On Friday, July 21, it became illegal to feed the homeless in public parks in Las Vegas. That same day, a homeless man returned to their owner nearly $21,000 in savings bonds he’d found in the trash on the streets of Detroit.

Some days, life’s moral ironies make you gasp. Let me explain.

After complaints about the homeless taking over its parks, Las Vegas now prohibits handing out so much as an apple core to the indigent. The new ordinance defines indigents as those whom “a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.

Most reasonable people, I suspect, agree we should try to eliminate poverty. So what are we to make of this law? Every advanced cultural, religious, and ethical system articulates powerful obligations to help the poor. Now comes legislation designed to penalize those who do. The intent of the ordinance — to keep parks clean and safe — is praiseworthy. But for a society that thinks of itself as compassionate and caring, its message is unfortunate. It’s telling us that well-to-do Nevadans can hold sumptuous picnics in their parks, as long as no morsel ever reaches the city’s hungriest. That spectacle raises the prospect of legal penalties based on class distinctions — something prosperous democracies find repugnant.

Charles Moore sees compassion a different way. Homeless in Detroit, he had been rooting around in a trash bin near a downtown church, looking for bottles to return for cash. Instead, he found an envelope tucked into a pocket of some discarded men’s clothing. It contained 31 United States Savings Bonds. Without missing a beat, Moore took them to a nearby homeless shelter, where an assistant located the widow of the man named on the bonds and arranged for their return.

So the day that Las Vegas would have made it illegal to feed him, Moore returned a valuable package to the man’s family. “I know you can’t cash them,” Moore told a reporter for the Detroit News, which broke the story. “They’re no good to nobody but the person (named).”

But was it really that simple? In fact, a different finder might have held the bonds for weeks while trying to create a false ID. Or he could have sold them to criminals adept at such fakery. He might even have thrown them away, out of a fear of being accused of stealing or an aversion to getting entangled with the law. Instead, he turned them in. Charge it up, perhaps, to a desire deep in human consciousness to act ethically. “They belong to him,” he told the newspaper. “I did the right thing.”

Whatever his reasons, he’s left us to ponder three lessons.

Lesson 1 tells us what’s wrong with the Las Vegas ordinance. Mistaking outward appearance for inner identity, it lumps “the homeless” together into an undifferentiated whole. In fact, some are so mentally disturbed or so far gone in drink and drugs as to be incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Others are members of the workforce whose suddenly changed circumstances have thrust them into poverty. Moore is a case in point: Losing work as a roofer in Toledo, he moved back home to Michigan and couldn’t find work, becoming homeless for the first time.

What if every homeless person had the moral compass of Charles Moore? Wouldn’t we want more rather than fewer of them — not only in our parks and on our streets, but as exemplars to others living in poverty? Lesson 1 reminds us of the dangers of legislating against an entire class.

Lesson 2 raises questions about fair and proportionate rewards. Returning nearly $21,000, Moore received a $100 reward from the family — a sum that struck many Detroit News readers as derisory and demeaning. But how should rewards be determined? In this case, apparently, the amount was set by the widow herself. Was she simply chintzy? Or was she harking back to an era where returning lost property was taken as an expectation deserving thanks, rather than an exception deserving reward?

Should a reward, as some observers have suggested, be like a tip amounting to at least 10 percent of the stake. That would have left a handsome windfall for the widow who never expected it. Or should the reward, as one couple told the newspaper, have comprised the entire amount, in recognition of a finders-keepers, law-of-the-sea ethic where the finder gets to keep whatever washes ashore? Lesson 2 reminds us that the way we think about rewards, and what we’re willing to share with others who help us, can affect whether we’re seen as noble or mean spirited.

Lesson 3 reminds us that goodness begets goodness. Troubled that the reward was so low, one reader sent Moore eight trash bags of returnable bottles and a bowl of coins. Others sent him on a shopping spree at a clothing store and gave him a lead on a job at a local cleaning company. When it was all over, Moore had received more than $4,000 from readers moved by his honesty. What most impressed him, Moore told the Detroit News, was “seeing and knowing people care, and they’re willing to help a total stranger.” His current goal: find an apartment.

As lesson 3 reminds us, giving gets. Why? Because the same values that motivated Moore lie behind a desire we all have to celebrate genuine acts of moral goodness. In an age of corporate and athletic anti-heroes ranging from Enron to the Tour de France, the public needs heroes. By doing the right thing where it was least expected, Charles Moore became one.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“I’m happy where things are right now.”

