Ethics Newsline®

“The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting it can refuse it without guilt.”

– Sir Walter Scott (Scottish poet and novelist, 1771-1832)

From the Gallup News Service:

“In the aftermath of the tragic events in Littleton, Colorado, this week, a Gallup poll taken Wednesday evening found that most Americans believe the shooting rampage at Columbine High School by two students is evidence of deeper problems in the United States. Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed said the attack, which left a teacher and 14 students — including the two gunmen — dead, is an indication of serious problems, compared to only 17 percent who see the event as an isolated incident. At the same time only a bare majority of the public, 53 percent, expresses confidence that government and society can do anything to prevent similar acts of violence in the future. Two-thirds consider it likely that a similar incident could happen in their own community.

“Americans’ skepticism about acts of teen violence similar to the one that occurred in Littleton may not be surprising given that the attack at Columbine High School is, according to Associated Press reports, the seventh fatal shooting at a U.S. high school in less than two years. However, when presented with several specific proposals, Americans appear somewhat more optimistic that there are effective ways to curtail the problem of violence in schools.

“In particular, Americans indicate significant confidence in the potential impact of stricter gun control laws and teen counseling, with roughly three in five Americans (62 percent and 60 percent respectively) saying each of these measures would be a ‘very effective’ way to stop violence in high schools and middle schools. About half of those interviewed also believe that metal detectors at schools, stricter regulation of violence on TV and in movies, and restricting teenagers’ access to certain material on the Internet would be very effective measures. Student dress codes and random body searches, two remedies that sometimes raise civil libertarian objections, are considered very effective by only a third of the public. . . .

“Americans’ confidence in the effectiveness of various measures largely mirrors their judgement about the factors that are to blame for the attack in Littleton, Colorado. Out of seven factors measured in the survey, the one to which the largest percentage of Americans ascribe heavy blame is the availability of guns, with 60 percent saying it deserves ‘a great deal’ of blame for shootings like this. A majority, 51 percent, also places a high degree of blame on parents, while 49 percent say that popular entertainment in the form of TV, movies, and music bear a great deal of blame. Social pressures on youth, media coverage of similar incidents, the Internet, and schools are significantly less likely to be blamed. . . .”

HONG KONG
Chinese officials last week announced provisional plans to phase out their 1998 ban on direct selling in China by the year 2003.

The ban, instituted last April, outlawed the direct-sales operations of companies including Avon, Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics, and Sara Lee.

China said its agreement to end the ban is contingent upon the development of direct-selling regulations and U.S. support in World Trade Organization negotiations, according to the Reuters news agency.

In the wake of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, a grieving nation keeps asking, "What’s the meaning?"

The answer is more obvious than we may think: The nation faces a profound moral challenge, of which Littleton is simply a symptom.

Why "moral?" Because at bottom, this is a challenge to one of our deepest core values: respect. Put simply, our task is to craft a nation so grounded in respect for one another that nobody has any desire to resort to violence.

Easier said than done, of course. But a moment’s thought suggests why it’s so important.

At its simplest, respect for the lives of others is precisely what these two alleged young killers lacked. Most kids have in-built controls that, no matter how deep their animosities, keep them from going over the edge. With these two, something seems to have shorted out on the moral motherboard. Maybe the overload came from the gun-loving, violence-inspiring, computer-gaming world around them. But lots of kids inhabit that world and learn to shrug it aside. These two couldn’t.

But there’s a deeper sense of respect in play here. It’s the respect we owe to each other, and it’s called "inclusiveness." It’s our moral responsibility to embrace every one of our fellows in a recognition of their humanness, their dignity, their desire to be part of the whole.

Talk to students in America’s public high schools, and many tell harrowing tales of being left out in an us-versus-them social structure. They often see it as students versus the administration. But it takes shape in a whole range of polarities. It’s jocks versus geeks, preppies versus rednecks, rich versus poor, beautiful versus plain, and a veritable thesaurus of permutations. It sounds complicated. But like the fractions students gnaw their pencils over, these polarities can all be reduced to a lowest common denominator. They’re all about insiders versus outsiders.

The alleged killers in the Littleton tragedy were archetypal outsiders. Nothing new there: That’s the common profile connecting them with the killers in earlier school shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas; West Paducah, Kentucky; and Pearl, Mississippi. In Colorado they wore black trench coats, admired Hitler, hated athletes, played violent computer games, and listened to music that spoke of social nihilism and millennial angst. But those are details. At bottom, these alleged perpetrators were what we too harshly call "misfits" — suggesting that we’ve got only a few standard shapes and sizes, and you either squeeze yourself in or hang helplessly in limbo.

