Ethics Newsline®

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Calvin Coolidge called it “the life of trade.” George Orwell said it was “the rattling of the stick inside the swill bucket.” Very few people are neutral about the subject of advertising, but I’m siding with Coolidge on this one.

As irritating as advertising may be, the industry pumps the blood through the veins of media and journalism. In the United States, the vast broadcast television and radio system is essentially free for anyone who can buy the receiver, with commercials carrying the freight. Most print media is heavily subsidized by the presence of ads: A $4 magazine could cost you $25 if the publisher were counting on revenue from sales of the publication alone to turn a reasonable profit.

Having said that, advertising raises an array of ethics issues that complicate the calculation. I’ve thought about those issues for some time, and last week’s news once more brought them to the surface.

Some background: Decades ago, when I was scrambling for a job in TV news, I worked as a jack-of-all-trades television and radio announcer. As part of my job, I would do commercials for products or services I didn’t particularly like or had no occasion to use. Some commercials involved taking on a role or persona, which in turn created what struck me as a mild degree of deception. I praised a certain type of children’s car seat, for example, even though I had no children at the time. In one series of commercials, I dispensed investment advice from behind an oak desk, imitating a trustworthy banker of some sort. (I can only note that friends and family familiar with my numerical and financial acumen characterized my casting as somewhere between “ludicrous” and “criminal.”)

Is such deception unethical? I learned to live with it by rationalizing that generally we’re accepting of some confection of images in advertising, and often prefer the image to reality. That was a lesson taught to advertisers by the Hathaway shirt man, who showed that the image of a mysterious fellow sporting an eye patch and wearing a Hathaway shirt sold a lot more shirts than the previously employed tactic of actually describing the attributes of the garment.

We’re also aware that many of the people we see on TV are actors, even if we still mix up image and reality. The confusion may have reached its self-referential peak in the 1970s when actor Robert Young, who had portrayed a physician on a TV drama, appeared in commercials wearing a lab coat and hawked a nonprescription drug. (The line attributed to him, “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV,” has been conflated into our social memories.)

The ethical aspects of playing somebody on TV as well as the attendant image tinkering made news last week after a page-one article in the New York Times scrutinized a series of commercials in which Dr. Robert Jarvik, who invented the artificial heart, appears on camera and praises a prescription drug. Jarvik is depicted in various athletic pursuits, reports the Times, including rowing a racing shell across a lake. His pitch line: “When diet and exercise aren’t enough, adding Lipitor significantly lowers cholesterol.”

But (and I suspect you knew this was coming) all is not as it seems. While Jarvik does have a medical degree and is clearly a distinguished inventor, he is not licensed to practice medicine and has never actually practiced. Moreover, he doesn’t really row a boat. Producers hired a double, an accomplished rower who physically resembles Jarvik, to enact the scene.

Jarvik says he takes Lipitor himself, but a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives wants to know when and why Jarvik began to take the drug, and is expected to call him to testify. The committee also wants to look at the whole concept of advertising for prescription drugs, a controversial practice that, despite some voluntary industry guidelines, has skyrocketed in recent years.

Jarvik, who reportedly earned more than a million dollars for his endorsement, defends his role in the commercials, writing on his website that he is dedicated to the battle against heart disease and was motivated to become a doctor after heart disease killed his father.

But Dr. David Triggle, a pharmacologist who has written about drug advertising, tells the Times that the ad is fundamentally deceptive. “In the case of a physician of significant reputation and renown, and Jarvik is well known for his artificial heart, I think it’s sending a rather dishonest message — that he himself taking Lipitor is healthy enough to row up and down whatever stream he was rowing…. Since he used a body double, that’s dishonesty.”

I tend to agree. While the line between acceptable puffery and deception isn’t clear, it’s clear that there must be a line somewhere. The Jarvik ad transfers his shining reputation as an inventor to a vaguely authoritative testimonial for a drug treatment. While testimonials, even illogical ones, are not unethical per se — a sports figure recommending a breakfast cereal comes to mind — the stakes in this case are high. And when Dr. Jarvik offers himself up as (literally) living proof of a drug’s effectiveness, the ersatz footage demonstrating his athletic prowess is misleading. He’s not an athlete, even if a stunt double helps him play one on TV.

What’s your opinion? Did the Jarvik ad cross the line? (You can view the commercial on the New York Times website, listed below.)

Let us know what you think. If we collect enough responses, we’ll provide a synopsis next week.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

Rushworth Kidder will return next week.