– Paul Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists, welcoming the demise of stringent lobbying reform measures once under consideration by Congress. The New York Times reported last week that the measures are dying a quiet death, with both houses getting ready to adopt “vastly scaled-back versions” of the reforms they once loudly proclaimed as vital to restoring legislative integrity in the age of Abramoff.

NEW YORK
A federal appeals court last week upheld the conviction and prison sentence of former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers, clearing the way for the start of his 25-year prison term.

Ebbers was convicted in 2005 of conspiracy, securities fraud, and other crimes after a jury found that he orchestrated the gigantic accounting fraud that led to the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The Reuters news agency reported that Ebbers had been free on bail pending his appeal.

In a 47-page ruling, the three-judge panel concluded that Ebbers’s trial was not “fundamentally flawed” and rejected his claim that the sentence was excessively harsh.

The opinion did note that 25 years “is a long sentence for a white-collar crime, longer than the sentences routinely imposed by many states for violent crimes, including murder,” Bloomberg reported.

But justice Ralph Winter, writing for the court, said that federal sentencing guidelines permit such a sentence and reflect the intent of Congress, which passed the guidelines in an effort to crack down on while-collar crime, according to an analysis from CFO Magazine.

While it now appears likely that Ebbers’s bail will be revoked, his lawyer vowed to “keep fighting” until his client is vindicated, according to a report from the BBC.

WorldCom’s 2002 collapse resulted in the loss of more than 20,000 jobs and about $180 billion in shareholder investments.

CHICAGO
The Boeing Company last week reported a $160 million loss in the wake of a settlement with the government over ethics charges, and also agreed to forego deducting the cost of the settlement from its income tax.

According to the New York Times, the decision to pass up the deduction comes at a time when Boeing is trying to polish its image in Washington as CEO W. James McNerney prepares to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee to answer questions about the firm’s actions.

BusinessWeek reported that several senators previously voiced reservations about the terms of the $160 million in civil and criminal penalties and fines because Boeing could exploit a tax-law provision that would have allowed it to write off the settlement. Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia told BusinessWeek that it was a “savvy move” for Boeing to “eat the cost” and not make itself a target.

In agreeing to the settlement, McNerney admitted that “a few years ago, certain Boeing employees did some things that were wrong,” and said Boeing had to accept responsibility for the actions of those employees, the Seattle Times reported.

McNerney referred to a scandal involving Boeing’s hiring of a former Air Force procurement officer who improperly steered billion-dollar procurement contracts to the firm, and another case involving midlevel employees stealing proprietary pricing information from rival Lockheed Martin.

McNerney told analysts and company officials on a conference call: “Without question, the short-term financial impact of the tax deductability issue is significant,” according to a report from the U.K. Guardian. “However, the long-term value of Boeing’s reputation is even more significant.”

MADRID
Tour de France winner Floyd Landis last week denied that he took performance-enhancing drugs, saying a natural overabundance of testosterone in his body accounted for a positive drug test from the Tour’s 17th stage, where he came back from a poor showing the day before to surge ahead of the pack.

Results from a second drug test taken the same day, known as a “B” or backup sample, had not been confirmed as of late last week, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

But the Detroit Free Press reported that Landis’s attorney said he expected the backup sample to show the same result because the elevated levels of testosterone occurred naturally.

Landis claimed further medical tests would verify his claim. “We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case but a natural occurrence,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

The New York Times reported that Landis implored the public and the media to refrain from coming to any conclusions until the process is completed.

Landis’s team sponsor, Swiss electronics company Phonak, has suspended him from racing until the B sample is analyzed, and several of the cyclist’s media appearances have been canceled.

Moreover, reported the Los Angeles Times, the sport itself is taking a hit in the wake of the incident. Jim Andrews, the editor of a trade publication covering sports sponsorships, told the Times that if evidence shows Landis was doping “it could be the final straw. If you’re a sponsor putting marketing money in this sport, how much more should you be asked to take?”

“The sport was already damaged by previous drug scandals,” Andrews told the Times. “Floyd was such a feel-good, positive story that might have gotten people thinking, ‘They’ve turned the corner.’ If that’s proven not to be the case, it’s just a cold slap in the face.”

