Ethics Newsline®

You’re in tough athletic competition. If you could throw a little farther, run a little faster, endure a little longer, or be a little bigger, you’d have that extra edge. If only there were some drug you could take….

Steroids. It’s easy to see their allure. After all, we live in a culture of drugolatry. There’s a prescription for just about everything — weight control, sexual performance, deep depression, uncontrollable excitement, and on and on. So why not a drug for long-term winning? How about a pill to pop or a serum to inject that will build a superhuman body? What’s wrong with that?

A lot, says Major League Baseball, one of numerous athletic entities (including the Olympics) to have banned steroids. In recent weeks some of baseball’s top professionals (San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds and New York Yankees players Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield) have been accused of using steroids. The drugs reportedly were traced to a firm known as the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), two of whose principals were indicted last month on charges of distributing a steroid known as THG, which BALCO allegedly developed specifically to avoid detection by normal drug-screening tests.

Such tests are increasingly commonplace in sports. Hence this new under-the-radar offering from BALCO. But nailing one firm won’t solve the problem. The issue is one of attitude — not only among some players but among some fans as well. For those fans, the logic goes like this: We like winners, winners use steroids, so we like steroids. True, steroids are banned, but fans need to understand why. They need to grasp the ethical as well as the legal case against them. Here are three arguments, in ascending order of importance.

First, steroids pose a health risk. That may be particularly true for teenagers, who find so many exemplars in professional sports. If those exemplars act in willful disregard for their own health, they’re giving teenagers license to do the same.

This argument, often heard, may not be the most compelling. The stereotypical teen is famously dismissive of health-related arguments: He or she intends to live forever. More thoughtful teens, surrounded by technological innovation, may feel that new steroids will be invented that pose no health risks, rendering the health argument moot in the long term. Besides, even if risk is present, doesn’t society already allow individual choice in taking informed chances? Is steroid use, some may ask, any more dangerous than riding motorcycles without helmets, as some states still permit?

More powerful may be the argument of unfairness. Athletics is predicated on fairness. Each sport is hedged with rules to help factor out unjust means of winning — right down to the requirements, so important in college sports, governing the seasons of the year during which a team may or may not practice.

But regulations don’t forbid individuals from staying in shape or developing their physical condition, even during the off-season. How they work out and what they eat is seen to be important — part of the disciplined training that lets some athletes prevail over others. On these points, the rules are silent. They don’t limit the number of push-ups you do or steaks you eat. The subtlety of steroids, however, is their claim that they do no more than diet and exercise can do: bulk up the muscles and strengthen the body. In fact, steroids substitute dope for discipline. And since drugs are expensive and available only through the right connections, steroid use allows some athletes to buy their way to glory rather than earning it themselves — a distinctly unfair advantage.

Which gets to the third argument, having to do with one of the oldest questions in moral philosophy: What is man? Is a human no more than a machine to be tinkered with, reconstructed, and built up by whatever means possible? Or is an individual an extraordinary being, far more than mere physique, whose personal accomplishments are earned by individual and collective initiative rather than by the stimulus of an abnormal substance on the brain and body? As a culture, do we want sports to send the signal to the young that athletics means developing only the physical side of our individuality, possibly to the detriment of our other sides? As fans, do we want athletics to be played by real people like us, rather than by artificially enhanced beings?

Abstract as it may sound, this third argument may be the most compelling. In the end, athletics matters because it pushes the envelope of what “people like us” can do. The most damaging thing for sports would be the perception that games are increasingly played only by robots, freaks, or mutants. Go down that road, and you end up with professional wrestling, widely understood to be a mere spectacle having little relation to athletic competition.

If athletics matters, it is because it provides so many metaphors for real life. Make it artificial and the metaphors evaporate — along with real fans and real players. Sports is too important to poison it with steroids.

(c)2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“I’ve been around here 18 years and I’ve never seen anything quite this bizarre.”