For more information, see: New York Times, Feb. 8 — Wall Street Journal, Feb. 8 — Forbes, Feb. 8 — Detroit News, Feb. 7.

“This whole conspiracy corrupted the law firm and it corrupted it in the most evil way.”

– U.S. District Judge John Walter, speaking at the sentencing hearing for William Lerach, a high-profile New York lawyer convicted for his role in paying $11.3 million in kickbacks to professional plaintiffs who would enroll to sue companies targeted by Lerach’s former firm, Milberg Weiss. On Monday, Judge Walter ordered Lerach to serve two years in federal prison, two years of probation, pay a $250,000 fine, and complete 1,000 hours of community service, reports the Associated Press.

Source: AP, Feb. 11.

But U.N. human rights chief hints that other nations could pursue action against CIA

WASHINGTON
U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey last week rejected calls by Congress for an investigation of the CIA’s use of waterboarding, a highly controversial interrogation technique akin to controlled drowning.

According to the Washington Post, Mukasey told a congressional panel that Defense Department lawyers concluded that the use of the waterboarding in 2002 and 2003 was legal, and therefore the government cannot investigate whether a crime had occurred.

The issue resurfaced after CIA director Michael Hayden confirmed earlier in the week that the agency had used the technique, ABC News reported.

Mukasey also refused a congressional request to see the Justice Department legal opinions, reports Congressional Quarterly, potentially creating a constitutional showdown over the legislative branch’s access to executive branch documents.

Waterboarding has been condemned by critics as being a form of torture — a view echoed late last week by United Nations high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour.

Arbour told a news conference in Mexico City that she “would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture,” according to the Reuters news agency.

Reacting to Mukasey’s contention that CIA officials who used waterboarding would not be prosecuted, Arbour apparently left open the door to international action, noting that violators of the U.N. Convention Against Torture could be prosecuted under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, according to the Reuters report.

Sources: Reuters, Feb. 8 — Washington Post, Feb. 8 — Congressional Quarterly, Feb. 8 — ABC News, Feb. 7.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 22, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 23, 2007.

Police-corruption problems range from Canada to Mexico; issues flare in Eastern Europe and Asia; and Bangladesh prosecutors say an assistant making $100 per month netted $145 million in bribes

VARIOUS DATELINES
Graft was the focus of news stories from three continents last week. Among them:

• Officials in Ontario, Canada, may make changes in the judicial system following the termination of what is thought to be the biggest police-corruption case in the nation’s history. Charges against six Toronto drug squad officers were stayed two weeks ago when a court ruled that the multimillion-dollar, decadelong investigation had taken too long, thereby violating the defendants’ rights. The detectives where charged with various counts of falsifying records and failing to account for money and drugs seized from crime scenes. In turn, charges in more than 200 cases against alleged drug dealers were dropped after the police were charged, according to CTV. Premier Dalton McGuinty said the controversy could “serve as a catalyst for us to look at the broader system,” CTV reports.
• Mexico’s federal government and army are cracking down on corruption in local police forces. USA Today reports that the move is part of president Felipe Calderón’s crackdown on drug trafficking. Mexican federal agents have arrested about a dozen city and state police officers on drug charges in the past month.
• A European Union report issued last week was lukewarm on Bulgaria’s efforts to fight corruption, but said that some democratic reforms had been introduced and appeared to be somewhat effective, according to the Sofia Echo. Bulgaria was admitted to the EU in 2007 but as part of the deal was required to clean up corruption. EU officials said that despite the lack of much progress, it is better to have Bulgaria inside the organization than outside in order to speed peaceful democratization, according to the International Herald Tribune.
• The former second-in-command of the Communist Party in China’s Shangdong province last week was sentenced to life in prison for graft, according to the official news agency Xinhua. Du Shicheng faced the death penalty but was given a lighter sentence in recognition of his confessions to crimes of which prosecutors weren’t aware.
• The AFP reports that a low-level employee of Bangladesh’s largest state-owned gas company has been accused of using his position to pocket $145 million in bribes over the past 12 years. Prosecutors say Abdul Kader Mollah, a former sales assistant who earned about one hundred dollars a month, took bribes in return for covertly lowering gas prices, reports the Agence France-Presse. Mollah, who is still under investigation and had not been arrested as of late last week, took out ads in top newspapers throughout the country claiming he made his fortune legitimately after leaving the gas business in 1997. Police, though, counter that at least 80 percent of the employees of the firm in question, Titas Gas Distribution Company, have profited from rampant corruption. “Almost everyone in the company is a millionaire,” said the head of Bangladesh’s anticorruption agency, reports AFP. As of late last week, some employees had opted to return their ill-gotten gains and sign a no-corruption pledge in order to escape prosecution, reports the Bangladesh Daily Star.