Professional cycling was already under a cloud of suspicion, Forbes magazine reported, after a wide-scale doping investigation in Spain that resulted in several leading cyclists being booted from the tour.

Landis was not implicated in that probe.

BOSTON
The head of the agency that oversees Boston’s troubled Big Dig project resigned under pressure last week, two weeks after tons of concrete fell from the ceiling and crushed a woman to death in her car.

Matthew Amorello quit a little more than an hour before the start of a hearing on an effort by Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to remove him from supervision of the $14-billion project, Boston television station WHDH reported.

Amorello claimed the hearing was going to produce a “foregone conclusion” and said he saw no reason to proceed, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune.

Boston’s tunnel system, originally hailed as an engineering marvel that would loosen the congested old city’s paralyzing gridlock, is now being treated as a crime scene by investigators after a contractor was indicted on charges of supplying substandard concrete, and inspectors continue to turn up defect after defect in the project. The Washington Post reported that the death of the motorist has become a “rallying cry” for politicians and the public who want to get to the root of the problems that have plagued the project during its 15-year history.

Meanwhile, the cost of the probe continues to escalate, with the Boston Herald reporting that federal officials want additional oversight that could bring the cost of the inspections into the $2 million range.

In an incident unrelated to the tunnel collapse, Boston is facing another crisis in civic confidence after three police officers were arrested on corruption charges. Other arrests are possible.

The Boston Globe reported that Boston police and the FBI are investigating charges that other officers were involved in a network of schemes that allegedly included stealing the identities of motorists, smuggling illegal aliens, and protecting shipments of cocaine.

“This is not a good day for us,” acting police commissioner Albert Goslin said at a press conference, according to the Globe. “It is very hard for us to see that some of our own have conducted themselves in such an unprofessional and atrocious manner.”

Special to Ethics Newsline™ from Adrian Allen

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Senate last week passed a bill that makes it a crime to transport a pregnant minor across state lines for an abortion to evade parental notification laws.

The bill, approved 65-to-34, must be reconciled with the version passed by the House of Representatives before it goes to president George W. Bush, who has promised to sign it, the Associated Press reported.

The House bill would create a national parental notification law requiring a physician who intends to perform an abortion on an out-of-state minor to provide at least 24 hours’ notice to the parents of the minor before ending the pregnancy, reported the Houston Chronicle.

The girl and her parents would be exempt from prosecution under the Senate bill, and there is an exception for abortions performed when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother.

Polls have found that parental notification laws are popular with voters, including those in favor of legal abortion, according to the Reuters news agency. But critics argue that the bill will endanger girls who are the most vulnerable, especially victims of incest or abuse.

Supporters counter that a minor cannot get an aspirin from a school nurse without parental consent and that abortion should be subject to the same ethical and legal framework, according to the Reuters report.

The Senate legislation, known as the Child Custody Protection Act, would make evading the parental notification laws punishable by a fine and up to a year in jail, according to the New York Times.

The law would apply to 26 states that have enforceable laws requiring minors either to notify or receive consent from their parents or to obtain approval from a judge before seeking an abortion, the Times reported.

LAS VEGAS
The cities of Las Vegas and Orlando have recently enacted laws that ban feeding the homeless in certain areas.

Two weeks ago, Las Vegas whose homeless population is estimated to be about 12,000, enacted an ordinance banning the feeding of homeless in city parks. According to a report from the New York Times, Vegas officials say the ordinance is not aimed at casual handouts but is intended to put a stop to regular feedings, often supervised by charities, that ostensibly lure the homeless to parks — and have frightened the general public away.

Last week, Orlando followed suit, enacting a measure pushed through after complaints from business owners and residents that homeless people were causing problems at a downtown park in a neighborhood that is becoming increasingly upscale, the AP reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) late last week said it plans to challenge both measures, according to reports from UPI and the Reuters news agency.

Orlando’s law will be challenged on religious grounds, under the theory that the ordinance interferes with the freedom of religious groups to fulfill their mission of feeding the homeless.

DALLAS
An increasing number of cash-strapped cities, schools, and other institutions are selling naming rights to buildings, parks, gyms, and other facilities, according to a report from USA Today.

A roundup by the paper noted that among the current projects up for bid are parts of the Chicago freeway now known as the Skyway, a monorail in Las Vegas, and even cafeterias in Sheboygan, Wis., schools.