– U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), describing last week’s sudden about-face by lawmakers, killing a proposed bill that would have given the gun industry widespread immunity from lawsuits. The measure died after senators added two amendments — one renewing the about-to-expire 10-year ban on assault weapons, another requiring background checks for purchases at gun shows (sponsored by McCain). The bill, which was expected to pass easily, collapsed suddenly under a 90-to-8 vote against the measure — a turnaround widely attributed to pressure from the National Rifle Association, which emailed and instant-messaged senators mid-debate and urged them to kill the bill because of the amendments. “I’m a bit numb,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the New York Times. “They had the power to turn around at least 60 votes in the Senate. That’s amazing to me.” (“Senate Leaders Scuttle Gun Bill Over Changes,” New York Times, Mar. 3)

NEW YORK
Domestic decorating maven Martha Stewart was convicted last week on four federal charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements regarding her sale of nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone stock in December 2001.

Stewart, who will be sentenced in June, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, though allowances under federal sentencing guidelines could reduce the sentence to less than one year, reported the New York Times.

She and her lawyers immediately said they would appeal the verdict.

Stewart, who was indicted last summer, also originally faced charges of securities fraud after investigators accused her of trying to deceive investors with her public protestations of innocence. That charge was thrown out last month by Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum.

Last week, a Manhattan jury convicted Stewart on the four remaining counts against her, finding her guilty of trying to conceal that she had been tipped off that her friend, ImClone founder Samuel Waksal, and his family were dumping their ImClone shares ahead of unfavorable news.

Waksal is serving seven years in prison after pleading guilty to insider trading and other charges, noted the Washington Post.

Prosecutors had been criticized for targeting Stewart because her case concerned a personal transaction involving a relatively small amount of money in comparison to recent scandals at Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom, which felled companies. But, as USA Today reports, prosecutors maintained that cracking down on Stewart sent an important message about stock-market manipulation.

“It’s very important for us to protect integrity of this system,” said David Kelley, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, after the verdict. “Failure to do so results in flood of corruption.”

Former Manhattan prosecutor David Gourevitch, also quoted by USA Today, concurred. “The government’s message is that lying and obstructing an investigation is a fundamental attack on the justice system and we will respond harshly and severely.”

Although last week’s guilty verdict was a blow, Stewart’s lawyer, Robert Morvillo, put an upbeat spin on the bad news.

“We look at this as an opportunity for us to go to the next round and to explain to the Court of Appeals what we think went wrong in this case,” he said outside of the courthouse.

“I will appeal the verdict and continue to fight to clear my name,” Stewart added in a statement on her personal Web site. “I believe in the fairness of the judicial system and remain confident that I will ultimately prevail.”

Also convicted last week was Stewart’s Merrill Lynch stockbroker Peter Bacanovic, who was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, lying to federal investigators, and perjury. He was acquitted on one count of making false documents, reported the Post.

Bacanovic faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, but as a first-time offender likely will see as little as one year behind bars, noted the Times.

NEW YORK
The federal government last week took its case against WorldCom executives to the highest rung, charging former CEO Bernard Ebbers with fraud and conspiracy in an $11-billion accounting fraud that pushed the company into bankruptcy.

Ebbers pleaded not guilty to the three federal charges of fraud, conspiracy, and making false statements, which carry a combined maximum sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

“Bernie Ebbers never sought to mislead investors, never sought to improperly manipulate WorldCom’s numbers, never improperly took any money, and never sought to hurt the company he built,” said his lawyer, Reid Weingarten.

Ebbers’s not-guilty plea came 24 hours after his former colleague, former WorldCom chief financial officer Scott Sullivan, pleaded guilty to the same charges, reported the Reuters news agency.

As part of his plea, Sullivan has promised to help prosecutors in their case against his former boss.

The two men are accused of overseeing $11 billion in fraudulent bookkeeping designed to make investors and analysts believe that the financially struggling WorldCom was meeting its earnings projections.

WorldCom, once the nation’s No. 2 long-distance phone company, was forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2002 after the accounting irregularities were exposed.