Sources: Bangladesh Daily Star, Feb. 1 — CTV, Feb. 8 — Xinhua, Feb. 8 — USA Today, Feb. 8 — Sofia Echo, Feb. 8 — AFP, Feb. 8 — International Herald Tribune, Feb. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 28 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 28 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22.

Various civil cases had accused the pharmaceutical titan of overcharging government programs

PHILADELPHIA
Drug giant Merck & Co. last week said it will pay more than $650 million to settle claims that it overcharged U.S. government healthcare programs for prescription drugs.

UPI reports that Merck was accused in a whistle-blower lawsuit of providing discounts to hospitals and doctors that bought large lots of drugs, but did not offer the same deal to patients treated through Medicare and other government healthcare programs, which violates U.S. law.

Merck also was accused of offering kickbacks to some medical professionals in order to boost sales, according to a report from MarketWatch.

The settlement, which was made without Merck admitting any wrongdoing, resolves several civil probes by federal authorities and state attorneys general, according to the Financial Times.

One of the cases stemmed from allegations made by a former Merck sales representative who charged that Merck violated the law in marketing the cholesterol drug Zocor and the painkiller Vioxx, a pain drug later pulled from the market after it was linked to heart disease risks, reports the Dow Jones News Service.

Sources: UPI, Feb. 8 — Dow Jones News Service, Feb. 8 — MarketWatch, Feb. 7 — Financial Times, Feb. 7.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 2, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 7, 2006 — Related Newsline story, July 3, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 12, 2005.

Longtime animal advocate donates million for animal ethics program; conditions on chicken farms capture headlines in Britain

LOS ANGELES and LONDON
A variety of animal-ethics stories were featured in news from education and commerce last week:

• Bob Barker, the former host of the TV game show “The Price is Right,” last week donated $1 million to establish an undergraduate animal-ethics program at his alma mater, Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. Barker, a longtime animal-rights activist, previously donated millions to similar programs at the law schools of Columbia, Harvard, and Northwestern, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• British supermarket chain Tesco sparked a controversy last week when it slashed the price of a whole chicken to about $3.70. While Tesco said the move would benefit consumers on tight budgets, critics said the discount would put more pressure on chicken producers and exacerbate the already grim conditions under which broiler chickens are raised, the London-based Independent reports. Chicken farming is a high-profile issue in Britain following a series of television reports documenting cramped, painful conditions and maintaining that many chickens are unable to walk properly because of their severely crowded confinement.
• A new poll shows that animal welfare is the top ethical concern among U.K. consumers, the Guardian reports. Twenty-one percent of respondents to the poll, conducted by the Co-op grocery chain, cited animal welfare as their most important issue. Fourteen percent rated fair trade as their key concern, while only 4 percent cited global warming. As a result of the poll, the 2,700-store chain is banning the sale of eggs from caged hens. The Co-op chain claims that the survey of 100,000 members and customers is the biggest poll of consumer ethics in history.

Sources: Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 8 — Independent, Feb. 8 — Guardian, Feb. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 7 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007.

Their environmental impact gets them blacklisted from Standard Life’s ethical funds

LONDON
One of Britain’s top investment firms has labeled airlines as unethical and plans to blacklist them alongside arms dealers and animal-testing labs.

The Scotsman reports that Standard Life, based in Edinburgh, says concerns over the millions of tons of carbon dioxide produced by commercial aircraft have prompted it to end ethical-fund investment in air carriers.

The London Stock Exchange reports on its website that Standard Life made the move after conducting a poll of its customers.

“The views of investors in our ethical funds are of paramount importance to us,” said Julie McDowell, head of socially responsible investments at Standard Life, according to the London Daily Telegraph. “We seek, wherever possible, to reflect those concerns in the criteria applicable to our funds.”

While several socially responsible investment funds exclude various industry sectors, few explicitly ban aviation, according to the management trade journal Environmental Finance.

Sources: Scotsman, Feb. 8 — London Stock Exchange, Feb. 8 — Telegraph, Feb. 6 — Environmental Finance, Feb. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 24, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 4, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 20, 2007.