While most seem accepting of naming rights for sports stadiums, some are drawing the line at other municipal sites. The head of a Wisconsin nonprofit group told USA Today that the answer to budget problems in cities and schools isn’t to “to put themselves up for sale. It shows the decline in our values.”

Regardless, the figurative “for sale” signs are sprouting across the country. San Francisco television station KPIX reported that Sonoma State University recently put a $7-million price tag on naming rights to its concert hall.

In New Jersey, governor Jon Corzine raised some eyebrows with his plan to sell naming rights to several state buildings and roads, the Morris County Daily Record reported.

And in Katrina-devastated New Orleans, city officials are scrambling to find a corporate sponsor to buy naming rights to the Superdome before the New Orleans Saints’ home opener on September 25, according to a report from Lafayette, Louisiana, television station KATC.

HOUSTON
New laws nationwide, along with private housing developments that screen prospective buyers, are restricting where convicted sex offenders can live — causing some potential unintended side-effects, according to a report last week from the Christian Science Monitor.

According to the report, 15 U.S. states and hundreds of cities restrict where sex offenders can buy or rent, forcing them to move away from schools and day care centers. Private businesses are joining the trend, too: A developer is building “sex offender free” subdivisions in Texas and Kansas, and a new website lists homes for sale nationwide that have no registered sex offenders living within a half-mile.

But such actions also may carry practical, legal, and ethical downsides, according to critics interviewed by the Monitor. Some claim that the proliferation of new laws may result in law enforcement losing track of offenders by forcing them to move frequently, or can turn localities without such ordinances into dumping grounds for displaced sex offenders.

Others contend that laws restricting the residences of sex offenders miss the point that most sex-crime victims know the perpetrators. “My concern is the misdirection by public officials and parents toward strangers and away from the real threat: the family and friends they know,” John LaFond, author of a book about sex offenders, told the Monitor. “These new monitoring laws are symbolic gestures by politicians to show that they are doing something. But in the long run, they do a disservice to the community.”

In related news, President Bush last week signed into law legislation that will establish a national sex offender registry. The Reuters news agency reported that the federal registry will fill in gaps that exist in state and community notification systems.

In Maine, the state legislature is reviewing the sex-offender registry law there, in part because of an incident in which two men on the list were tracked down and murdered by a Canadian man who got their names from the website. “One of the two murdered men had been found guilty of having sex with a 15-year-old girlfriend when he was 20; the other had served only five years on probation and had not committed an offense in the 25 years since his conviction for the rape of a child,” reported the Kennebec Journal.

And in Georgia, a new sex offender law was blocked last week by a federal judge who temporarily halted the eviction of sex offenders who live near school bus stops. According to the Associated Press, the ruling came after a suit by a human-rights group claimed it would make vast areas off-limits to registered sex offenders.

The Telegraph of Macon, Georgia, also noted that some police agencies say the law is difficult to enforce and could backfire by causing offenders to drop out of the registry despite the risk of prosecution.

WASHINGTON
Corruption damages societies worldwide by shaking faith in institutions, and is so deeply entrenched in the business world that it is impossible to calculate its true costs, according to a ten-part series launched last week by the Voice of America.

VOA noted that while the public has become aware of abuses in big-name cases such as Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom, corruption has woven itself deeply into the fabric of business and society and exacts an often unrecognized cost at all levels and in all regions of the world.

Author Kimberly Elliot told VOA that while the cost of corruption is difficult to measure, the effects are visible worldwide. “You really can see it very qualitatively in countries where sick people in poor countries don’t get medicine because it’s been shifted off to the black market and sold, or you don’t get teachers showing up in schools unless they’re paid by parents to show up and teach their children,” she added. “You see it in cement plants that are built and never operate because they weren’t really needed.”

In developed nations, VOA reported, the effects of corruption are different but just as pervasive. “Corporate corruption leads to higher prices,” Wendell Rawls, head of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, told VOA. “Corporate corruption leads to less efficiency. Corporate corruption leads to a reduced share price. Corporate corruption reduces your pension benefits. Corporate corruption means there’s less profit usually because they spend more money on legal fees to protect themselves against prosecutions.”

The series examines corruption in business and government, examines the role of a free press in fighting corruption, profiles various anti-corruption efforts, and details region- and country-specific problems in Africa, China, India, Mexico, and Russia.

