Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

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“Bribes are necessary” – Berlusconi; but he does hit a nerve.

February 18, 2013

Bunga-bunga Berlusconi is at it again!

But he is describing a reality which applies not only in 3rd world and developing countries but also in the EU and Japan and the rest of the “developed” world.

This time he was reacting to a string of corruption cases in Italy culminating in the arrest of the Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi for involvement in bribes allegedly paid to Indian government officials to secure a helicopter contract. This follows ENI’s CEO Paolo Scaroni being investigated for alleged bribes paid by its Saipem subsidiary to win contracts in Algeria.

From the FT:

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has defended the need for bribery in winning contracts for Italy’s multinationals, as politicians campaigning in general elections have been forced to respond to a welter of corruption scandals revolving around the nexus of politics and business.

“Bribes are a phenomenon that exists and it’s useless to deny the existence of these necessary situations when you are negotiating with third world countries and regimes,” Mr Berlusconi, leader of a centre-right coalition and seeking his fourth stint in office, said on Thursday.

“These are not crimes,” said Mr Berlusconi, describing payments as “commissions”. He also defended state-controlled energy group Eni, whose chief executive Paolo Scaroni is under investigation for alleged bribes paid by its Saipem subsidiary to win contracts in Algeria. Mr Scaroni denies the allegations.

Corruption generally takes two forms:

  1. According to rule: Where a bribe is paid for preferential treatment  in an otherwise lawful process (i.e. to be preferred over a competitor, to have an application approved “out of turn”  or generally for the facilitation of a lawful process in favour of the briber)
  2. Against the rule: Where a consideration is provided to obtain some service that the receiver is not legally authorised to provide (i.e. to a judge for a favourable judgement or to a policeman to not do his bounden duty or to a Professor to pass a failing student).

For both the cases above of Finmeccanica and ENI, the corruption alleged is primarily of the “According to Rule” type. In the first Finmeccanica’s subsidiary Augusta-Westland apparently payed bribes totalling some €51 million to first have specifications altered so that they could bid and then paid bribes for preferential evaluation during technical trials where the trials themselves were tailored to suit their product. The value of the helicopter contract is about €480 million. In the ENI case, CEO Scaroni apparently arranged to pay some €197 million through a Hong Kong company who then paid bribes to Algerian officials to win Sonatrach and other Algerian contracts for their Saipem subsidiary. The contract values add up to some €8.5 billion.

In the Finmeccanica case the “bribes” make up some 10.6% of the contract value whereas for the ENI case the alleged bribes amount to some 2.4% of the contract value. This difference is itself interesting. Profit margins in energy contracts (oil and gas pipelines or equipment or power plants and power equipment)  are generally significantly lower than in defence contracts. Certainly in the power industry – from my own experience – “consultancy” and “agent” contracts – always ostensibly for the supply of specific services – were considered to be at an “acceptable” and justifiable level if they amounted to less than than about 3% of the contract value in a contract with a profit margin of something less than 10% and typically around 7 – 8%. This suggests to me that the helicopter contract probably has a true profit margin of around 25% with a visible margin of around 15% after paying the “commissions” and “software consultancy contracts” of around 10%.

This is bad enough but there is a particular kind of case where I am a little less certain of what the correct and ethical course of action is. I have seen many cases where the “bribe” is effectively structured as a kind of ” private tax” applying to whoever the winner is. A sort of level playing field as regards bribes.

It is made clear to all bidders that the bidder with the lowest visible evaluated price will win. But it is also made clear – privately – to all bidders that there is a minimum “commission” payment  – usually expressed as a percentage – which will apply. The bidder who makes the best (highest) private bid above this minimum also receives the largest amount of “support” during the evaluation procedure  to be able to declare his bid L1 (lowest evaluated price). The highest bribe-bidder does not necessarily win if his product/bid are not quite good enough to also achieve the lowest evaluated price.