That limbo, that shadowy penumbra of inattention, has plagued the American experience from the beginning. Founded as a nation free from the hereditary class-consciousness of Europe, it has instead grown its own classes, cliques, and coteries. For those at the center, it’s a dilly of a system. For those in the penumbra, it’s a condemnation to a sort of social laryngitis. No matter how hard they scream, their words are unheard in the din of others’ success. In the worst cases, they let guns do the talking for them.

But America’s not alone. I was reminded of that when, the day after the Colorado shootings, I had the opportunity to hear a man whose experience with systematic exclusion has been legendary: Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Addressing several thousand participants at the Council on Foundations annual meeting in New Orleans — a gathering of the staff and boards of the nation’s leading philanthropies — he spoke directly to the Colorado incident in language that reflected his profession.

"There are no outsiders in God’s world," he told the group, adding that "everybody in God’s world is an insider." Explaining, he noted that, in the context of his own culture, "a person is a person through other persons." The point: Nobody succeeds alone, and we can only truly prosper if those around us are also prospering.

You don’t need to be religious to see what he’s getting at. But look inward at our schools. Are we genuinely making that point? Is there a locker room anywhere where big-boned athletes still stuff their smaller peers into trashcans for fun — and get away with it? Are there still cafeterias where the kids with weird hairdos are beaten up if they refuse to clean up after the cool kids? Are minorities still shunned by those who think they own the place? Are there words afloat in the general vocabulary that inflame the polarities and marginalize the outsiders?

But those things have been around forever, you say? Exactly what some business executives said in the early years of diversity training and gender equity issues. Yet today’s workplaces are moving rapidly toward an institutionalized respect that rules exclusiveness off the turf.

We can do that in our schools. History will record, among its shocking ironies, that the Colorado massacre occurred just as Slobodan Milosovic was proving in Kosovo how polarizing language could build up exclusivities that finally overflowed into the violence of ethnic cleansing. There, as in Littleton, the long-term answer will not lie in more guns, laws, or political deals. It will come down to our willingness to insist that, as Archbishop Tutu said, "everyone is a very special person." Never mind that the problem has always been around. What’s changed is the technology. In an age of hate-speech entertainment and readily available firepower, the importance of respect has just gone up dramatically. What we’ve learned from Columbine High is that, ready or not, we’ve got to meet the challenge of exclusivity with the morality of respect.

(c)1999 by Rushworth M. Kidder

The ethics involved in the information and entertainment industries are once again spotlighted in the wake of the Littleton, Colorado tragedy — covered this week in Rush Kidder’s column, and in our statistic and research reports — and also in several other stories leading this edition of Business Ethics Newsline.

In our wrap of the news of the week with an ethical angle, we lead with details of a court ruling allowing CBS’s “60 Minutes II” to air a piece gathered inside a medical facility with a hidden camera.

Another media-related story with a different bent follows: a new Web site aimed at socially conscious investors. The site is devoted to discussion of the ethics of major corporations.

And we follow with another information-age ethics story concerning FTC charges brought against an “information broker,” a firm that obtains and sells data, for allegedly lying in order to learn about individuals’ financial records.

In other news, we have two stories dealing with Asia: a report from China that officials supervising construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric project are corrupt and have allowed shoddy work to be done, and charges brought by activists who claim that a U.S. oil firm is fostering brutality by supporting a project in Myanmar.

Next, three stories about medical ethics: a report claiming doctors tend to use more of heavily-advertised varieties of blood-pressure medication because they are influenced by the ads; a movement by a noted philanthropist to fight the influence of money on medicine; and a suit against a managed-care company claiming false advertising.

We follow with two Olympics-related stories: Johnson & Johnson’s decision to back out of sponsorship of the event, and the International Olympic Committee’s reluctance to comply with congressional requests for periodic updates on what it’s doing to stanch corruption.

A story from the Netherlands concerns outrage over the killing of animals that arrived at an airport without proper papers, and two stories from the United Kingdom look into the always-interesting world of British commerce.

We conclude our wrap of the week’s news in ethics with a story about the retirement of Wayne Gretzky, an athlete praised not only for his abilities but also for his conduct.

Our “Trendlines” feature this week focuses on the sometimes-unhygienic mixture of news and advertising on the Web. And our “Whatever Happened to…” feature brings you up-to-date on three stories: the U.S.-E.U. “banana wars,” the NCAA wage-freeze suit, and the future of the direct-sales business in China.

Have a productive, ethical week.

