Ethics Newsline®

To walk the cobbled streets of Eger, Hungary, is to be enchanted by a half millennium of history still alive in the stones of this regional city three hours northeast of Budapest.

To talk to Ferenc Bárdos, a leading environmentalist and executive director of the Tree of Life Society for the Environment, is to understand the dilemmas that arise in maintaining that enchantment.

Over a lunch of chicken paprika and beer-battered beef at a restaurant near the main square last month, Mr. Bárdos reminded me that cities don’t remain beautiful all by themselves. Doing so, he raised an ethical dilemma that is emblematic for environmentalists everywhere.

Eger (pronounced EGG-air) came to early prominence because of its hot springs. By 1448 it already had a public bath, built by Carthusian monks. A century later, in 1552, its hilltop castle protected a band of local heroes about whom Hungarian schoolchildren still read. Aided by an early winter and miles of hidden tunnels, those fighters withstood a massive Turkish siege so successfully that the invaders didn’t return for 40 years. When they eventually came back, they established mosques, planted minarets, and sometime after 1610 built the famous Turkish bath still in use today.

Taken over without a fight by the Nazis during World War II, Eger sustained little damage when the Communists drove out the Nazis at the end of the war and chained Hungary to the Soviet bloc. So when Bárdos was growing up, the view from the castle across the roofs of the city must have looked much as it did in prior centuries.

But what warfare hadn’t disrupted, the peacetime Communist government appeared ready to ruin. As Bárdos began his career, local officials were putting forward plans for housing the people of Eger. Needed, they said, were towering cement blocks of flats so typical in post-Soviet countries, so grimly utilitarian, and so offensive to the architectural richness of old Europe. Bárdos and his friends — budding scientists, environmentalists, and urban designers — were active already in local causes. But how could they stop such a permanent blight?

Their answer came, he recalls with a chuckle, by a kind of ruse. Searching old records, they found that Eger had experienced several earthquakes in the past. Never mind that the evidence was scant and unscientific. Never mind that little damage had occurred. Their historical finding was enough to spin an argument that eventually persuaded the Communists to abandon their plans and build low-rise apartments instead. To this day, the view from the parapets retains much of its original charm.

That’s a good result. But was it ethical? To some, the very question seems an affront. If fighting Communism requires deliberately stretching the truth, they would say, then spin must trump honesty. After all, the Communists were masters of revisionist history, corralling every fact into the service of the Soviet ideology. Should an ethical standard prevent Bárdos and his team from doing all they could to stop the desecration of their city — especially when alternative plans would still fulfill the goal of more housing?

To others, however, the ethical question is key. To the extent that ecology and architecture are sciences, they depend on high standards of accuracy, logic, and proof. To pervert information for a political end is to degrade the very basis of science itself. If the only way to fight Communism is to use the same kind of deception from which it drew strength, then the Communist mindset has triumphed already. The only ethical approach is to adopt a standard — in this case, of scientific veracity and verifiability — that you would like to see adopted universally by Communists and their opponents alike.

Not surprisingly, these two views rest on different ethical principles. Those who rankle at the question are probably holding to an ends-based, utilitarian perspective, where consequences determine the rightness or wrongness of the action. Because the towers never got built, the thing turned out right and (say the utilitarians) was therefore ethical.

Those who think the question matters, by contrast, probably dismiss that utilitarian argument as a wooly rationalization. They hold to a rule-based or Kantian approach, where a thing is right only if it can be set forth as a universal principle to which everyone should aspire. Since one such principle is, “Always insist on scientifically accuracy,” this side would have little interest in fudging the truth. For them, right outcomes cannot be won by wrong practices — a standard that the more practical utilitarians, longing to do the greatest good for the greatest number, probably regard as inhumanly severe.

Which side is right? You tell me — which you can do by emailing me. Whichever way you decide, one thing is sure: In our age, science increasingly is called upon to bolster environmental and social causes in the face of possibly destructive government decisions. We haven’t seen the last of the Eger dilemma.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“We are in a regulatory frenzy. Corporations are acting out of fear and they don’t want to take a chance that employees did something wrong under their watch, so they are basically cleaning house. Someone has to say enough.”