The real question for a CEO then becomes:
“Should I decline to bid and jeopardise jobs – and profits – at my own factories, or join the prevailing game and pay the lowest possible bribe I can?”

And by the way – it is not only 3rd world and developing countries where this dilemma appears. And anybody who thinks this does not happen every day in the EU is living in a fantasy. Not least in the area of public procurement.

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Posted in Corruption, Ethics, India, Italy | Comments Off on “Bribes are necessary” – Berlusconi; but he does hit a nerve.

German Education and Research Minister’s dissertation in formal revocation proceedings

January 25, 2013

Yet another German politician’s dissertation is being questioned. But it is particularly ironic when the politician accused of plagiarism is the current German Minister for Education and Research and has been since 2005. Professor Debra Weber-Wulff reports:

Düsseldorf University to open formal revocation investigation

 After an almost six-hour-long meeting behind closed doors, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Düsseldorf voted to open formal revocation proceedings on the dissertation of Annette Schavan, the current German Minister of Education and Research, as noted in a press release issued this evening. Since so many people are interested in this topic world-wide, I am translating it to English here:

In May 2012 a public allegation was raised that the doctoral thesis of Prof. Dr. Schavan contained plagiarism.  If we as a faculty find substantial evidence of  scientific misconduct, we must pursue it vigorously —  regardless of the person involved or their social position. There is no legal statute of limitations on such cases. 
The Faculty of Arts and Humanities must then determine if the doctorate was correctly granted at the time it was granted. 
As part of the process, the doctoral committee of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities conducted a preliminary investigation. They examined Schavan’s written thesis and obtained a statement from her on the situation. 
Based on the recommendation of the doctoral committee, I [the dean, Bruno Bleckmann] presented the question to the Faculty Board at today’s meeting as to whether or not we should proceed with a formal revocation investigation. 
The Faculty Board discussed all of the issues raised during the preliminary investigation in detail today. They voted by secret ballot with 14 votes in favor and one abstention to open a formal revocation investigation.  
In the coming weeks, the members of the Faculty Board will intensively deal with the documents prepared by the doctoral committee and the statement from the person in question. The next meeting of the Faculty Board is set for February 5, at which time the continuation of the revocation investigation will be on the agenda.  
I want to emphasize that the process is still open-ended at this point.

 

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Ethics, Germany, Politics | 1 Comment »

Shocking gender inequality in scientific misconduct

January 22, 2013

Apparently men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud according to a new study. Of course the study only deals with misconduct and frauds that have been found out.

Important areas that the study does not address are – for example – :

  1. Whether women are being denied the same opportunities to cheat that their males colleagues obviously have and if so how this can be rectified, or
  2. Whether women cheat as much as men but are better able to conceal their misconduct and avoid being found out and if so what training or ability their male colleagues lack, or
  3. Whether this behaviour is due to the more aggressive nature of the male species and whether all male research should be subjected to greater scrutiny.

Whatever the reasons this kind of gender inequality should not to be tolerated in a modern society. Further study is clearly needed and I think there is plenty of room here for a number of PhD theses in social psychology. That is not to say that immediate actions to promote gender equality should be delayed. For a start quotas for women found to be committing misconduct could be introduced at all research institutions.

Male scientists are far more likely to commit fraud than females and the fraud occurs across the career spectrum, from trainees to senior faculty. The analysis of professional misconduct was co-led by a researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and was published today in the online journal mBio.

“The fact that misconduct occurs across all stages of career development suggests that attention to ethical aspects of scientific conduct should not be limited to those in training, as is the current practice,” said senior author Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of microbiology & immunology and professor of medicine at Einstein, as well as editor-in-chief of mBio.

He added, “Our other finding – that males are overrepresented among those committing misconduct – implies a gender difference we need to better understand in any effort to promote the integrity of research.”

