Ethics Newsline®

It’s almost August. How could I have been so dumb? I had the whole winter to write the annual column on doping among cyclists at the annual Tour de France race, and I missed the opportunity.

The column would have been a template, of course. I’d have left blank spaces where the names of this summer’s cyclists, teams, countries, and specific drugs could be slotted in. After explaining how, yet again, the Tour de France was descending into a tour de farce, the story would list the various renowned cyclists who had been sent packing for using performance-enhancing drugs. It would describe how their teams had either (a) brazened it out, (b) admitted surprise at having been duped, or (c) packed up and gone home.

After a few paragraphs, the quotes would begin. From a race official would come the defensive it’s-a great-sport and-we’re-doing-our-best line, paired with the hand-wringing I-know-how-it-works assessment from a whistle-blowing former cyclist. It would then segue into the dire someday-they’ll-go-too-far prophecy from a drug-testing-lab official, followed by the what-causes-them-to-be-so-unethical question raised by an academic. It would end on the closing kicker — the ain’t-it-awful-but-hey-I-love-this-sport blurb from a fan perched on his bike high in a mountain pass waiting for the racers to come over the crest.

With a bit of extra effort, this template could even be expanded to address the almost-central questions. It could look at how cycling will seek to reform itself and why drugs are so dangerous for athletes to use.

The trouble is, those aren’t the real questions. Why? Because in the end, this isn’t a story about cycling. It’s about us, the public. Who are we that, year after year, we find ourselves again lamenting the unresolved? Is it merely a function of late July, known among journalists as the silly season, when newsmakers are on vacation, governments are running on batteries, editorial desks are scantily staffed, and any halfway serious story lands on the front page? After all, without a doping scandal, Tour de France coverage would languish in the sports section. Is it just a fluke of the season?

I doubt it. That doesn’t explain the story’s maddening persistence. Like a weird morality play, this story returns precisely on schedule each year, with different actors filling the same parts in a ritualized script whose well-known ending never changes. But what is the ritual celebrating? This is not a script about building a better world by exposing, denouncing, and reforming the illicit drug culture of professional cycling. The message is quite the reverse. Each year’s reporting makes it plain that drugs are nearly universal in this sport and that while the occasional high-profile cheater gets nailed, the average racer’s chances of succeeding without being caught are quite high.

Are we paying homage, then, to a culture of anything-goes competition, of which cycling is merely a symbol? Are we idolizing the derring-do of anyone — athlete, CEO, corporate raider, rock star, preacher, vigilante leader — who will hazard everything for the prize? Are Tour de France stories like the latest techno-spy thrillers, where the heroes — handsome, graceful, smartly attired, and in perfect physical shape — accomplish their impossible mission by embracing the geeky edge of bio-innovation with a cavalier disregard for self, future, or anyone else?

Thriller, morality play, religious ritual — however it plays out, the myth is the same. Here is Everyman, locked in intense competition with relentless adversaries. But with a twist: In this version, Everyman must abandon all moral restraint if he intends to win.

In a morality play, the adversary is the ultimate victim. But in today’s culture, it is we — society at large — who are the victims. The test of a good society is how it treats its elders and raises its young — in other words, what it reveres and what it teaches. The upcoming generation looks to the adult culture for lessons on what to hold in high regard. As kids watch us watching cycling, what are they learning? Seven lessons stand out:

• Doping is easy and harmless. Guys this cool wouldn’t do it if it were dangerous.
• If professional cycling officials really cared, they could eliminate doping with a serious testing program. They seem indifferent, so it must not be that important.
• Most cheaters in this sport survive just fine. Seems to be just like life: The odds of not getting caught are heavily in your favor, so just do it.
• Even if they nail you, you’ll become a household name. “All publicity is good,” the Irish playwright Brendan Behan once observed, “except an obituary.”
• The public wants superhuman winners. After some ritual complaining, they’ll give you the wink and the nod of approval.
• Building a better body is the whole point — just look at the magazines. Who cares whether you do it through food, exercise, surgery, or drugs?
• Watching the way adults watch this event, the only visible ethical standard is, “Don’t get caught.” The end justifies the means.

The real farce here is that this is what we’re teaching about our public passivity — the glazed indifference, the moral shrug that telegraphs so much to the young. Absent outrage, what stands between us and the next generation of Enrons and Watergates — led by those who grew up watching us tolerate the Tour de France?