– A senior white-collar crime lawyer in Manhattan, speaking to the New York Times about the willingness of companies to fire workers for infractions that might have incurred private reprimands before the era of Enron and WorldCom. “The seemingly frantic reach for the moral high ground is driven as much by self-interest as any attempt at righteousness, now that boards and chief executives have seen how public scandals can torpedo stock prices, alienate customers, and end careers,” writes the Times’s Landon Thomas, Jr. (“On Wall Street, a Rise in Dismissals Over Ethics,” New York Times, Mar. 29)

Special to Newsline from editor Carl Hausman

PINNELAS PARK, Florida
Although the protestors have left the hospice where Terri Schiavo died last Thursday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under a judge’s order despite attempts by Congress, the White House, and the governor of Florida to intervene, the battle over the wrenching right-to-die case continues on several fronts.

Among last week’s developments:

• Religious groups that opposed the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube said they will push for more precise legal standards applied to end-of-life issues. The Schiavo case promises to set off a “moral tsunami,” sweeping up many other families involved in similar situations, according to Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethicist with the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based organization involved in the protests. Earll, one of several spokespersons for religious organizations interviewed by the Associated Press, contended that the conversation must go beyond laws governing end-of-life issues and examine an alleged “imbalance of powers” in the federal government.
• The backlash against the judiciary played out on the floor of Congress last week, with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) saying, “I never thought I’d see the day when a U.S. judge stopped feeding a living American so that they took 14 days to die.” DeLay warned that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.” But according to an analysis in USA Today, politicians who urged executive intervention in the case — like DeLay and President Bush — may face a political backlash. Bush’s approval ratings slid dramatically last week in polls taken after he made a high-profile return to Washington to sign the congressional bill seeking to intervene in the case.
• For many who are disabled, the Schiavo case sparked personal worries about end-of-life issues. The Washington Post reported that some disabled Americans are distrustful of the medical system and worried, in the words of staff writer Ceci Connolly, that they “may be one ER visit away from becoming the next Terri Schiavo.” One who echoed that concern was William Strothers, deputy director of the Center for an Accessible Society. “What happens if I go to the hospital,” asked Strothers, who has been confined to a wheelchair after contracting polio more than 50 years ago, “and they say, ‘He’s so disabled anyway, why should we do these heroic measures?’”

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that a federal law barring gender-based discrimination at U.S. schools and universities applies not only to those suffering the discrimination, but also to whistle-blowers who complain on their behalf.

The 5-to-4 ruling means that Roderick Jackson, an Alabama high school coach fired in 2001 after repeatedly complaining about the treatment of his girls’ basketball team, will have his day in federal court.

Lower court rulings had rejected Jackson’s suit for unfair firing, saying the 1972 anti-discrimination law known as Title IX covered only the girls suffering discrimination, not those — like Jackson — who witnessed the alleged wrongdoing.

The court’s majority last week said that such a narrow interpretation of Title IX was neither intended by Congress nor effective as a method of enforcing the law since it would effectively gag whistle-blowers willing to stand up against discrimination.

“Retaliation against a person because that person has complained of sex discrimination is another form of intentional sex discrimination,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the majority’s ruling.

“Reporting incidents of discrimination is integral to Title IX enforcement and would be discouraged if retaliation against those who report went unpunished. Indeed, if retaliation were not prohibited, Title IX’s enforcement scheme would unravel,” O’Connor wrote, according to the Chicago Tribune.

In the court’s minority dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas claimed that “Jackson’s retaliation claim lacks the connection to actual sex discrimination that the statute requires…. The question before us is only whether Title XI prohibits retaliation, not whether prohibiting it is good policy.”

Backed by last week’s ruling, Roderick Jackson now will try to prove that Ensley High School in Birmingham, Alabama, fired him in 2001 for sticking up for the girls’ team, whose practice facilities were inferior to those of the boys’ team.