In a previous study, Dr. Casadevall found that misconduct is responsible for two-thirds of all retractions of scientific papers. The finding was unexpected, since earlier research had suggested that errors account for the majority of retracted scientific papers.

Researchers embarked on the current study to better understand those who are guilty of scientific fraud. They reviewed 228 individual cases of misconduct reported by the United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI) from 1994 through 2012. ORI promotes the responsible conduct of research and investigates charges of misconduct involving research supported by the Department of Health and Human Services.

An analysis determined that fraud was involved in 215 (94 percent) of the 228 cases reported by the ORI. Of these, 40 percent involved trainees, 32 percent involved faculty members, and 28 percent involved other research personnel (research scientists, technicians, study coordinators, and interviewers).

Overall, 65 percent of the fraud cases were committed by males, but the percentage varied among the academic ranks: 88 percent of faculty members who committed misconduct were male, compared with 69 percent of postdoctoral fellows, 58 percent of students, and 43 percent of other research personnel. In each career category, the proportion of males committing misconduct was greater than would have been predicted from the gender distribution of scientists. The gender difference was surprisingly large among faculty, said Dr. Casadevall, who also holds the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Chair in/of Microbiology & Immunology. Of the 72 faculty who committed fraud, just 9 were female – one-third of the expected 27 if females had committed fraud at the same rate as males.

 

 

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Ethics, Science, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Shocking gender inequality in scientific misconduct

Liverpool Care Pathway for babies is surely euthanasia but it is not painless

November 29, 2012

I have no doubt that the Care Pathways have the best of intentions to make an inevitable death as painless and comfortable as possible. But at best this is euthanasia and at worst it is something else. The latest article in the Daily Mail’s “campaign”  is more than a little disturbing. If a Care Pathway – by definition – is intended to lead to a dignified and pain-free death then causing additional suffering by being put on the Pathway cannot be right. I am not sure where the ethical line goes but I cannot help feeling that a final painless lethal injection may be preferable to 10 days of starvation and thirst and suffering as feeding and fluids are denied and a baby shrinks to death.

(more…)

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Do not resuscitate! A case of an “institutionally mandated execution”?

November 6, 2012

In the light of the recent criticisms of the Care Pathways in the UK, this case of the “Do Not Resuscitate” orders by doctors – against the patient’s wishes –  and Janet Tracy’s subsequent death  is more than a little disturbing. She was suffering from terminal cancer but her death was surely accelerated by the DNR.

When a patient’s death is apparently deliberately caused – by inaction and prematurely – by the “policies” of a hospital (and its doctors), we are entering into the murky realm of institutionally mandated executions.

I don’t live in the UK but the National Health Service is held up as a model in so many other countries that what is practised at hospitals in the UK today will be quickly justified and adopted in many other places.

The Independent:

Doctors twice placed ‘do not resuscitate’ orders on medical notes of Janet Tracey, against her and her family’s wishes

A dying woman was “badgered” by doctors so much about agreeing to a do not resuscitate order that she was reduced to terrified tears, her husband said today.

Janet Tracey, 63, had been determined to fight cancer but within days of being admitted to hospital after a car crash, she became “anxious and distressed”.

“At one point she told me they were trying to get rid of her and I told her not to be silly, which proved to be a mistake. She was panicked. They were questioning her all the time about a DNACPR (do not attempt cardio-pulmonary resuscitation order),” her widower David Tracey told the High Court today as he explained that he and his daughters asked for the order to be removed.

Days later, on 7 March last year, Mrs Tracey died after second DNR was placed on her files, explicitly against her family’s wishes. ….. 

Something is not quite right if the death of a patient – even a terminally ill patient – is caused deliberately and prematurely – whether by action or by inaction – against the patient’s wishes. This comes perilously close to  an execution being mandated by an institution’s “policies”.

Related articles

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Posted in Ethics, Medicine, UK | 1 Comment »

UK embraces being “cared to death”

November 1, 2012

I have posted earlier about the disturbing ethical questions with the “Care Pathways” in the UK  which operate in the grey zone between euthanasia and execution.

