Ethics Newsline®

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LONDON

You’re walking along the beach, and you find a toilet kit washed ashore. It contains some sodden cosmetics and a few dollars in change, but no identification. What should you do? The ordinarily ethical person probably tosses the potions and keeps the cash, persuaded by three arguments: Whatever drifts ashore falls under the heading of “finders, keepers,” whatever has no identification is difficult to return, and whatever has trivial value would cost more to advertise for the proper owner than it’s worth.

The next day on the same beach you find a dinghy with a small outboard motor attached, but no name or registration number. What should you do? While the finders-keepers and anonymity tests still hold, the triviality test does not: The dinghy clearly has significant value. The ordinarily ethical person probably, at the very least, contacts nearby harbormasters to see if anyone is missing a boat, leaving a phone number in case the owner calls.

The third day, astonishingly, you find forty shipping containers that have washed off the deck of a vessel grounded on a sand bar in plain view a mile offshore. One contains a dozen brand-new BMW motorcycles, each worth more than $20,000. What should you do?

This third case is not hypothetical. The ship was the Napoli, a 62,000-ton cargo ship. On January 19, she encountered a terrific storm and was abandoned by her crew off the coast of Devon, England. As she was being towed to a nearby port, she began to list and was deliberately grounded. When the containers came loose, scores of people came from miles around, swarmed across Branscombe Beach under the eyes of helpless police, opened the containers, and made off with everything of value, including the motorcycles.

Why? They apparently saw this opportunity as somewhere between winning a lottery and finding money in a hollow tree. “It’s great, isn’t it?” one man told the Guardian newspaper, “a cross between a bomb site and a car boot [trunk] sale.” Another said it was like finding “Aladdin’s cave.” In their view, the stuff was there for the taking, and they were in the right place at the right time.

To call these people “looters” gives the wrong impression. These weren’t professional second-story men, cat burglars, or back-alley thugs. By all accounts (and there were many in the news here last week), they were ordinary people. Two questions, then: Were their actions legal, and were they ethical?

What they did clearly fails the triviality test. As for anonymity, there’s no doubt about the source of their loot, and no difficulty tracing its ownership. The finders-keepers test, however, is more complex. In fact, the police were legitimately flummoxed. English law allows salvagers to take whatever marine wreckage they find, as long as they fill out a form and take it to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency within 28 days. That entitles them to a reward if the property is claimed — and to legal ownership if, after a year, it is not. So the police felt they could do little more than hand out forms. By day’s end, some of the items began showing up for sale on eBay, brazenly described as coming from the Napoli, suggesting that even the pretense of legality had been breached by some of these collectors.

What’s being tested here, then, is not simply the law but the ethics underlying the law. Given the circumstances, would we expect a reasonably ethical person to remove objects clearly belonging to someone else, or would we want them to help restore lost property to its owners? Surely the latter. Cynics, of course, will yawp that if you don’t take it, others will — a line of reasoning so thin that it also would permit you to slaughter your obnoxious neighbor if you thought others were also upset with him. Cynics also will argue that the shipper’s insurance will recompense the owner for anything removed — an argument that, along with driving up insurance costs for everyone else, fails to account for one woman’s loss of a collection of letters and pictures, personal and irreplaceable, that disappeared from Branscombe Beach as she was moving her home to South Africa.

So suppose we grant that, except for those who fenced their wares on eBay, the rest intended to behave legally by filing proper forms. Even so, does that make them ethical?

While visiting schools in England and Scotland last week, I tested that question with two head teachers whose schools have rigorous programs in character education. Suppose, I asked them, the face of one of your teachers showed up on television reports from Branscombe Beach, and there they were, taking stuff. Would you say, “Oh, whatever teachers do in their private lives is their own business”? Or would you confront that teacher?

Here, too, law and ethics diverged. Legally, each head teacher recognized that it would be difficult to raise a formal complaint. But ethically, each agreed that they would have to raise the issue with the teacher. Their questions: What did you think you were doing? What message do you want your students to take away from this? Is this the way you want the world to behave?

The lesson? Very simply, it’s that ethics rises above law. When the two are seen as one — when people can convince themselves that if it’s not illegal, it must be ethical — even a generally law-abiding culture occasionally will run into sorry tales of collective rapacity from places like Branscombe Beach. What ordinarily ethical people want, I suspect, is not a culture of every beachcomber for himself, but of school heads who, despite the law, are willing to hold those beachcombers to a higher ethical standard. They want a culture where, when ethics and law diverge, ethics wins.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“It must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions. The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now.”

– Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy, calling last week on President Bush and the U.S. Congress to adopt mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Rogers and the CEOs of nine other major U.S. firms — including Alcoa, BP America, DuPont, Caterpillar, and General Electric — announced a joint coalition seeking to direct the course of energy reform in the face of global warming, reports the Associated Press.