Jackson eventually was rehired on an interim basis as coach in 2003, noted the Washington Post.

In other news last week, the Supreme Court ruled that older workers can sue their employers for enacting policies that inordinately affect them as an age bloc, even if those consequences were unintended.

While the court ruled that such “disparate impact” lawsuits are authorized by the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, it also said plaintiffs must identify specific policies or practices — rather than a general atmosphere of antagonism — that caused the harm, according to the Post.

DENVER
Religious beliefs and legal rights came into conflict last week on multiple fronts, prompting debate in the United States and abroad about how to balance competing ideas of morality. Among the developments:

• Colorado’s Supreme Court last week overturned the death sentence of a convicted rapist and murderer, ruling that the jury overstepped by using Bible passages to argue the righteousness of capital punishment.

• The Washington Post offers a roundup on growing reports that some pharmacists are refusing to provide legal medications and prescriptions, such as birth control pills, that violate their religious beliefs.

• The Washington Post last week profiled a picnic by Iraqi students in Basra that became a bloody melee when Shiite Muslim militiamen attacked, saying religious strictures forbade the students’ activities. The students were singing, dancing, and eating in mixed-gender groups.

• Also last week, the Reuters news agency provided a snapshot of the struggle between religious conservatives and their critics in Saudi Arabia, profiling a linguistics professor sentenced to 200 lashes and four months in jail for criticizing the rise of religious extremism.

WASHINGTON
Two of the world’s leading scientific organizations last week independently called on educators and learning centers to withstand pressure from religious groups that would censor the teaching of evolution.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest organization of scientists, last week urged science centers and museums to not water down their displays to accommodate religious theories.

The organization’s letter follows a report that a large number of IMAX theaters, which typically are housed within science centers, have refused to book a movie that touches on evolution and the Big Bang because such views contradict the beliefs of religious audiences, reported NASA’s news outlet, Space.com.

“The desire not to antagonize audiences and to avoid negative business outcomes is entirely understandable,” American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner wrote.

“Yet, the suppression of scientifically accurate information as a response to those with differing perspectives … threatens both the integrity of science and the broader public education to which we all are committed. It is also objectionable to many stakeholders — including many with strong religious convictions — who understand that religion and science are not in opposition,” he added.

Leshner’s letter follows a similar March 4 missive from National Academy of Sciences chief Bruce Alberts, who called on the Academy’s members to rebuff pressure from religious groups opposed to evolution.

Alberts’s letter cited a survey taken by the congressionally chartered National Academy of Sciences, which found that 30 percent of science teachers saying they “feel pushed to de-emphasize or omit evolution or evolution-related topics from their curriculum.”

A growing number of school districts across the United States are debating or encouraging the instruction of “intelligent design,” a theory akin to Creationism that supposes divine invention, not evolution, gave birth to humans in their present form.

Intelligent design advocate Stephen Meyer of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute last week dismissed Alberts’s concerns as “panic among the official spokesmen for science,” reported USA Today.

BRIGHTON, England
Unruly students and teachers’ safety took center stage last week at the annual conference of a leading U.K. teachers’ union, with policy proposals putting the spotlight on cleaning up the classroom.

At the annual conference of the NASUWT, educators discussed how best to prevent classroom violence as well as bullying by school administrators.

U.K. School Standards Minister Stephen Twigg promised to support their efforts, saying the government fully backs “head teachers’ tough decisions to remove or prosecute anyone — whether parent or pupil — who is behaving in an aggressive way,” reported the BBC.

Addressing the NASUWT, Shadow Education Secretary Tim Collins last week proposed “zero tolerance” legislation that would hold parents accountable for the bad behavior of their children at school.

Collins’ proposed Teacher Protection Act would stiffen penalties for student violence, provide anonymity to teachers who complain of abuse, and require parents to sign “good behavior contracts” on behalf of their children. Those who refuse to sign could have their children barred from local schools, reported the BBC.