The company is expected to emerge from bankruptcy next month under the name MCI Inc., noted the Los Angeles Times.

The trial of Bernard Ebbers is scheduled to begin on November 9, although prosecutors said the date could be delayed if more charges are added, according to the AP.

WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court last week rebuffed a request to weigh in on whether or not Justice Antonin Scalia should recuse himself from a pending case against his friend, Vice President Dick Cheney.

The court’s reply was directed to the Sierra Club, which has sued Cheney over his refusal to disclose details regarding with whom and how he formulated the nation’s oil-friendly energy policy.

Cheney insists the records are private and not subject to disclosure laws. The Sierra Club, together with the conservative group Judicial Watch, claim the records should be available under the Freedom of Information Act.

After a lower court ruled against Cheney, the Bush administration asked the Supreme Court to consider the case. The court agreed to do so in mid-December. Three weeks later, Cheney and Scalia went on a Louisiana hunting trip together in Air Force Two, raising eyebrows and questions of bias.

So far, Scalia has refused to recuse himself from the case, saying his personal friendship with Cheney has no bearing on his ability to hear the case professional and impartially.

Disagreeing, the Sierra Club last month asked the full court to take up the issue, reported the Los Angeles Times. In a one-sentence reply, the court said it would defer to tradition and leave the matter up to Scalia alone.

The concise reply follows a February piece from the Times noting that Scalia went on a 2001 speaking and hunting trip with the dean of a Kansas law school who was arguing two cases before the Supreme Court.

Scalia and Kansas officials present for the law-school speech and hunting trip told the Times that pending litigation was not discussed and that no favors were requested. Scalia ruled in favor of the officials in both cases.

This week, the Times reported that Scalia, while deliberating in a landmark gay-rights case, also gave a keynote dinner speech to a conservative group advocating against gay rights, further jeopardizing his appearance of impartiality.

Responding to the Times, Scalia echoed his argument about his relationship with the Cheney case, insisting his impartiality could not be “reasonably questioned.”

In its petition to the Supreme Court, the Sierra Club noted that Scalia’s actions have cast doubt on the integrity of the legal process surrounding Cheney’s case, with 20 of the nation’s 30 largest newspapers publishing editorials calling on Scalia to recuse himself from the upcoming April hearing.

CHICAGO
In the latest flap over journalistic fabrication, the Chicago Tribune last week said it was reviewing the past three years of stories written by a former Tribune reporter who admitted falsifying details in a recent piece.

Uli Schmetzer, a 16-year veteran of the Tribune’s staff and a two-year contract freelancer for the paper, has admitted concocting the name and profession of an Australian quoted in a Feb. 24 article.

The piece, which covered riots in Australia following the death of a 17-year-old Aborigine boy being chased by police, quoted a disparaging remark by an Australian psychiatrist named Graham Thorn.

Aborigine “people always complain. They want it both ways — their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won’t work. They steal, they rob, and they get drunk. And they don’t respect the laws,” the quote read.

After a reader complained that the quote did not “sound like something a psychiatrist would say,” Tribune editors began looking into the quote, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.

Under questioning, Schmetzer first said he had changed only the name to protect the subject’s identity. Later, he admitted to changing the profession as well, according to the report.

But Schmetzer insisted that “the quotation was uttered by an Australian man of his acquaintance,” the Tribune said in a published apology, announcing plans to look into his previous work for signs of other tampering.

“We’re going to read the stories and see what looks odd — if anything — and where might quotes seem too perfect,” Tribune public editor Don Wycliff said.

Schmetzer, who resigned from the Tribune last week, admitted breaching journalism ethics, but said he felt he had “certain obligations to the source,” accusing “armchair editors” of overreacting, the Associated Press reported.

BOSTON
Harvard University last week announced steps to further widen its doors to disadvantaged students, saying higher education was being harmed by the exclusion of talented youth from lower-income families.

Harvard president Lawrence Summers said the university no longer would ask families earning less than $40,000 to pay any money for their children’s education. Previously, those payments averaged $2,300, reported the New York Times.