In the past, many energy firms, as well as the Republican-led Congress and President Bush, disputed the science of global warming and rejected taking action, claiming that reforms would cripple the U.S. economy. Under the weight of mounting scientific evidence and global opinion, the issue is beginning to take center stage in Washington and at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to press reports last week.

WASHINGTON
As the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of former U.S. vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby unfolds over the next few weeks, it promises to focus a spotlight on the uncomfortable evolution of ethical and legal practices relating to the relationships of reporters and sources.

The New York Times reports that several major journalists are expected to testify for the prosecution, which is attempting to prove that Libby lied to a grand jury about his role in leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the press in retaliation for her husband’s public criticism of the Iraq war.

While previous leak investigations often were frustrated by journalists invoking the sanctity of anonymous sources, this case is different, reports the Times. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald succeeded in pressuring several reporters to testify about their conversations regarding the case, and in one instance, Fitzgerald jailed a former Times reporter for 85 days until she relented and revealed details about the source of the leak.

The CBS News media column “Public Eye” notes that the Libby case has “shaken the unofficial rules of engagement among reporters and confidential sources,” and quotes a legal observer who says that the leak probe has “undercut the assumptions that existed for several decades that a reporter’s promise of confidentiality is not only sacrosanct as a matter of journalistic ethics but relatively secure as a matter of law.”

According to a report from USA Today, the trial also will involve another ethics-related matter: the prosecutor’s promise of confidentiality to former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Prosecutor Fitzgerald has acknowledged that Fleischer came forward with an offer to provide information in return for immunity from prosecution, and that the offer was granted without the standard informal account of what the witness will say, known in legal circles as a “proffer,” according to the paper’s report.

Another oddity of the case, reports CNN, is that no one has ever been charged with actually leaking the name or any other information about Valerie Plame, also known by her married name, Valerie Wilson. Libby, the only person ever charged in the incident, stands accused of orchestrating a cover-up, not with any charges related to the alleged leak.

DURHAM, N.C.
The North Carolina state bar leveled new and potentially more serious ethics charges last week against the district attorney in the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case.

The Associated Press reports that the bar association has accused Durham County district attorney Mike Nifong of withholding evidence favorable to the defendants and lying to the court and to bar association investigators.

According to a report from the Duke Chronicle, the Duke University student newspaper, the new charges come on top of previous bar accusations that Nifong made prejudicial public statements about the defendants.

According to legal experts interviewed by the Charlotte News and Observer, the new charges against Nifong involve allegations that he withheld DNA evidence that was favorable to the defendants and lied about the existence of the evidence to judges.

Nifong withdrew from the case earlier this month after the first round of ethics charges.

The case centers on allegations that several Duke lacrosse players sexually assaulted an African-American stripper hired to perform at an off-campus team party. Fallout from the case fanned racial tensions in the sleepy college town of Durham. Nifong stated the alleged attack was racially motivated and characterized the team as “hooligans,” according to press reports.

The case began to unravel when the woman who claimed she was attacked gave conflicting stories of the incident and failed to identify the alleged attackers. Rape charges were dropped, and it was expected that assault and kidnapping charges that remained on the books could be abandoned in February.

But the Washington Post reports that while the new prosecutorial team, part of an office that handles cases in which the county prosecutor has an apparent conflict of interest, declined to be interviewed, they are known to be hardnosed and unconcerned with public pressure, meaning that the case against the lacrosse players is not necessarily dead.

OTTAWA
Canada’s prime minister last week apologized to a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was deported to Syria as a suspected terrorist and tortured.

Prime minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to Maher Arar for Canada’s role in the incident and said Arar will receive $8.9 million, the largest compensation package for an individual in Canadian history, according to the CanWest News Service.

The Toronto-based Globe & Mail reports that Canada intends to enact reforms based on the outcome of a judicial inquiry, which determined that Canadian law enforcement authorities provided faulty information to the U.S. immigration officials who had detained Arar at a New York airport.

Arar was deported to Syria, leading to accusations that the United States and Canada engaged in “torture by proxy,” extracting information from terror suspects by sending them to countries where they have reason to assume the suspects will be tortured.

The circumstances surrounding Arar’s rendition were examined in a two-year public inquiry led by a prominent Canadian jurist, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. The inquiry’s final report urged the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to make policy changes on information-sharing procedures

RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned in the wake of the commission’s investigation.

In the aftermath of the case, the Canadian government repeatedly has demanded a similar apology from U.S. authorities and that Arar be removed from U.S. watch lists.

The United States has refused, insisting that it has good reason to keep Arar on a watch list, though officials will not provide specifics, reports the Toronto Star.