Teachers at the annual conference also called for reforms to the way allegations of sexual abuse are handled, calling for criminal charges against students whose claims turn out to be false.

Noting that less than 4 percent of alleged sexual misconduct cases result in convictions, the NASUWT said teachers cleared of wrongdoing should have the charges wiped from their records when not found guilty.

Also at the NASUWT meeting, teachers called for school heads to face tougher disciplinary measures for bullying staff, calling on local authorities and school boards to more effectively monitor how teachers are treated on the job.

WASHINGTON
An independent panel investigating allegations of corruption at the United Nations last week faulted U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan for poor management, but stopped short of accusing him of wrongdoing.

Annan has been under fire over his handling of apparent corruption, bribery, and bid rigging in the $64 billion Oil for Food program, administered by the United Nations from 1996 through 2003.

Part of the scandal involved an Oil-for Food contract awarded to Swiss firm Cotecna Inspection Services, which employed Annan’s son, Kojo, prompting charges of favoritism and undue influence, reported the Associated Press.

An independent panel headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker last week released a report concluding that while Kofi Annan should have investigated more fully his son’s ties to Cotecna, there is insufficient evidence to accuse Annan of any wrongdoing.

The panel criticized Annan for failing to hold a thorough investigation of his son’s relationship with Cotecna when it was first reported by the Sunday Telegraph of London in 1999. Instead of insisting upon an “independent, thorough-going professional investigation,” an in-house inquiry dismissed the issue in less than 24 hours, noted the New York Times.

While Volcker’s panel failed to fully vindicate the embattled Annan, they eased his burden by concluding that much of the blame belonged to Kojo Annan and Cotecna, which tried to hide their relationship.

Last week, Kofi Annan called on his son, who has stonewalled investigators since a single interview last October, to cooperate, reported the Los Angeles Times.

“I love my son, and I have always expected the highest standards of integrity from him,” Annan said. “I am deeply saddened by the evidence to the contrary that has emerged, and particularly by the fact that my son had failed to cooperate fully with the inquiry.”

Also coming in for criticism last week were two of Annan’s closest advisers, Dileep Nair and Iqbal Riza, the latter for shredding documents despite Annan’s directive to preserve records for investigators.

WASHINGTON
Former U.S. security advisor Samuel Berger last week admitted taking and destroying documents from the National Archives, agreeing to pay a $10,000 fine and have his security clearance suspended for three years.

The guilty misdemeanor plea ends the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of Berger, who deliberately took the document during two visits to the National Archives in September and October 2003.

After being confronted, Berger initially lied, saying he had taken the documents inadvertently. He returned two of the documents without disclosing that he had shredded three others, reported the Washington Post.

The controversy forced Berger to step down from his role as senior policy adviser to presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

The documents were five copies — three of them nearly identical — of a report on U.S. preparedness to handle terrorism threats in 2000. He was reviewing the report, which he commissioned as national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, before testifying before the 9/11 Commission.

An associate of Berger’s told the New York Times that Berger took the documents because he wanted to compare the five versions side by side to track changes as the report made its way around agencies of the executive branch.

“He was just too tired and wasn’t able to focus enough, and he felt like he needed to look at the documents in his home or his office to line them up,” the unidentified associate told the Times. “He now admits that was a real mistake.”

Officials at the National Archives have said that all of the documents taken by Berger were copies, with the originals remaining intact and in the possession of the government, noted the Post.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
Canada, in a rare move, is imposing trade sanctions against the United States in its continued fight against the so-called Byrd Amendment, a U.S. law repeatedly found to be a violation of international trade rules.

To date, the Byrd Amendment has imposed more than $3.2 billion in duties on Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States — funds that could be turned over to the exporters’ U.S. competitors under the controversial measure.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that the Byrd payments constitute a double penalty that not only imposes duties, but also provides an incentive to U.S. competitors to initiate trade disputes with their foreign competitors.

In retaliation, Canada has announced it will impose a 15-percent surtax on cigarettes, oysters, live swine, and fish imports from the United States.

