Corruption pays @ FIFA

Fun stuff at FIFA. Six members of the voting body that decides where the next world cup takes place have been found guilty of bribery charges to some extent or other. Remarkably so, none of those voting members received more than the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. None of them, for instance, was dismissed from the committee in question. Some of them are banned from voting for up to four years, and that's where it ends.

Now, these guys ended up in a typical Murdoch 'news'papers style sting operation. You know, one of those Ms Ferguson is used to these days. Basically the newspaper offers bags of cash to folks with either access to folks in power (Ferguson) or folks with actual power (FIFA Executive Committee members), films their response to the bribery offer and publishes the results of their sting operation in order to sell more of its 'news'papers. These kinds of 'news'media create the news they then report about.

You can argue about the question of whether it's fair game to offer huge amounts of money to FIFA folks who come from impoverished parts of the world, in the hope that they might take the bite. At least one of those folks made quite clear that he didn't mean to take any of the offered dosh for himself. He wanted it to be channeled to his local football association so that they could build more soccer fields. The other bloke wanted it transferred into his personal bank account, also ostensibly to support soccer in his home country. Who knows what would have happened to that money.

Either way, these votes were on sale, and for FIFA to not kick those folks off their voting committee for good tells you all that you need to know about that organization's ethics code and more important ethics standards!

5* Hotels and the Pharmaceutical Industry

You will probably know that pharmaceutical companies (despite quadrillions of ethics codes of conduct that were usually produced by bioethics consultants of sorts) try hard to persuade doctors to prescribe their medicines as opposed to equally effective cheaper products. So they go about this by means of giving doctors plastic pens, inviting them to fanciful dinners, and much much more. Anyway, one way of keeping selected medics on their side has been to invite them to 'educational' events, usually in a nice city like Paris, Sydney or Berlin. All expenses on those junket trips are naturally paid for by industry.

Well, there has been a bit of an outcry over this, seeing that many people are unable to afford the medicines their obliging doctors prescribe them, private health insurance fees have gone thru the roof, and public health care systems resort to ever more draconian resource allocation measures to deal with the rising prices. So, unsurprisingly perhaps, it has been suggested that luxury hotel accommodation like 5* outfits for such junket trips are kinda unacceptable. Pharmaceutical companies have, hence, become reluctant to book such venues in recent years. Clever hoteliers in Berlin have found a way to deal with this (and I am not joking!). 5* hotels like the Hilton, Steigenberger, Intercontinental, Swissotel, and the Esplanade are giving one of their stars back to keep the pharmaceutical industry bookings rolling in. The service levels remain the same, of course, and so do the prices. It's a scheme designed to permit freeloaders and their service providers to continue feeling comfy again without having to worry about how it will look like in the public eye.

Corruption - a problems of those (ethnically) others

It's true, isn't it? We hear the words corruption, tax evasion, theft, many people think immediately 'third world'. And, to be fair, there's a fair share of all of that in developing countries, BUT, us developed world whities are also not doing really badly on that front. Germany, that beacon of decency and honesty, has just been hit by a gigantic tax evasion scandal in the vicinity of about 4 billion Euro. Orchestrated by very wealthy business leaders (including, for instance, the boss of logistics company Deutsche Post) and aided and abetted by that funny financial outfit Liechtenstein (the European equivalent to Caribbean tax havens for tax evaders), in effect these richest of the rich in Germany stole billions of Euros from other tax payers. Not just a problem of the developing world then, it seems...

UNICEF - latest money scandal at UN

Hey, anyone monitoring closely the UN's latest frolics in terms of money wastage, corruption and incompetence will be pleased to see that the international organisation remains true to its historical form. It's been discovered that the German arm of UNICEF diverted about 20% of all donations (roughly 20 mio of 100 mio Euros) to pay its staff nicely exorbitant salaries, make plenty of external consultants happy etc. It could well be that this year, possibly for the first time, UNESCO might have to give up the mantle of most corrupt (and arguably most pointless) or most inefficiently run outfit in the UN bureaucracy, and might have to pass it on to UNICEF. No doubt UNESCO will fight hard, and, according to well-informed insiders, will almost certainly be able to claim the title back in 2009. Still, for 2008 it seems a remarkably close race. The only bit that's really funny about this are serial resignation of UNICEF 'ambassadors' (invariably actors, sports people, and the like, trying to do good by the world's children without wanting to think too much about it). It's as if it had never before occurred to them that any money poured into a UN outfit or a UN affiliated outfit is like attempting to fill a bottom-less pit.