WASHINGTON
The ethical implications of ubiquitous digital video technology figured in two stories last week:

• Television, music, and movie producers, fretting about the ability of Web-savvy consumers to pirate intellectual property, have taken action against individuals who have posted material on video services such as YouTube. In one case, News Corp., the corporate parent of Fox TV, is seeking the identity of a YouTube subscriber known as “ECOtotal,” who allegedly uploaded episodes of the hit series “24″ to the video-sharing site, reports the computer publication MacWorld. According to the Times of London, the user is believed to be British, and is likely to be the target of a test case designed to “send a message” to other uploaders. According to BusinessWeek, YouTube’s owner, the search giant Google, faces a difficult decision: If it complies with News Corp.’s subpoena, it risks angering YouTube users, who want their identity protected, and alienating advertisers who are nervous already about associating their names with the site.
• Small, easily portable video cameras are changing the nature of politics in Virginia, reports the Washington Post. Democrats are trolling the halls of the state capitol looking to capture embarrassing moments for Republicans, and uploading them to YouTube or their blogs. While Democrats say they are attempting to expose GOP tactics to kill a minimum wage hike, Republicans say the video cameras are harmful tools. “It’s indicative of a culture of viciousness that is infecting these halls,” Vincent Callahan, Jr. (R-Fairfax), a member of the legislature since 1968, told the Post. “You are going to get shots of someone picking their nose and using it out of context in the fall election.”

JERUSALEM
A series of ethics scandals has roiled Israel, with the latest incident — allegations that president Moshe Katsav is a rapist — punctuating what some observers say is a climate of moral decline.

Christian Science Monitor reporter Ilene Prushner writes: “A slew of civilian and military leaders here are under investigation for various types of wrongdoing, and the nation’s regard for its top elected official is at an all-time low, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert garnering approval ratings as low as 14 percent. And although Israelis have been showing increasingly less regard for their once-venerated institutions over the past decade, this new slide in public confidence coincides with a range of indicators pointing in the direction of change.”

Olmert is under investigation for alleged wrongdoing in a banking sale, according to the Monitor, with former Justice minister Haim Ramon facing charges of sexual misconduct and Tzahi Hanegbi, a former environmental minister, charged with making illegal appointments.

But the Katsav case is the most demoralizing, with the Israeli attorney general planning to indict the president on charges of rape and other incidents of sexual misconduct involving four women he supervised when he was tourism minister in the late 1990s or after he became president in 2000, the New York Times reports.

Katsav last week decided to suspend himself pending the outcome of the indictment, an action approved by a Knesset committee by a narrow margin after a heated debate in which four female members argued vehemently that Katsav should either resign or be removed.

One member of the Knesset, Gideon Sa’ar, said the parliamentary body “missed an opportunity to make a moral decision that would somewhat rehabilitate the public’s confidence in the government apparatus,” reports the Jerusalem-based newspaper Haaretz.

Vice premier Shimon Peres, who opposed Katsav in the 2000 election, said the scandal surrounding the presidency, which is largely a symbolic position but nonetheless a highly visible one, “looks bad…. They’re making fun of us all over the world,” according to a report from the Jerusalem Post.

OŚWIĘCIM, Poland
An ethical controversy is developing over the remains of the Auschwitz concentration camp, with some contending that it is important to keep the structure and the memory alive while critics say fixing up the facility will give ammunition to Holocaust deniers.

The International Herald Tribune reports that the new director of the exhibits at Auschwitz, known formally as the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, is attempting to find ways to preserve evidence of Nazi crimes. Complicating the issue is the fact that, as director Piotr Cywinski notes, “This wasn’t built as a medieval castle with strong materials to last for all time…. It was a Nazi camp built to last a short time.”

Cywinski is calling for retaining walls to be built around the gas chambers to prevent them from sinking and caving in.

But as reported in the newspaper the Scotsman, that proposal has run into opposition from some who claim that fixing up the structure would provide Holocaust deniers more ammunition for claims that the events and evidence of Nazi atrocities are fabricated.

Jonathan Webber, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Birmingham, England, and a member of the council that advises administrators of the Polish death camp, tells the Scotsman that “anyone tampering with gas chambers is tampering with the heart and soul of what Auschwitz represents.”

Webber wants advice from the best engineering experts in the world before making any decisions about preserving the gas chambers, the Scotsman reports.

Jan. 27 was the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian military.

JOHANNESBURG
Medical ethics research boards are not doing enough to protect Africans, according to a new study.

But the paper published in the open-source medical journal PloS also concludes that despite handicaps of inadequate funding and training, research ethics committees are becoming more numerous, according to a report from AllAfrica.com.

Ethics boards review proposals for research on human populations and are supposed to ensure that there are adequate safeguards to protect subjects. But as Scientific American reports, review committees in Africa face many logistical problems such as lack of supplies, computers, and meeting space.