The European Union, Brazil, Chile, India, Mexico, and South Korea also will be imposing WTO-sanctioned penalties against the United States for other payments made to U.S. firms under the Byrd Amendment.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin is quoted as saying that the Byrd Amendment is the ultimate in protectionism.

It is estimated that Canadian and European Union penalties alone will amount to duties worth nearly $125 million.

CHARLOTTE, South Carolina
The steroid controversy spread last week from the baseball diamond to the gridiron, following a report from CBS that two football players with the Carolina Panthers received a banned substance shortly before the 2004 Super Bowl.

Less than two weeks before the National Football League (NFL) championship, Panthers starting lineman Jeff Mitchell and punter Todd Sauerbrun both received testosterone cream from local physician James Shortt, according to the CBS News program “60 Minutes Wednesday.”

Sauerbrun, the NFL’s top-rated punter in both 2003 and 2004, also received syringes and an injectible steroid, according to the CBS report, which also claimed that former Panther teammate Todd Steussie, who now plays for Tampa Bay, also received testosterone from Shortt.

Dr. Shortt, who is under federal investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for prescribing steroids, told the Charlotte Observer that he did not realize he was violating NFL policy until last month’s congressional testimony by baseball officials.

The allegations pushed NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to defend the league’s current drug-testing program.

“We test players on all teams each week, conducting more than 9,000 tests a year for steroids and related substances,” Tagliabue told CBS. “Over the past five seasons, just to take one example, we’ve only had 25 players who have violated our program and been suspended. This is far below 1 percent.”

As the scandal mounted last week, the NFL said it would bolster its efforts to detect boosted testosterone levels and would adopt a test for human growth hormone (HGH) when it becomes available.

Meanwhile, Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith said he is sticking by his teammates until more is known.

“You have to consider everyone innocent until proven guilty; I’m not there and I don’t know the circumstances,” Smith told the Observer. “There are two sides to every story, and I try not to draw conclusions even if it seems incriminating.”

From the Gallup News Service:

“With the death of Pope John Paul II, most American Catholics believe that history will judge him favorably — either as a great pope, or even one of the greatest ever. Seven in 10 predict the Catholic Church will make him a saint. Most American Catholics also say the choice of the next pope will matter to them personally, and also to the world. But American Catholics seem not to care where the next pope comes from — they are equally willing to have him come from Africa, Asia, or Latin America.

“As for the future, many Catholics appear to disagree with church teachings in several areas — use of birth control, allowing priests to marry, making church doctrine less strict on stem cell research, and allowing women to become priests. The poll shows that a majority of Catholics support each of those policies, while Pope John Paul II was adamantly against all of them. About half of American Catholics also would allow Catholics to remarry after a divorce, without getting an annulment. And more than a third would like to make church doctrine less strict on abortion.

“…About 9 in 10 Catholics also believe that it will matter to the world either a great deal (55%) or a moderate amount (34%) whom the church chooses as its next pope. Even three-quarters of non-Catholics believe the choice will matter to the world.

“Americans are less likely to say the choice of the new pope will matter to them personally than to say it will matter to the world, though it will matter personally to a clear majority (65%) of Catholics. Not surprisingly, among non-Catholics, only 23% say the choice will matter to them, while 76% say it will not….

“About a third of all Catholics (including a third among weekly churchgoers) would also like the new pope to be more liberal than Pope John Paul II, while about 6 in 10 think the new pope should be about the same.

“Although only a third of Catholics say they want the new pope to be more liberal than Pope John Paul II, clear majorities say they want the new pope to adopt policies that were clearly unacceptable to Pope John Paul II. Among all Catholics, 78% support allowing Catholics to use birth control, 63% allowing priests to marry, 59% making church doctrine on stem cell research less strict, and 55% allowing women to become priests.

“In addition, Catholics are evenly divided on allowing members of their faith to remarry after a divorce without getting an annulment, and 37% support making church doctrine on abortion less strict….”

“Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (U.S. poet, 1802-1882)