This, of course, goes very much to the heart of the international do-good industry. Many such organisations these days have sufficient cash at hand, and are prepared to pay salaries sufficiently high to advertise in eg. THE ECONOMIST, a magazine in which a half-page advertisement costs probably about 15000 GBP. The question one has to ask in this context is whether poverty fighting organisations really need to pay many of their staff more in terms of salaries than most of their donors take home in a good year.

Bioethics @ UNESCO - the farce continues

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been scathing (that's an understatement) about pretty much most activities of UNESCO in the field of bioethics. The organization's bioethics committees churn out Declarations clearly aiming to beat each other to the title of being the most inept guidance document in the field (and there's plenty of contestants out there). Its Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights requires its member states, among other things, not to discriminate against people on any grounds. Tell that to current day South Africans trying to rectify the former apartheids state's injustices by means of affirmative action, or explain that to investigators excluding particular people from a given clinical trial on prudent scientific grounds. The same document also exhorts clinical researchers to maximize the trial participants' benefits. This is pretty much impossible and would in fact render most clinical research impossible. There's much more nonsense that forms the core mantras of this Declaration, and, understandably so, the document is by and large ignored by folks in developed countries. This is not so in developing countries, and this is what we as Editors of Developing World Bioethics warned in an Editorial about. We suggested that people not overly familiar with modes of bioethical reasoning might just fall for this sort of waffle and as a result the Declaration rather than being consigned to the traditional dustbin of UNESCO text production activities, might actually have negative impacts on policies or training programs established in developing countries.
It seems that we were correct. Today a Kenyan newspaper reports that a UNESCO bioethics center (and accompanying professorial chair) has been established at Egerton University in Kenya. I'm sure nobody in the field of bioethics has ever heard of Egerton University's research and teaching excellence in bioethics. Indeed, the new bioethics professor, sorry, the new UNESCO bioethics professor at that university, a professor Jude Mutuku Mathooko, has - according to a quick google scholar search that I undertook just now - not published a single peer reviewed paper (in a bioethics or other reputable journal) on a bioethical subject matter. Not a big surprise then that our new professorial bioethics colleague, undoubtedly after an extensive UNESCO in-house peer review process found competent to research and teach bioethics, also happens to be chairperson of one of UNESCO's bioethics committees. How he got there... don't ask. It's UNESCO after all. I'm sure this bloke is a nice chap, but surely even he should realize that it takes more to be a bioethics professor then access to UNESCO's rolodex and frequent visits to Paris.
Anyway, there is some bright spot in all of this. According to the Kenyan news report, 'The centre will perform functions in line with Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and other declarations.' Yes, the university promises that its new UNESCO bioethics center will operate and indoctrinate in line with the above criticized Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. This possibly explains why long-established serious bioethics research and teaching institutions in developing countries such as South Africa, Mexico or the Philippines were shunned in favor of a Kenyan institution that happens to be the employer of UNESCOs bioethics committee's Kenyan chairperson.

Medical professionalism African style - more on Manto Tshabalala-Msimang

Hey, what a tendentious headline this is... I don't mean to write about medical professionalism African style, but about the disgraceful conduct of the (current, and would you believe it, still in office) South African Minister for Health Prevention, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Manto has succeeded for several years to aid and abet the line of her boss, Thabo Mbeki, on HIV/AIDS. Hundreds of thousands of South African people with HIV/AIDS died preventable deaths because those two shady characters colluded in slowing down the roll-out of effective life-preserving AIDS treatments for as long as was/is feasible. She instead continued to promote various vegetables as a serious alternative to proper AIDS treatments.

Of course, as is usually the case when it comes to such people, there's one rule for the people and another for the rulers. All the politically correct rhetoric of the ANC is not going to change that. It has since transpired that Manto,a card carrying member of the League of Continuing Alcoholics (LCA), jumped the queue in order to access a fresh liver. It would have been very difficult for her to continue drinking otherwise. Other people of her age who happen to continue to enjoy large quantities of alcohol (as she does) tend not to get access to life-preserving new organs. These scarce resources are usually preserved for people younger than Manto, and people who, unlike Manto, stopped drinking. Well, despite much by way of denials (attending doctors were seemingly pressured into claiming that her alcohol induced liver disease wasn't alcohol induced...), it's clear now that the country's health prevention minister is not only incompetent but also otherwise unfit to run the Department of Health. She doesn't seem to mind bending the rules that have been put in place to allocate scarce transplant organs justly in the country.

