Ethics

Agents of the East German Stasi could only have dreamed of the sophisticated electronic equipment that powered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s extensive spying apparatus, which the Libyan transitional government uncovered earlier this week. The monitoring of text messages, e-mails and online chats — no communications seemed beyond the reach of the eccentric colonel.

Last week, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the advocacy group Public Citizen that the FDA may loosen conflict-of-interest rules for experts who serve on the agency’s advisory panels. These panels wield considerable power when it comes to FDA decisions about approving drugs and medical devices, and for pulling them off the market when evidence surfaces that they may cause patients harm.

Why loosen the rules? Commissioner Hamburg said the agency is having trouble finding experts to fill its advisory panel slots. In other words, anybody expert enough to be on an FDA panel undoubtedly has a conflict.

Or maybe the FDA just isn’t looking very hard. In 2008, Jeanne Lenzer -- an independent journalist -- and I created a list of more than 100 experts in fields ranging from epidemiology to neurology to emergency medicine, every one of them independent from industry conflicts of interest. We made the list available to our fellow journalists at the website, Healthnewsreview.org, a site that grades health stories. Dozens of journalists from top news outlets, including the New York Times, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal, have requested the list, and used it to find sources for their stories -- or at least we hope they have. 

In the Western world, government-mandated biometric IDs -- identification systems that identify individuals based on fingerprints, irises, and other unique physical traits -- are often regarded with suspicion, even hostility.

Welcome

Andrés Martinez, co-director of the Future Tense Initiative and director of the Schwartz Fellows Program at the New America Foundation, took to the stage at Washington, D.C.’s Google office to welcome the assembled audience and set the stage for the day-and-a-half-long event. Among the primary questions to be pondered, he said, were: “How, as a democratic society, can we exercise oversight over scientific inquiry?

Video of  the keynote from Monday's event is posted above; please see the agenda for links to individual panel discussions.

New technologies are changing warfare as profoundly as did gunpowder.  How are everything from flying robots as small as birds to “peak warrior performance” biology altering the nature of the military as an institution, as well as the ethics and strategy of combat?  How will the adoption of emerging technologies by our forces or others affect our understanding of asymmetrical conflict?  

This may be the season of giving, but it sure feels like everybody is suddenly on the take. 

Siemens, the German engineering giant, agreed this month to pay a record $1.6 billion to U.S. and European authorities to settle charges that it routinely used bribes and kickbacks to secure public works contracts across the globe. Prominent New York attorney Marc Dreier--called by one U.S. prosecutor a "Houdini of impersonation and false documents"--has been accused by the feds of defrauding hedge funds and other investors out of $380 million.

A few disclosures to the incoming Obama administration: As a 20-year-old, I received a ticket (fine greater than $50) for having jumped a subway turnstile in New York City. A few years later, I received another ticket (fine likewise greater than $50), this time for allowing my miniature dachshund to run off the leash in Riverside Park. I spent several years as a bass player in a rock band.

The US Senate judiciary committee has drawn a line in the water -- and is holding it. Before the committee's Democrats approve Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general, they want to know that he believes waterboarding is torture under United States law. Simulating drowning to get terrified detainees to speak, a favourite technique of the Khmer Rouge, strikes many as a paradigm of torture. If it isn't torture, what does the word mean?

Who’s sorry now? Lots of people these days are rushing to the cameras, claiming to be misunderstood -- but none of them seems truly regretful.

Saying that one is sorry, of course, is just the beginning. Those who are genuinely apologetic know that repentance is a stern taskmaster. According to Catholic doctrine, for example, "contrition" is "a sorrow of soul and a hatred of sin committed, with a firm purpose of not sinning in the future."

Confession is good for the soul -- even here in Washington, D.C. How do I know? Because many here confess, albeit in the circuitous style of the Beltway.

We all know of cases in which the malefactor just blurts out his guilt years after the crime; that seems to be what’s happening, in stages, to O.J. Simpson. But Washingtonians, who excel in the sneaky arts of manipulation, confess in their own Machiavellian manner, with one eye on the camera and the other on the history books.