The Scientific American summary of the study also notes that ethics panels face the risk that if they are too rigorous, projects that provide employment and perhaps a significant public health benefit may move to more lenient venues.

In related news, a killer strain of tuberculosis is posing a medical-ethics dilemma in South Africa, according to the Reuters news agency. “Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis,” called XDR-TB, is so virulent that researchers are calling on South African authorities to forcibly isolate patients infected with the disease, noting that it poses a grave threat to persons already infected with AIDS, which has ravaged the continent.

“XDR-TB represents a major threat to public health. If the only way to manage it is to forcibly confine then it needs to be done,” Jerome Singh, study co-author and lawyer at Durban’s Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, told Reuters.

“Ultimately in such crises, the interests of public health must prevail over the rights of the individual,” he said.

SYDNEY
About three quarters of police recruits in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, failed their ethics exam but were given passing grades anyway in order to get them on the street, according to an investigation by the Daily Telegraph, a Sydney-area newspaper.

The results prompted some at the academy to call the situation “a joke,” and others speculated that it could turn dangerous.

“It’s putting them in a really bad situation — these kids are going to come out and be totally unprepared for real police work,” one officer told the Telegraph. “It’s an embarrassment because they will literally come out knowing no better.”

Critics are charging that police recruits are being pushed through training in order to meet a campaign promise in which government officials pledged to increase the authorized force of the state police by 750 men and women, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that several recruits also have failed physical fitness tests. Commander of Educational Services Tony Aldred told the Herald that there are more “mature” candidates in this year’s class, including recruits as old as 52.

CHICAGO
The world’s largest pork processor, facing claims that it practices one of the cruelest practices in the food industry, will phase out the confinement of pigs in individual “gestation crates.”

Smithfield Foods, which raises pigs at 187 farms, said it will replace the individual metal or concrete cages, which don’t have enough room for the animals to turn around, with more spacious pens holding groups of pigs, the New York Times reports.

According to the Washington Post, the company denied it made the decision because of pressure from animal welfare groups, saying instead they were influenced by concerns from McDonald’s and some large supermarket chains.

And as Post reporter Mark Kaufman notes, the development is following the latest trend in animal-welfare activism. “Groups concerned about issues such as animal welfare or the use of antibiotics or biotechnology in agriculture no longer look to government regulators to produce change, but rather take their concerns to the public, to producers, and to the restaurants and grocery chains that sell the products.”

The Humane Society of the United States has urged other pork producers to follow Smithfield’s lead, according to a report from MSNBC.

In Manitoba, Canada, the executive director of that province’s Humane Society also called on local producers to phase out the use of gestation crates, the Winnipeg Sun reports.

From the Conference Board:

“Total corporate contributions in the U.S. and abroad (among 211 corporations and foundations) amounted to $9.8 billion in 2005, The Conference Board reports today in its annual survey of corporate giving to worthy causes.

“This represents 71 percent of the overall estimated $13.77 billion in corporate charitable giving in the U.S. in 2005….

“The Conference Board study compared U.S.-giving among 130 corporations and foundations between 2004 and 2005. These contributions to worthy causes have increased by 18 percent among the largest corporations and foundations….

“Total overseas charitable contributions (as reported by 98 companies surveyed) were approximately $2 billion in 2005.

“The Conference Board compared 60 international-giving companies and foundations between 2004 and 2005. These contributions to worthy causes have increased by 14 percent.

“Corporate U.S. giving ranged from a low of $71,529 to a high of $1.22 billion, with median U.S. contributions at $8.7 million compared to $7.6 million in 2004, an increase of 14 percent….

“Support for health and human services maintained its position as a top priority in U.S. corporate contributions by garnering approximately 56 percent of the U.S. contributions, compared with the 15 percent earmarked for education, which ranked second.

” ‘The dominance of health and human services as the beneficiary of the lion’s share of U.S. giving is primarily attributable to the pharmaceutical industry which accounted for 43 percent of U.S. giving tracked by The Conference Board,’ says Sophia A. Muirhead, Associate Director, Research Working Groups at The Conference Board and author of the report. ‘Pharmaceutical companies donate mostly product, and, since they are in the healthcare business, health and human services are the primary recipients of their largesse.’…

“The survey also reports:

• “U.S. corporate contributions as a median percent of U.S. pretax income decreased to 1 percent in 2005, compared to 1.6 percent in 2004 and 1.7 percent in 2003.
• “The ratio of U.S. contributions measured as a median percent of worldwide sales has remained stable from 2004 to 2005 at 0.08 percent….
• “In 2005, non-cash giving surpassed cash giving and, for the third consecutive year, accounted for the largest portion of U.S. corporate contributions at 53 percent of total U.S. and international giving….”

“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.”

– Edmund Burke (Irish statesman and orator, 1729-1797)