Since these facts came to light it was also discovered by an investigation published last weekend by the country's SUNDAY TIMES that Manto was fired a couple of years ago from her day job as a superintendent at a hospital in Botswana because she stole plenty of hospital property and even a watch from a patient who was undergoing surgery under full anaesthesia.

Here's a revealing excerpt from yesterday's SUNDAY TIMES:

This week some of the key witnesses who testified during her trial and who had worked with Tshabalala-Msimang at the time, told the Sunday Times that jewellery, hats, handbags and even shoes had disappeared from the hospital over several months.

They had not suspected Tshabalala-Msimang and had were shocked when she was arrested for the thefts.

“It was unbelievable that a superintendent of the hospital would do something like that,” said a retired nurse who worked at the hospital at the time. Tshabalala-Msimang was arrested after an oval-shaped watch belonging to a female patient disappeared while she was under anaesthetic. The theft was reported to the police. Tshabalala-Msimang was arrested when she arrived at work three weeks later, wearing the watch. Staff contacted the investigating officer and Tshabalala-Msimang was arrested in front of her employees. A warrant was obtained to search Tshabalala-Msimang’s home and police found, among other things, linen, blankets and heaters that belonged to the hospital.'

So, an incompetent, drinking crook that is how one could best describe South Africa's Minister for Health Prevention, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. No wonder the ANC leadership has promoted her straight into the health department. There are only few senior people in the ANC that haven't managed to get their hands in one till or another, so Manto probably had the perfect character profile for the job.

Mind you, there's still people left in South African medical schools seriously trying to teach ethics.

... to be continued

Time to go Mr Wolfowitz

Very sensible commentary in today's FINANCIAL TIMES. The paper describes how Paul Wolfowitz, current President of the World Bank and one of the Bush administration's leading neocons, has breached a whole range of ethics rules at the Bank when he helped his girlfriend (who also worked at the Bank) to a cushy job in the US government. Now, while she is on secondment there the Bank picks up the tab. More remarkable even, his girlfriend draws a gigantic salary during her secondment, larger even than that of Condoleeza Rice, the US Secretary of State. Wolfowitz made much of his commmitment to fight corruption, another good reason for why he ought to resign. The FINANCIAL TIMES comments on the White House's continuing support for Wolfowitz: 'To place loyalty above all other virtues is the ethics of a mafia boss not of the leader of a great country. The US president also needs to consider what is both right and in the interests of his own country.' This point is well-made. US President Bush is famously loyal to staff who show loyalty to him. As the FT point out, to do this without regard for your underlings failures is more the behaviour of a mafia boss than that of the leaders of the world's remaining superpower.

Business is business - ethics is ethics is something else altogether

UK arms manufacturers, pretty much beyond reasonable doubt, bribed their way into getting multi-billion pound contracts from Saudi Arabia. The current UK government, which is pretty close to or has beaten the governmental sleaze factor introduced during the disastrous Major years, has ended an official investigation into the issue on the grounds that it would not be in the 'national interest' to investigate the matter. The reason (ie the 'national interest') is that the Saudi government threatened to stop buying any further arms from the UK if the investigation continued. They were upset that their cosy little corrupt world was just about to be opened up to the glare of the public eye (mass media, the lot). No wonder that high-flying ethical governance principles were discarded in an instant by Tony Blair and his governmental cronies.

In Germany Siemens managers admitted to having paid kick-backs to secure contracts from Italy's state owned energy company Enel. Goes without saying that they insist that they didn't 'offer' the dosh, but that those Italians demanded it out of the blue - what choice did they have other than to pay up. It goes also without saying that Siemens has an ethics structure (mission statement, compliance staff etc etc) that's second only to Enron.

Which brings me back to 'business ethics'. I am almost certain that all the business ethics activities in the universe won't make a difference to companies' real-world behaviours, unless there's a severe threat to a company's reputation and business, in case its ethical failing is discovered. So, at the end of the day it's about CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL, and almost certainly not about voluntary codes of conduct.

In the case of democratically elected governments that back corruption, at the end of the day it's about ELECTING A NEW GOVERNMENT. We, the electorate must hold them accountable and remove them as soon as is feasible.