Parents earning between $40,000 and $60,000 also will see a drop — from an average of $3,500 to an average of $2,250, noted the report. Students still will be expected to contribute via work-study programs and summer jobs.

Tuition, room and board, and fees at Harvard cost nearly $38,000 this year, according to the Associated Press.

Worried that higher education was failing to bridge class divides, Summers said it instead seemed to be reinforcing them through the exclusion of poor students who had the talent but not the funds to attend the prestigious school.

“When only 10 percent of the students in elite higher education come from families in the lower half of the income distribution, we are not doing enough,” Summers told the Times.

“Our doors have long been open to talented students regardless of financial need, but many students simply do not know or believe this,” Summers said. “We are determined to change both the perception and the reality.”

Other announced measures include waived application fees, subsidized visits for prospective students, funds for books and other needs, as well as an aggressive campaign to recruit talented students from poorer families.

Harvard’s move follows similar outreach efforts by Princeton, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Virginia, noted the AP.

SAN FRANCISCO
Catholic Charities in California cannot refuse to cover contraceptives under its employee health-care plan, the California Supreme Court ruled last week in a decision watched closely for its wider implications.

California, along with 19 other states, has a law requiring all employers who offer prescription health-care coverage to also cover contraception, deeming its exclusion to be discriminatory against women.

Catholic Charities filed suit in 2000, arguing that it was a “religious employer” and therefore exempted from the law, noting that church dogma forbids contraception, reported the New York Times.

Last week, the state’s Supreme Court rejected the group’s line of reasoning with a 6-to-1 vote, finding that in legal terms, Catholic Charities is a religious organization in name only.

Noting that the organization employs mostly non-Catholics, provides a wide range of social services to mostly non-Catholics, and mostly declines to preach its Catholic teachings, the court ruled that it does not meet any of the criteria required for the exempted designation, according to the Times.

Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, denounced last week’s decision as an attack on religious rights by a court that failed to understand the charity’s true nature.

“Officially and formally, Catholic Charities of Sacramento is part of the Catholic Church in Sacramento, answerable to the local bishop and providing the services the church provides as a religious organization,” Dolejsi told the Times.

While the court acknowledged the group’s origin, it ruled that Catholic Charities’ practice was sufficiently secular to qualify the group as a nonreligious employer subject to state law concerning contraception.

“The court’s decision ensures that … employers cannot impose religious views about family planning on employees who may not agree with them,” American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Margaret Crosby told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last week’s case was watched widely as a harbinger of how other courts might rule in similar cases. One such case is currently working its way through the New York legal system, according to the Times.

PALO ALTO, California
As U.S. pharmaceutical firms shift a growing number of their drug trials to poorer nations, companies are facing tough ethical questions about what — if anything — they owe to volunteers when the tests are done.

The quandary is covered in a report from last week’s New York Times, which found little consensus among corporate executives about how to handle end-of-trial issues.

While some firms continue to provide volunteers with drugs after the tests have concluded, others simply wash their hands of the volunteers, saying the cost of setting up shop in underdeveloped countries is too steep.

Even if they end volunteers’ access to helpful drugs, companies note that subjects gain access — even if only temporarily — to medicine, equipment, and doctors whose services they otherwise could not afford, noted the Times.

Critics say the tests sometimes put ill-informed patients at risk or treat them like guinea pigs by pulling all support once the companies get the information they want.

“It is no coincidence that though all the big [drug] companies are based in the United States or Europe, their major tests are conducted on poor people in Third World countries,” charged a women’s group in India, where lawmakers now are considering a law to bolster oversight of drug trials, reported OneWorld.net.

Other drug firms fall somewhere in between, struggling to weigh moral obligations with economic needs — complicated dilemmas that touch on physician ethics, corporate practices, and social inequities.

“Do we have an obligation to everyone in the trial or to everyone in the community, the province, the nation, the region of the world? We haven’t really figured this out,” Dr. Ruth Faden, the director of the Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times.

