughly $29.50 per month, compared to Indonesia’s new minimum wage of about $26 per month, the Reuters news agency reported.

Nike also announced that it would implement a monthly compensation package to help its Indonesian workers pay for housing, health care, transportation, and meals.

Some human rights groups praised Nike’s decision as a “positive” step, but added that the payments, which are based on a single person’s cost of living, are insufficient to cover the medical and living costs of a family, National Public Radio reported.

WASHINGTON
Unilateral economic sanctions against other countries are relatively ineffective, hurt U.S. businesses, and disproportionately benefit foreign competitors, according to a new study.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank, released the report last week.

The report argues that doing business with misbehaving nations effects change more rapidly than isolating them.

Critics, including some human rights groups, say that sanctions send a swift message of disapproval to offending countries, such as the formerly apartheid-ridden South Africa.

Last week, Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) pushed for congressional approval of a sanctions reform bill that would require cost-benefit analyses of possible sanctions, allow for public hearings on sanctions, and require reauthorization of sanctions every two years, the Associated Press reported.

Business groups estimate that sanctions, currently imposed on 26 nations, cost the U.S. economy between $5 billion and $20 billion each year in lost sales and lost jobs, according to the AP.

WASHINGTON
President Clinton last week signed a law barring nursing homes from evicting residents who rely solely on Medicaid to pay their bills, clamping down on nursing homes and doctors who push out poorer residents to make room for higher-paying clients.

The new law also seeks a review of whether current punishments for defrauding federal health care programs should be made more severe, the Associated Press reported.

In a related development, the General Accounting Office (GAO) last week released a report detailing the severe lack of safety oversight at the nation’s nursing homes. According to the GAO report, “serious complaints alleging that nursing home residents are being harmed can remain uninvestigated for weeks or months.”

The Clinton administration has ordered states to overhaul and speed up their inspection procedures. The Department of Health and Human Services has also been asked to conduct a campaign educating nursing home residents and their families about federal safety standards and how to file complaints, according to the AP.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTOWA
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is being accused of conflict of interest concerning government loans to entrepreneurs.

The story goes back to 1993, when the PM and his business partners sold a money-losing hotel in his St. Maurice home district to a local businessman, Yvon Duhaime. Within a few years Duhaime applied for a grant from the federal Department of Human Resources Development to expand the hotel and was granted $109,000 and, later received an even bigger loan from the Business Development Bank of Canada.

In total, Mr. Duhaime, who has a criminal record, received nearly $570,000 in grants and loans to expand the unprofitable hotel.

When the application for the grant was approved, a representative from the PM’s Office was part of the granting committee.

This revelation came at the same time it was also disclosed that approximately $133,000 of public monies was paid to the PM’s private contractor to build an access road and for other work for the PM’s holiday cottage. The contract was untendered for security reasons. There is no evidence that the PM was personally involved in the award of the contract.

The PM’s defenders claim that it is part of any elected Member of Parliament to lobby for job-creating grants in their home districts and that opposition MPs have done the same thing. Moreover, the PM did not directly negotiate over the sale of the hotel and had no previous business relationship with him.

Some commentators are pointing out that while no evidence of actual wrongdoing may surface, at the very least, the appearance of such may be sufficient to require a change in the participation of elected officials in decisions about the granting of public funds to the private sector.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

MONTREAL
A Montreal firm has been permanently blacklisted by the World Bank after it allegedly committed fraud in obtaining a contract.

The action, called a “debarment,” was the first time that the World Bank has announced such a sanction, and was instituted as part of its drive to eliminate fraud and corruption in World Bank projects.

According to the World Bank sanctions committee, the firm, Canadax, was involved in the forgery of two letters of credit sent as part of its bid submission for a $3,275,000 million contract for the supply of computers to Argentina.

WARSAW
Poland’s doctors remain trapped in a system of inadequate pay that forces many to leave public practice or accept bribes from patients hoping for extra attention, according to a report in last week’s Chicago Tribune.

Such “tipping” has become standard practice at many Polish hospitals, according to Dr. Wojciech Feleszko, a physician for seven years at Poland’s prestigious Szenajch Children’s Hospital.

Many doctors “have no choice,” Feleszko told the Tribune. “They have families to feed, and the state is not paying them enough.”

Feleszko, an assistant professor and immunology specialist, earns $250 month — twice the average pay of a worker at Warsaw’s McDonald’s restaurants. A cardiologist with 30 years experience and full tenure at a prestigious Polish hospital earns, at most, $650 per month, according to the Tribune.

Low wages have instigated recent strikes from public physicians, who say that many of Poland’s doctors and medical students are resorting to private practice or quitting medicine altogether in search of better wages.

LOS ANGELES
Sleeping on the job is gaining ground in the United States, where employers are creating “nap zones” to boost worker productivity and job safety, the Reuters news agency reported.

The move toward accommodating weary workers with cubicle-like “spent tents,” relaxing music, and reclining chairs makes financial sense to many employers and industry observers, including the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) in Washington.

According to NSF figures, 56 percent of all working adults experience significant drowsiness during business hours, and 20 percent of the 25 million workers whose hours fall outside the normal business day say they regularly fall asleep on the job.

That on-the-job sleepiness is costing U.S. businesses $18 billion annually in production losses, according to Reuters.

“Push the person long enough … and they’re going to make mistakes,” workplace-trends author Gary Celente told Reuters. “They’re going to crash the company.”

To keep workers focused, charged, and safe, employers and employees are increasingly deciding to “substitute a caffeine fix with a nice healthy nap,” says Celente.