From the Pew Global Attitudes Project:

“Muslims in Europe worry about their future, but their concern is more economic than religious or cultural. And while there are some signs of tension between Europe’s majority populations and its Muslim minorities, Muslims there do not generally believe that most Europeans are hostile toward people of their faith. Still, over a third of Muslims in France and one-in-four in Spain say they have had a bad experience as a result of their religion or ethnicity.

“However, there is little evidence of a widespread backlash against Muslim immigrants among the general publics in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. Majorities continue to express concerns about rising Islamic identity and extremism, but those worries have not intensified in most of the countries surveyed over the past 12 months; a turbulent period that included the London subway bombings, the French riots, and the Danish cartoon controversy.

“Opinions held by Muslims in Europe — as well as opinions about Muslims among Europe’s majority populations — vary significantly by country….

“Most notably, France shows no signs of a backlash in response to last year’s riots. In fact, a counter trend seems to have emerged with slightly more French people saying that immigration from the Middle East and North Africa is a good thing than did so a year ago…. Nor do German and British publics express any increase in negative views of immigrants…. Meanwhile, the Spanish public’s view toward immigrants has grown slightly more negative over the last year.

“But in Britain worries about Islamic extremism are intense among both the general public and the Muslim minority population as well. Concerns about the problem rose markedly this year among the general public. And worries about extremism within the British Muslim community are greater than in France, Germany, and Spain.

“…The poll finds that Muslims themselves are generally positive about conditions in their host nation. In fact, they are more positive than the general publics in all four European countries about the way things are going in their countries. However, many Muslims, especially in Britain, worry about the future of Muslims in their country.

“The greatest concern among Muslim minorities in all four countries is unemployment. Islamic extremism emerges as the number-two worry generally, a concern shared by Western publics as well as Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan. The decline in the importance of religion, adoption of modern roles by women, and influences of popular culture upon youth are generally lower-ranked concerns. Overall, British Muslims express the greatest level of concern about the issues tested.

“The majority of European Muslims do not see many or most Europeans as hostile towards Muslims. But substantial numbers of Muslims do perceive such hostility. This belief is most widespread in Germany…. At the same time, however, German Muslims are the least likely to report personal experiences with discrimination….

“Most French and British Muslims think women are better off in their countries than in most Muslim countries. About half of German and Spanish Muslims agree, and very few think women actually have it better in most Muslim countries….

“Religion is central to the identity of European Muslims. With the exception of Muslims in France, they tend to identify themselves primarily as Muslim rather than as British, Spanish, or German. In France, Muslims are split almost evenly on this question…. By contrast the general populations in Western Europe are far more secular in outlook. Roughly six-in-ten in Spain, Germany, and Britain identify primarily with their country rather than their religion, as do more than eight-in-ten in France.

“Americans, however, split about evenly on this question: 42 percent say they first think of themselves as Christians versus 48 percent who think of themselves primarily as Americans — a divide close to that found among French Muslims….”

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”

– Confucius (Chinese philosopher, 551-479 B.C.)

Is she a heroine or a murderer?

The question lies at the heart of one of the most harrowing ethical dilemmas in recent years. It came to a head last week as Louisiana’s attorney general, Charles Foti, accused Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses in New Orleans of administering lethal injections to four patients during the post-Katrina chaos last September. And it will surely reverberate in medical-ethics discussions for years to come.

On some details there is little dispute. As Katrina bore down on the city late last August, Dr. Pou arrived for work at Memorial Medical Center. A highly respected surgeon with a distinguished research-and-teaching résumé and a reputation for advocating strongly for patients, she was still there three days later. By then the electricity had failed, temperatures were above 100 degrees, and medicines were running low. Outside, the water around the hospital was five feet deep, and there were looters in the neighborhood and gunshots in the air. Many patients already had been taken out in boats and helicopters.

But for the eldest and sickest in Dr. Pou’s acute-care ward — some of whom she didn’t know since they had been transferred in from a nearby hospital closed just before the storm — there was little hope of surviving an evacuation. And when it was all over, at least 34 patients at Memorial lay dead — including four in her care who, witnesses say, were intentionally killed on September 1, 2005. In arresting Dr. Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry on second-degree murder charges, Mr. Foti described their acts as “not euthanasia” but “plain and simple homicide.”