– Carl Hausman

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina
A federal judge ruled last week that CBS’s “60 Minutes II” could broadcast an episode charging the nation’s largest psychiatric hospital company with mistreating patients, despite concerns over the legality of CBS’s hidden-camera investigation.

In the report, CBS charged Charter Behavioral Health Systems with falsifying records and using improper restraints to immobilize children with psychiatric disorders, the Reuters news agency reported.

CBS backed its claims with secretly videotaped footage obtained by a Charter employee who wore a pair of eyeglasses fitted with a miniature camera.

U.S. district judge Graham Mullen ruled that while CBS had satisfied his concerns about maintaining patient anonymity, he was troubled by CBS’s methodology.

Mullen said he would ask federal prosecutors to investigate whether CBS violated federal wiretapping laws, according to Reuters.

NEW YORK
A new Web site allows investors to comment on the social policies of corporations — a high-tech alternative to picketing or protesting at shareholders’ meetings.

The new site, the Shareholder Activism Center, provides a forum for stockholders and the general public to discuss corporations’ records on dealing with tough ethical issues, the Associated Press reported.

The site’s topical categories include the environment, treatment of minorities, corporate governance and executive pay, and hiring and employment practices.

The new site was launched by the Interfaith Center of Corporate Responsibility, a New York-based alliance of roughly 200 religious institutional investors.

The Center last year petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to ease restrictions on shareholder activism. The SEC agreed, amending regulations to permit shareholders wider latitude for raising and voting on “significant social policy matters,” according to the AP.

WASHINGTON
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week announced charges against Touch Tone Information Inc., an investigative firm that allegedly deceived financial institutions to obtain client information, which it then sold.

According to the FTC, Touch Tone employees called banks, brokerages, and other financial institutions, posing as account holders who had forgotten their balances and account information, the Associated Press reported.

The FTC claimed that Touch Tone would use names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers to learn about account holders’ holdings and financial affairs — information the Denver-based company would then sell.

An FTC sting resulted in last week’s complaint and charges.

BEIJING
Foreign engineers will be hired to oversee construction of China’s mammoth Three Gorges Dam project in order to avoid shoddy work overlooked by corrupt inspectors, China’s Workers Daily newspaper reported last week.

The move, announced by Three Gorges Construction and Development Co. director Lu Youmei, follows a series of collapsed construction projects widely attributed to endemic corruption.

Lu said Chinese officials often are too friendly with the firms they oversee, causing them to overlook shoddy work or siphon off funds from construction budgets, the Associated Press reported.

Last week, officials from a Chinese construction company were detained after a bridge under construction collapsed for the second time, killing 9 people. Earlier this month, a government official was sentenced to death and 12 others to prison for accepting bribes to ignore substandard work that caused a bridge to collapse in January, killing 40 people.

LOS ANGELES
A group of human rights activists last week petitioned California’s attorney general to revoke the state charter of oil giant Unocal, which they charge has supported human rights abuses by doing business in Myanmar (Burma).

Activists, led by the National Lawyers Guild, say Unocal should be held responsible for its investment in the Myanmar oil pipeline. Activists claim that construction of the pipeline prompted brutal forced labor and relocations.

Unocal spokesman Mike Thacher said that his company was “very comfortable” with its role in the Myanmar oil pipeline, which he insists has benefited the region, the Reuters news agency reported.

“We make business investment decisions that follow ethical standards,” Thacher said. “We have consistently taken the position that it’s better that we be there.”

The United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Myanmar in 1997 to protest the military government’s human rights abuses, prohibiting new investments but allowing existing businesses to continue.

WASHINGTON
Advertising could be influencing the prescription patterns of doctors treating blood pressure, a new study published by the American Heart Association warned last week.

The new report found that a large number of doctors are abandoning traditional treatments for fighting heart disease, in favor of newer, less-proven — and heavily advertised — prescriptions.

“We were surprised to see how striking the increase in advertising was during the years we studied,” Dr. Thomas Wang of Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement explaining his team’s research.

“Physicians who have been surveyed claim that advertising has little effect on their practice patterns,” study co-author Dr. Randall Stafford told the Reuters news agency. “But common sense suggests that pharmaceutical companies would not spend the money they do if they didn’t have evidence of its effectiveness.”

NEW YORK
Philanthropist George Soros announced last week that he would fund a $15 million initiative to fight the growing influence of money on medicine.

Announcing his new Medicine as a Profession (MAP) campaign, Soros insisted that there is a desperate need for “professional ethics to stand out against marketplace forces,” the Reuters news agency reported.