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“It’s the end of a nightmare for these women and this man. Everyone in Europe is convinced that they are innocent…. We had to get them out, we got them out, and that’s all that matters.”

– French president Nicolas Sarkozy, talking last week about the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor imprisoned for eight years by Libya, which accused them of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV.

The medics’ innocence was not in doubt in the West — independent studies showed that the hospital infections occurred years before the they arrived in Libya, notes the Washington Post. They reportedly were tortured to extract confessions and subjected to three trials and two separate death sentences.

And while their release was widely celebrated, some questions have arisen about the deal that secured their freedom — a deal involving massive debt forgiveness for Libya and million-dollar payments to the families of the infected children, which has struck some as little more than ransom.

VARIOUS DATELINES
The high-stakes arena of professional sports was rocked by a series of ethics scandals last week, leading many in the mainstream media to wonder if athletics have suffered incalculable and irreparable damage to their credibility.

As stated in a July 25 editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Pro bike racing has run itself into a ditch. Scrutiny of the National Basketball Association’s oversight of its referees may call the league’s integrity into question. When Barry Bonds breaks the home run record, the celebration will be muted by Major League Baseball’s history of willful blindness to a growing steroid problem. If sports leagues fail to elevate their level of ethical play, they deserve all the public backlash they will receive.”

Brief details of those and other stories:

• NBA commissioner David Stern, facing what may be the worst crisis in professional basketball’s history, blasted a referee under investigation in an alleged betting scandal, calling him a “rogue, isolated criminal.” The Chicago Tribune reports that former referee Tim Donaghy, who resigned July 9 after finding himself in the crosshairs of an FBI probe, is alleged also to have provided information that could have given an advantage to someone who bet on the game. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti contends that the incident is of the absolute worst order: “Leagues can survive almost any scandal these days, from steroids to Pete Rose to dog fighting, but the scab that never heals is when a fan no longer trusts the official who controls a game. The manipulation of outcomes by a ref poisons the very core of why people invest their money, time, and energy into sports. For their family-of-four, $350 investment, consumers should expect an honest product above reproach. Without that trust from league-employed officials, pro basketball might as well be pro wrestling.” Donaghy had not been officially charged with any crime as this issue of Newsline went to press.
• Cycling’s premier event has been rocked by three alleged incidents involving performance-enhancing substances. In the most widely reported incident, yellow-jersey leader Michael Rasmussen was yanked by his Danish team after it was disclosed that he had missed several drug tests, reports the Canadian National Post. Before Rasmussen’s sacking, the French Confidis team withdrew after one of its riders failed a drug test. And before that, Kazakhstan’s Astana team withdrew after its leader, Alexander Vinokourov, failed a blood-doping test. Vinokourov has contested the results of that test.
• Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and two co-defendants pleaded not guilty to federal charges relating to dog-fighting last week as his team, stunned by the allegations, prepared to open training camp without him. A fourth man pleaded guilty on Monday, promising to cooperate with prosecutors, reports the Associated Press. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, whether Vick can play at all during the upcoming season is unclear and depends in part on the results of a league investigation of the charges. Those charges, which include gruesome allegations of alleged fights and executions of losing dogs, prompted demonstrations by animal-rights activists and resulted in the suspension of some advertising contracts involving Vick’s endorsements.
• San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds was on the verge of tying Major League Baseball’s home run record last week, but the buzz was not entirely about batting: Much of the media coverage dealt with how league officials and fans planned to react to what many view as a tainted record because of Bonds’ alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. Other than Bonds, the most visible player in the drama, reports Newsday, is commissioner Bud Selig, who announced last week — after a month of deliberation — that he would attend games in which Bonds was likely to hit his historic home runs. Selig said he decided to attend “out of respect for the tradition of this game, the magnitude of the record, and the fact that all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty.” While Bonds has been linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs through the statements of others and has testified before a grand jury that he may have unwittingly used a steroid-based cream or liquid, he has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing, notes the official Major League Baseball site MLB.com.

HOUSTON
NASA received another blow to its reputation last week as a panel investigating the agency charged that two astronauts had been drunk immediately before a flight but were cleared for blast-off anyway after officials dismissed the concerns of flight surgeons.

Newsweek reports that an independent review panel’s report concluded that in two incidents, astronauts “had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and/or fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety…. However, the individuals were still permitted to fly.”