“We seem to hit a wall of moral unease,” she added. “In the end, I’m not sure exactly where we ought to end up.”

LONDON
Many of the world’s leading sportswear firms were accused last week of exploiting workers in a push to get cheap merchandise on store shelves in time for the August 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Adidas, Asics, Fila, Mizuno, Nike, Puma, and Umbro were among the firms singled out by last week’s report, “Play Fair,” which was released jointly by Oxfam, Global Unions, and the Clean Clothes Campaign.

The report focused on the alleged mistreatment of millions of workers in Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Turkey, reported the Reuters news agency.

Workers surveyed by the groups say they are being forced to work 16-hour-plus days in hostile conditions for meager pay in order to stock store shelves with Olympic-emblazoned T-shirts, shoes, and memorabilia.

“The exploitation and abuse of workers’ rights endemic in the industry is violating that Olympic spirit,” warned Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and spokesman for Global Unions.

The report calls on sportswear firms and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to make sure that the rush to profit from the Olympics does not injure the poor.

“The IOC has an obligation to challenge the abusive business practices of its sponsors and licensees,” the groups said in a joint statement. “The industry needs to make prices fairer, deadlines more appropriate, and treat labor standards as important a set of criteria as cost, time, and quality.”

Several of the companies mentioned in the report last week said they would carefully review its contents, with many adding that they already bar sweatshop-like conditions under codes of conduct now in place, reported Reuters.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

VANCOUVER
An unemployed Vancouver woman with a chronic disease and living in a mobile home with two sons, both of whom also are unemployed, has shown a great example of honesty in the midst of poverty.

While working as a volunteer at a thrift store, the woman, Ms. Shirley Steward, discovered nearly $130,000 in a bunch of garbage bags that had belonged to an elderly recluse who had passed away.

When she returned the money to its rightful owners, she received a reward of $38.

Reinforcing the ethical lesson she was providing by example, Ms. Steward said she did not expect any reward and was just “an average nice person.”

With Canada mired in the midst of one of the most serious corruption scandals involving crown corporations, senior government officials, ad agencies, and politicians, Canadians are celebrating quietly this demonstration of honesty and ethical behavior.

From BDO Stoy Hayward:

“Forget cigarettes and alcohol, working Scots believe the Chancellor [Gordon Brown, the governmental head of Scotland's finances] should consider introducing new ’sin taxes’ on household waste and fast food to help plug his budget black hole.

“It seems that environmental concerns are top of the list for taxpayers. Non-biodegradable household wastes — such as disposable nappies [diapers] and plastic bags — are the most popular future sin tax, according to a new survey from tax advisers, BDO Stoy Hayward.

“Forty-seven percent of Scottish taxpayers believe the government should place extra charges on these offending items with the same percentage wanting more tax on pesticides. Thirty-five percent would be happy to see a financial deterrent on the use of aerosol sprays.

“As the debate around Britain’s so-called obesity time bomb continues, Gordon Brown could also consider including unhealthy food in any new ’sin tax’. More than a third (36 percent) of Scots believe that fast-food takeaways should be taxed. Surprisingly, those aged 16-24 feel particularly strongly on the subject, with 43 percent of young taxpayers in favor of the charge….

“And whilst Scottish taxpayers are prepared to part with their own cash, they also want to see businesses make a contribution. Green issues should also be top of the list when it comes to businesses as 71 percent of Scottish taxpayers believe that companies should be made to pay more for air pollution, 46 percent for noise pollution and 44 percent for the use of pesticides.

“Sandy Knox, tax partner for BDO Stoy Hayward in Scotland, said: ‘Scottish taxpayers appear to be happy to put their money where their mouths are on issues relating to health and the environment. They accept that a proportion of their income tax goes towards the NHS [National Health Service] and ecological initiatives and appear to be willing to pay direct charges to help curb use of products that exacerbate problems for these services.’…”

“We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.”

– G. K. Chesterton (English journalist and author, 1874-1936)