It’s too soon to render judgment here. Too many questions remain. What do we know of these women’s backgrounds, thinking, and motivations? Why, out of scores of medical professionals connected to Memorial, were these three still there that day? What were the avowed best-practice standards of the hospital — and what was the real ethical culture around the place? As conditions deteriorated hour by hour, what was the relative sense of hope or hopelessness as help from outside inexplicably failed to arrive? And if injections were indeed administered, what drugs were used: potent cocktails to end life, as Mr. Foti argues, or strong sedatives to alleviate pain, as many medical observers believe?

All of these need answering before serious ethical analysis can proceed. But it’s not too soon to begin asking a different question: What should an enlightened and compassionate society want from its medical professionals in such circumstances?

• We probably want them to say, “Never kill patients.” But what should the alternative be in such emergencies? Should doctors in the wards behave like medics on the battlefield by engaging in triage, focusing only on the wounded who might survive and leaving the worst cases untreated? Or should doctors act like captains at sea, sticking to wreck to the end and willing, if necessary, to sacrifice everything for their patients?
• Hospitals are being called on to create detailed plans to ensure evacuations in catastrophic emergencies. Would that exercise sharpen our preparedness in an age of terrorism and large-population natural disasters? Or was Katrina such a one-off event that such planning would be a luxury we can ill afford? If so, should hospitals be required to warn severely incapacitated patients, when they check in, that they can’t be certain of being saved in an emergency? Or does that smack of a fatalism directly at odds with our values of care and compassion?
• Should we be far more diligent in equipping hospital staff with conceptual frameworks for ethical insight and moral reasoning? Assuming that Dr. Pou and her colleagues were not pathological killers, what kinds of right-versus-right dilemmas were they facing — and did they have the tools to address them thoughtfully and explicitly? Under the pressures of the moment, were they equipped to work through the tension between fairness for the many and compassion for the few? What was their understanding of the moral courage that might be required in such situations?
• How much should we, as public observers, be prepared to ask of medical professionals? Is it fair to require of them a level of clarity in extremis that we ourselves may not be willing to demonstrate? How many of us know, with real certainty, what we would do in situations where exhaustion and helplessness conspire with compassion and a deep desire to reduce suffering? If, as a culture, we broadly accept abortion while arguing against euthanasia, are we sending uncertain signals to those on the ethical front lines?

Fortunately, there are pathways forward. Trainers in military and athletic programs know the need of so grooving the ethical responses that, however intense the emergency, the habit of right action kicks in and remains firm. A mountaineer once described to me the value of such training when he faced a life-threatening situation in a mountain-top gale. Even with “mental capacity … at half-mast,” he said, you had to “do the best due diligence you can at 19,000 feet and 27 below zero.” He wanted, in other words, to think right through the extremity, rather than let it do the thinking for him.

Hospitals aren’t mountains, and their staffs don’t think of themselves as mountaineers. In an age of ethical intensity and potential emergency, maybe they should.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“I was still willing to go until I started reading.”

– U.S. Army first lieutenant Ehren Watada, 28, explaining his refusal to fight in Iraq, for which he is the first active soldier expected to face a court-martial. Watada says he became opposed to serving in Iraq after reading about the conflict’s background, the U.S. government’s failures, and Iraqi civilian deaths.

Watada, whose military evaluations hailed him as “exemplary” and having an “insatiable appetite for knowledge,” told the New York Times that he is not opposed to serving in an armed conflict, but believes the Iraqi war was a ruse and a distraction from the real war on terrorism. He “volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, which he regarded as an unambiguous war linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. The request was denied,” reported the Times.

“Lieutenant Watada conceded that the military could not function if individual members decided which war was just. But, he wrote to [brigade commander] Colonel Townsend, he owed his allegiance to a ‘higher power’ — the Constitution — based on the values the Army had taught him: ‘loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage,’ ” the Times noted.

“I personally disagree with his opinion and his stance against the war. But I personally support his stand as a man, to be able to do what his heart is telling him,” Army captain Scott Hulin, who served with Watada in South Korea, told the Times.

If court-martialed this fall, Watada faces a maximum penalty of seven years in prison, forfeiture of pay, and a dishonorable discharge.

NEW YORK
As Hezbollah guerillas and Israeli forces continued to pound each other late last week, the United Nations warned of an impending humanitarian crisis, the agency’s human rights commissioner hinted at possible liability for war crimes on both sides, and many worldwide debated whether whatever “ethics of war” that may exist justify what some claim is a disproportionate response by Israel.