Cynthia Cooper profiled by TIME magazine

NEW YORK
TIME magazine last week profiled WorldCom whistleblower Cynthia Cooper, who was instrumental in exposing the accounting fraud that eventually brought down the company and led to the imprisonment of five executives.

TIME, noting that many whistle-blowers become isolated, depressed, and unemployed, asked Cooper whether she would do it again.

“Yes, I would,” she told the magazine. “I really found myself at a crossroads where there was only one right path to take.”

Asked if she sees parallels between WorldCom and the gigantic bank fraud unfolding at Société Générale, Cooper observes: “Frauds typically start small and then they begin to grow. People rationalize their decisions. It will be interesting to see if there was collusion involved. That’s one of the commonalities across all these big frauds we’ve seen: There is collusion — and it is has gone in most of these cases up to the very highest levels of the company. That is how you bypass controls.”

Cooper is the author of a new book, Extraordinary Circumstances: Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.

Sources: TIME, Feb. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 31, 2006 — Related Newsline story, June 26, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 2, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 26, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 15, 2005.

Pew survey examines public’s priorities for coming year

From the Pew Research Center:

“With the economy slowing and the stock market reeling, there is greater agreement among Republicans and Democrats that strengthening the nation’s economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress in the coming year. By contrast, partisan differences over the importance of other domestic issues — such as dealing with global warming, helping the poor, and providing health insurance to the uninsured — have all increased substantially over the past year….

“The annual survey on the public’s policy agenda shows that substantially more Republicans and independents view strengthening the economy as a top priority than did so in January 2007. Partisan differences over the importance of bolstering the nation’s economy, which were fairly sizable at the start of last year, have disappeared.

“However, far fewer Republicans rate dealing with global warming, expanding access to health insurance, and helping the poor as top concerns — and partisan disagreements over the importance of those issues have increased considerably. Only about a quarter of Republicans (27%) say that providing health insurance to the uninsured should be a top priority, down 17 points from January 2007. More than twice as many Democrats (65%) and independents (58%) now rate this as a major policy goal.

“There is a similar pattern in views about the importance of dealing with the problems of the poor and global warming. A year ago, global warming was the lowest-ranking agenda item for Republicans of 23 issues mentioned; just 23% viewed it as a top priority. This year, it has fallen even further — just 12% of Republicans cite global warming as a top priority, less than half the proportion naming the next lowest rated issue (27% for providing health insurance to the uninsured).

“Democrats currently are about four times more likely than Republicans to rate global warming as a major priority (47% vs. 12%), a much greater gap than in January 2007 (48% Democrat vs. 23% Republican)….

“Economic problems now top the public’s list of national concerns, with roughly one-in-three (34%) citing economic problems as the nation’s most grave, compared with 27% who say the war in Iraq is the biggest problem facing the nation….

“Democrats remain more likely than Republicans to cite the economy as the nation’s greatest problem. Nearly four-in-ten Democrats (39%) list an economic concern, compared with 27% of Republicans. Democrats are also substantially more concerned about Iraq than are Republicans (36% vs. 21%). By contrast, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to name immigration, terrorism and national security as the biggest problems….

“Notably, 81% of Democrats say that reducing health care costs should be a top priority for policymakers — the highest percentage for any issue mentioned. Only about half of Republicans (53%) view this as a major priority….

“As he begins his final year in office, President Bush’s standing with the public continues to worsen. While his overall job approval ratings are holding steady, the balance of opinion is roughly two-to-one negative (31% approve, 59% disapprove)….

“A 59% majority of Americans believe that, in the long run, the failures of the Bush administration will outweigh the accomplishments, up from 53% a year ago. Half as many (28%) say Bush’s accomplishments will outweigh his failures….

“This dour view of the Bush presidency stands in contrast to public sentiment at the same point in Bill Clinton’s presidency. In January of 2000, 51% felt the Clinton administrations main legacy would be its accomplishments, while just 37% said the failures would stand out….

“…The most striking difference in views of the two presidents’ legacies is among independents. In January 2000, a majority of independents (53%) said that Clinton’s legacy would be marked by his administration’s accomplishments. Today, by a 64% to 23% margin, most independents say Bush’s legacy will be marked by his administration’s failures….”

For the full press release, Jan. 24, click here.

“Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.”

– Alexis de Tocqueville (French political writer and statesman, 1805-1859)