But it is more than just disturbing when UK hospitals run by NHS trusts apparently get financial benefits if they increase the number of terminally-ill patients who are put onto the so-called “Care Pathways”. Once someone is “put on a Care Pathway” they are effectively written off. Medication may be withdrawn, water and food may be withheld and any chance of continuing to live or of any recovery are removed – intentionally – from the equation.  “Care” is provided but now with the intention of causing death. The sooner such patients die the better the use of resources!

I cannot see how any “Care Pathway” where there is an incentive to ensure that a patient dies and dies quickly can be anything other than an intentional termination of life. But is it euthanasia or is it murder or is it an execution?

Where the patient truly wishes to die it is effectively euthanasia. But where the patient would wish to live if he could only get better we get into a dangerous zone between euthanasia and execution. Can all attempts to “make the patient better” be abandoned by a hospital because someone other than the patient has decided that the patient cannot get better? When it is relatives who are pushing to get the patient onto a “Care Pathway” it comes close to murder. And when it is the hospitals or the hospital staff who are “incentivised” to get the patient onto the “Care Pathway” it gets close to being an execution. The decision to put someone onto a “Care Pathway” is itself then an irrevocable sentence of death. Why not – having passed sentence –  just give them a quick, quiet lethal injection after putting them on a “Care Pathway”? Why go through the charade of care while ensuring the patients rapid demise? The 33 hours these patients survive on average after being put on a “Care Pathway” could be reduced to zero. Why not provide incentives to hospitals to

  • maximise the number of patients put onto a “Care Pathway”, and then
  • minimise the amount of time spent on such a Pathway?

This could get rid of many hundreds – if not thousands – of problematic and elderly patients who only absorb resources, no longer provide any useful contribution to society and are just a pain for their relatives. It would not be a very large step to converting the corpses to Soylent Green.

The Telegraph: 

The majority of hospitals in England are being given financial rewards for placing terminally-ill patients on a controversial “pathway” to death…

Almost two thirds of NHS trusts using the Liverpool Care Pathway have received payouts totalling millions of pounds for hitting targets related to its use, research for The Daily Telegraph shows.

The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the full scale of financial inducements for the first time.

They suggest that about 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.

More than six out of 10 of those trusts – just over half of the total – have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million. 

At many hospitals more than 50 per cent of all patients who died had been placed on the pathway and in one case the proportion of forseeable deaths on the pathway was almost nine out of 10.

Last night the Department of Health insisted that the payments could help ensure that people were “treated with dignity in their final days and hours”.

But opponents described it as “absolutely shocking” that hospitals could be paid to employ potentially “lethal” treatments. ……

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, UK | 2 Comments »

The Liverpool Care Pathway: Euthanasia? Or is it execution of the elderly – for convenience?

October 17, 2012

An article in The Telegraph caught my eye while watching the US Presidential debate at my hotel.

A rather disturbing development in the UK and I don’t  like the ethics of the situation. Euthanasia is voluntary but I am not sure that the Liverpool Care Pathway is. It is a pathway which leads to the death of the patient /victim in about 33 hours. I wonder who this pathway serves? At first sight it seems to be primarily for the benefit of hospitals and doctors and health care system costs. Perhaps for relatives.

The Telegraph:

Mary Cooper, 79, died a few days after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

The pathway, originally designed to ease the suffering of terminally ill cancer patients in their very last days, is being used more and more widely in NHS hospitals.

The idea behind the LCP is to give patients a ‘good death’ by avoiding unnecessary and burdensome medical interventions.

However, there have been accusations it hastens death because it can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition.

The LCP leads over 100,000 people to death every year – just in the UK. It smacks of execution of the elderly for convenience.

Daily Mail:

There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. …. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.

An assisted death for someone who does not wish to die is an execution.