The flight surgeons told the panel they were “demoralized” after their recommendations were ignored and are less likely to report concerns in the future.

While NASA did not immediately confirm or deny the incidents, or provide names and other details, deputy NASA administrator Shana Dale said the agency would ramp up its supervision of the astronaut corps and develop a formal code of conduct, according to a report from CBS News space analyst William Harwood.

The review panel that leveled the drinking charges was set up to monitor the mental health of astronauts after former astronaut Lisa Nowak was accused of making a bizarre cross-country trip in order to assault a romantic rival, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The Times notes that some former astronauts have expressed skepticism about the report, insisting that they have never witnessed in-flight drunkenness and that fliers are so closely monitored that such behavior would have been flagged at several levels.

The latest incident echoes past cases where NASA dismissed the concerns of knowledgeable low-level employees in the rush to report all systems go, according to an analysis from the Associated Press. “Four years ago,” writes AP reporter Marcia Dunn, the culture of dismissing concerns “involved higher-ups ignoring engineers who feared possible catastrophic damage to the shuttle Columbia. The engineers were right.”

In addition to its other troubles, NASA is also probing the sabotage of a computer that was to be installed in the International Space Station next month. NASA confirmed late last week that a worker at a subcontractor’s plant deliberately cut wires on the computer, according to a report from National Public Radio.

LONDON
A split over a question of the ethics of terror-suspect rendition is developing between the United States and Britain, according to various reports from the world press.

The Reuters news agency reports that a parliamentary committee last week accused the United States of harboring a “lack of regard for U.K. concerns” after two British residents were sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp after British intelligence officials shared background information with the CIA.

The British secret service had specifically prohibited any action being taken against the men and did not intend for them to be arrested or transferred, the parliamentary report claims.

According to the U.K. Guardian, the pair was seized as they flew to Gambia in 2002 on a business trip. Natives of Iraq and Jordan, they had lived in Britain for many years. One man has been released but the other remains at Guantánamo because his British residence status expired during his captivity.

The report from the Intelligence Security Committee, delivered to prime minister Gordon Brown, could undermine confidence in the exchange of information between the CIA and MI6, reports the London-based Independent. It also may prove a sticking point during current summit talks between Brown and President Bush.

Rendition of terror suspects has been the source of controversy between the allied nations, with some in Britain charging that the United States mistreats detainees at Guantánamo or sends them to other countries where they are likely to be tortured and the information relayed back to the States, according to the Times of London.

Critics in Britain claim the United States routinely has downplayed such concerns and made British intelligence agencies complicit in the practice of rendition.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Senate last week voted 95-0 to require colleges and student-loan companies to conform to a set of ethical guidelines.

Bloomberg reports that the move comes in the wake of revelations that some schools received kickbacks and other perks from the student loan industry if they steered students to a particular lender.

The new legislation also includes billions of dollars in cuts to subsidies to student lenders, funds that will be redirected largely to federal grants for low- and middle-income students, reports the New York Times.

As the Christian Science Monitor notes, the Senate version also includes a program for partial loan forgiveness to college graduates in public-sector jobs, such as teaching or social work.

A similar measure was passed by the House in early July. The measures now move to a conference committee where they will be reconciled and then submitted to President Bush for his signature, Forbes reports.

WASHINGTON
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is facing criticism over allegations that it deliberately ignored health hazards in government-supplied trailers for people who lost their homes to hurricane Katrina, and is also taking heat from experts in legal ethics who say FEMA’s lawyers were complicit.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee heard testimony last week claiming that lawyers had opposed testing for formaldehyde gas in the trailers, which were provided to tens of thousands of families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

According to the Chronicle report, an email from a FEMA staffer said the agency’s general counsel “has advised that we not do testing, which would imply FEMA’s ownership of the issue.”

Early last week, FEMA said it would continue to sell and donate the trailers, but will warn recipients about the possible dangers of formaldehyde. But later in the week, according to the Charlotte Observer, the agency backed away from that statement, saying it would “review a number of policies related to the trailers,” including their sale and donation.

Formaldehyde is a preservative sometimes used in materials for mobile homes. The Washington Post reports that the chemical is thought to be a possible cause of cancer and has been linked to a variety of respiratory disorders.

FEMA began collecting samples from trailers, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune, but it is unclear how long it will take for the agency to develop a test, administer it, and receive results.