The $15 million, three-year program will teach young doctors how to help underserved communities, fund watchdog alliances of academicians, physicians, and consumers, and promote the debate of medical ethics.

HARTFORD, Connecticut
Three customers and a consumer group last week sued managed-care giant Aetna Inc. for false advertising.

The suit claims Aetna tells customers that quality medical care comes first, but pushes Aetna doctors to skimp on services and spend less time with clients.

The suit also charges Aetna with violating federal antiracketeering laws, which prohibit the use of the U.S. Postal Service and interstate commerce for dissemination of fraudulent material.

Aetna spokesman Fred Laberge told Reuters that Aetna, the largest HMO in the United States, would “vigorously” defend itself against the lawsuit, which he dismissed as “without any conceivable merit.”

The class-action lawsuit, filed in part by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, seeks unspecified damages for nearly 6 million Aetna members from July 1996 to the present.

SALT LAKE CITY
The pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson last week withdrew its $30 million sponsorship of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, according to wire service reports.

A spokesman for the New Jersey-based company said the decision was due in part to its concern over the bribes for-votes scandal surrounding the Salt Lake Olympics, the Reuters news agency reported. Internal disagreements about the best methods to advertise the firm’s varied products also played a role, the spokesman said.

Since the scandal broke last year, no new sponsors have signed on to support the 2002 Winter Olympics, which still needs to raise roughly $300 million to meet the event’s estimated $1.45 billion budget.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last week rejected a request by the U.S. Congress for monthly updates on IOC progress in stamping out internal corruption.

Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) had spearheaded the demand, saying that U.S. lawmakers and the public still have “significant skepticism” about the IOC’s anticorruption efforts, according to the Reuters news agency.

Kevin Gosper, a member of the IOC ethics commission, expressed surprise at McCain’s request for further proof of the IOC’s commitment to reform after the bribes-for votes scandal surrounding the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

“I don’t know any international corporations doing (that). I don’t know any U.S. corporations doing it, and don’t know why we should be asked to do it,” Gosper said at a Foreign Correspondents Association luncheon.

Washington lawmakers have warned that the IOC could face stiff sanctions if the group fails to show significant progress in the near future.

The IOC’s new ethics committee is scheduled to meet for the first time on May 3.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines apologized last week for its decision to kill 440 illegally imported Chinese squirrels by putting them into an industrial shredding machine.

The incident prompted harsh criticism from animal rights groups, a debate in Parliament, a KLM investigation, and the temporary suspension of the worker who fed the live animals into the shredder.

The Chinese squirrels, en route to a collector in Greece, arrived in the Netherlands without proper documentation. When the Beijing exporter refused to take them back, the airline destroyed them, according to a BBC report.

KLM issued a statement saying the airline “made a grave mistake on ethical grounds,” but insisted that government officials had approved the airline’s method of killing confiscated animals.

Animal rights groups say the airline has used the same shredder to kill more than 200 other squirrels, water turtles, and rare parakeets this month alone, according to the Associated Press.

LONDON
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) last week announced an investigation into U.K. car repair companies, which it says may be overcharging customers and doing substandard work.

The OFT, the government’s business watchdog agency, received more than 27,000 complaints last year from disgruntled customers unhappy with the quality and cost of car repairs, the BBC reported.

OFT head John Bridgeman told the BBC that the car service industry is “in urgent need of investigation” on charges of performing unnecessary repairs, overcharging consumers, and doing shoddy work.

LONDON
A group of laboratory technicians began legal proceedings last week against the National Health Service (NHS), complaining that their 90-hour workweeks violate new U.K. workplace protections.

Forty lab-techs, represented by the Manufacturing Science and Finance union, are taking on the NHS after allegedly being denied rest breaks at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, the BBC reported. They claim extreme fatigue and blame an auto accident on the long hours.

An employment tribunal will hear the workers’ case, which claims that the long hours breach the Working Time Directive, new legislation designed to limit the length of the U.K. workweek.

Special to Newsline from Canadian Correspondent Errol P. Mendes

NEW YORK
Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky played his last game as a professional hockey player last week, and millions of Canadians were glued to their television sets to witness one of the country’s greatest heroes passing from the professional hockey scene.

One of the most fitting tributes was paid by Bill Torrey, former general manager of the New York Islanders, whose four-year reign as Stanley Cup champions was ended by Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers.

“How can you ever fault what this guy has done publicly for our sport?” Torrey told the Post. “He said the right things at the right time, he’s led a clean life, he has a nice family. The thing I feel about him is he came along at a time of a media explosion in all sports and he never ducked his responsibilities, never walked away.”