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, UK | 3 Comments »

The price of longevity is degradation of the elderly

October 7, 2012

The care of the elderly passing from family members to institutions is one of the apparently irreversible  developments in all cultures today. It is not just a phenomenon of “Western” civilization but is a trend across the globe. As “joint families” have given way to nuclear families and as couples have both gone out “to work” and as the elderly desire greater independence and as people live longer, the responsibility for the care of the elderly has passed to institutions from ever-more burdened children or relations.

But a model for institutional care – whether by private players or the State – which works without the degradation of the elderly has yet to be found. I suppose the fundamental reasons are that

  1. to die quietly and with some dignity and with as little discomfort as possible is only of value to the dying,
  2. those who are “in care” have limited opportunities to make themselves heard, let alone to complain,
  3. those “in care” are no longer worth very much to the society they live in and are only seen as a cost,
  4. even for the relatives and children of those in institutional care, the elderly are seen primarily as “duties”  and they would rather not complain if the only solution is a responsibility devolving upon themselves, and
  5. for institutions providing care there is always a  financial benefit to not providing care and they get no “extra bonus” when they do provide care.

(more…)

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EPA particulate experiment subjects warned “.. there is the possibility you may die from this…”

October 5, 2012

I am amazed.

I would not have thought it possible that for whatever the ends a government agency could justify such means.

JunkScience carries a report today:

EPA admits to Court: Human subjects ‘may die’ from air pollution experiments

EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes — and $12 per hour.

EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against its ongoing human experiment (called “CAPTAIN”) involving the air pollutant known as PM2.5.

In the declaration of Martin W. Case, the EPA clinical research studies coordinator for CAPTAIN, Case claims he verbally warns study subjects before the experiment as follows:

… My first approach after being introduced to the subject by the medical station staff is to ask the subject if they have read the consent form. The subjects for CAPTAIN have been given the informed study consent form on a previous visit, and, they are also given the same consent to read again if they have not read the consent the day of the training…

I provide participants with information about fine particles (PM2.s). I say that PM2.s are particles so small that they are able past through your airways and go deep into your lungs, these particles are so small that your usual lining and cilia of your airways are not able to prevent these particles from passing into your lungs, Therefore, if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York, and it’s been a very hot day, and you can see the haze in the air, and you happen to be someone that works outside, and if you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age; the chances are that you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what’s wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this…

………..

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Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Ethics, scientific misconduct, US | 1 Comment »

Belgium introduces euthanasia for prisoners

September 15, 2012

Belgium allows euthanasia under very stringent conditions and now permits prisoners also to choose euthanasia.

If you agree with the concept of euthanasia  then the idea of allowing prisoners to opt for euthanasia would seem perfectly rational. There are ethical questions here which I am still thinking my way through but I think there are some dilemmas to be faced. However I cannot help feeling that a prisoner – almost by definition – is inevitably subject to some level of coercion. Within an isolated and vulnerable prison population where individuals are probably subject to the additional pressures of group phobias and pressure, I am not sure that an apparently voluntary choice can ever be a completely free choice.

And I have an additional dimension of nagging concern when organs for transplantation are harvested from euthanasia subjects:

BioEdge reports:

For the first time, a Belgian prisoner has been euthanased. A man identified as Frank V.D.B, who had spent 20 years in prison for two murders and rapes, died recently. The date is not clear from media reports, but it took place outside the prison. The death only became known because it was revealed by a politician, Senator Louis Ide, who was complaining about the lack of social services in Belgian jails. He seems to have been tipped off by a prison official.

The case has provoked a controversy in the media –not over euthanasia but over the violation of the prisoner’s right to privacy. All of the conditions for euthanasia in Belgium were carefully fulfilled: the prisoner had a terminal illness, he had made repeated requests for death, and three doctors had independently ratified the request. ….. 

Last year Belgian surgeons revealed that they had been harvesting organs obtained from persons who had requested euthanasia.

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