VARIOUS DATELINES
Current and former officials found themselves on the hot seat in various corruption probes last week, and a survey highlighted just how fed up one nation is with graft:

• Former French president Jacques Chirac was questioned in a scandal involving political corruption that allegedly took place when he was mayor of Paris, the Financial Times reports. Chirac, who lost his immunity from prosecution when his presidential term ended in May, is being questioned about municipal jobs given out by his party during his mayoral terms from 1977 to 1995. One former official who served under Chirac at the time has received a suspended jail sentence for his part in the incidents, according to the Financial Times.
• The former party boss of Shanghai was drummed out of the party last week and may stand trial on corruption charges, reports the International Herald Tribune. Chen Liangyu is the highest official sacked in a decade, and his ouster is part of an unusual — for China — public investigation into official wrongdoing. The nation is battling international backlash against dangerous food and drug products claimed to have been produced after bribed officials turned a blind eye to substandard manufacturing processes or outright counterfeiting.
• Bangladesh continued its highly publicized corruption crackdown with the jailing of three former high-ranking cabinet ministers. More than 170 political figures have been detained, reports Reuters, as part of a government promise to clean up politics before the next round of elections. Some of those jailed also have been accused of consorting with terrorists.
• Graft-weary Russians want the government to make fighting corruption its top priority, according to a poll released last week. The survey, conducted by a major Russian public-opinion institute called the Levada Center, showed that 45 percent of respondents said corruption was their biggest worry, and that the government should focus on eradicating it, reports the English-language daily Moscow Times.

BEIJING
China’s propaganda department has called on journalists to adhere to news ethics — essentially, to stop making things up — but the request is being interpreted by some as an effort to sneak another government tendril into intricate systems of press control in that nation.

At the same time, many skeptics wonder if the government-discredited report was real after all.

The BBC reports that the government’s warning to journalists came after a reporter was allegedly caught faking a story about how cardboard was used to make buns. But after a police raid, workers at the bakery reportedly admitted adding the cardboard at the suggestion of the reporter, who apparently had grown frustrated because he could not find a story about food contamination.

The report, filmed with a hidden camera, was broadcast on China Central Television and has been viewed thousands of times on YouTube, reports the Associated Press.

China has been buffeted by a series of stories concerning adulterated food and counterfeit merchandise. Now, notes Reuters’ Beijing correspondent John Ruwitch, locals are quipping that even the news is fake.

And according to Reuters, reporter Zi Beija is now under arrest, though details of his detention and the charges against him are sketchy.

Ironically, since his detention many ordinary Chinese now say they doubt the government’s line and believe that the buns really were made of cardboard.

One more angle on the story: The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for greater transparency in the arrest of the Chinese reporter, cautioning that many in Beijing are skeptical of the police investigation and that fake products really are made in the region.

A press release from the CPJ warned against persecution of journalists under the guise of preventing false reports and said that the public will continue to harbor doubts as long as the charges against Zi are not clarified.

From Transparency International

“Over half of the world’s major exporting countries are still lacking the political will to prosecute foreign bribery, according to a new report by Transparency International (TI).

“The 2007 TI Progress Report on OECD Convention Enforcement shows that more than half of 34 parties to the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials are not enforcing the Convention or keeping their commitments. Signatory countries account for about two-thirds of world exports of goods and services. At the same time, there is now significant enforcement in 14 countries compared with 12 in 2006 and 8 in 2005.

” ‘Stronger measures must be applied to ensure compliance by governments that have not shown the political will to prosecute foreign bribery. Inaction by one country undermines enforcement by others, ultimately hurting international competition and business,’ said TI Chair Huguette Labelle.

“Of the eight largest exporters, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States have made important progress in enforcement; however, there have been no significant prosecutions in Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom….

“The termination by the UK of the investigation into allegations of bribery by BAE Systems on the Al Yamamah arms project in Saudi Arabia represents a major setback for the Convention. The UK’s claim that national security interests override the prohibition of foreign bribery creates an open-ended loophole that other countries could readily use….

“The key problem in non-enforcing countries is lack of political will. Additional obstacles identified in the Report include national legal systems that do not sufficiently comply with the convention’s provisions and a lack of resources which in turn hinders investigations and prosecutions.

“Rigorous company compliance programmes are missing in many countries that are economic powerhouses and the base for major multinationals….”

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (U.S. philosopher and poet, 1803-1882)