A day after the U.N. warned of a growing threat to the general population caught up in the conflict, an Israeli envoy confirmed that aid supplies will be allowed into Lebanon through a humanitarian corridor for food, medicine, and other supplies, UPI reported.

Transport lanes had been blocked by an Israeli air and sea blockade, and roads, bridges, and airport facilities in Lebanon have suffered heavy damage, according to the Toronto Star.

As of late last week, about 300 people had been killed in the conflict and more than 700 injured, with an estimated 500,000 people displaced and seeking shelter, the Reuters news agency reported.

As the fighting escalated, U.N. Human Rights commissioner Louise Arbor issued a sharp warning to the leaders of Israel and Hezbollah, claiming that what she called “the perpetrators of wanton violence against civilians in the current Middle East conflict” face possible “liability for war crimes,” according to a report from the Christian Science Monitor.

In a press release reproduced in part in an analysis on the University of Pittsburgh’s legal-affairs website, The Jurist, Arbor said, “Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians…. Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable.”

International debate last week focused on whether Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon has been in reasonable proportion to the need to fight terrorism and secure the release of captive Israeli soldiers. Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement affirming Israel’s right to defend itself but added that “the unprecedented scale of the casualties and destruction” in Lebanon indicates that Israel is using too much force, according to a report from the Associated Press.

According to the BBC, British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells also criticized Israel for allegedly disproportionate attacks that were not “surgical,” joining many across the United Kingdom who have been protesting the breadth and severity of the impact of the attacks on Lebanon’s infrastructure and civilian population.

President Bush last week continued to support Israel’s strategies, using his Saturday radio address to stress that ending the violence in Lebanon must involve confronting Hezbollah and the nations that back the terror attacks, the Voice of America reported.

DENVER
President Bush last week issued his first veto in either of his terms, rejecting a bill that would have overturned his policy on one of the most ethically charged issues on the national agenda: federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

USA Today reported that the veto runs counter to strong public support of the research and bipartisan congressional backing for the measure, though the House was not able to summon the 286 votes necessary to override the president’s veto.

In killing the bill, Bush argued that it was ethically wrong to use federal funds to support research that would involve the destruction of human embryos.

Critics parried back with another moral objection, claiming that blocking federal funds would slow research that shows promise of providing help for a range of debilitating and deadly diseases.

Following the veto, two state governments created mechanisms to funnel money to stem cell research.

In California, Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger authorized $150 million in loans to the state agency that oversees stem cell research, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. California also has been mired in controversy over stem cells, with a broad state funding bill being held up after a series of lawsuits.

And in Illinois, governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, said he would divert about $5 million from the overall state budget into stem cell research. “Investing in research that can save lives and prevent serious illnesses is more than a sound public health strategy, it’s our moral obligation,” Blagojevich said, according to the Associated Press.

Illinois, too, has been a battleground over the ethical aspects of stem cell research, with lawmakers there previously voting down funding over ideological differences, the AP reported.

NEW ORLEANS
A doctor and two nurses were arrested last week on charges they administered lethal doses of drugs to critically ill patients caught in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina last year.

CNN reported that Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were arrested early last week and booked on second-degree murder charges for allegedly injecting four patients with lethal doses of painkillers and sedatives on September 1, 2005, the day before the hospital where they worked was evacuated. They were subsequently released on their own recognizance.

The case has ignited a furious ethical debate over the role and duties of medical personnel in times of desperation. While state prosecutors characterize the three as murderers, many in the medical community have expressed outrage at the arrests, saying that the doctor and nurses were heroes who voluntarily remained in a horrifying, deadly environment to provide care for patients who could not be moved.

A report syndicated by the Chicago Tribune news service noted that the case has far- reaching implications not only for formulating ethics and policy in an era of devastating natural disasters and weapons of mass destruction, but also for causing medical ethicists to rethink how society should respond to mass casualties when medical care is limited.

“These are situations we better start discussing way in advance if such an event would ever happen in a nation where our social welfare net can fray under extreme conditions,” Laurie Zoloth, director of the center for bioethics, science, and society at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, told the Tribune.

Under Louisiana law, the arrests of the doctor and nurses will be followed by a grand jury probe that will determine if they will be formally arraigned and enter pleas, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

In a related story, the Government Accountability Office last week issued a report saying federal disaster planners must view the aftermath of the devastating storm as an indicator that better plans need to be put in place for evacuating the old and weak, according to the Reuters news agency.