Ethics

Drowning in Lawyers

Articles — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:34:00 -0400

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?

This is about more than a terrible practice. It's about the integrity of the elite lawyers who assess the president's power -- who answer to the attorney general.… more

Spin Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry

Articles — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:49:00 -0400

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."

In other words, if you are contrite, you really have to mean it. So we can make short work, then, of Randall Tobias, who, until resigning… more

Infamy is Another Way to Make a Mark in D.C.

Articles — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:25:00 -0400

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.

The very obviousness of such confessions, paper or electronic, forces one to conclude that there’s method… more

Beyond Bioethics

Communications — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
03/02/2007 - 11:45am

Beyond Bioethics, a new report by Dr. Francis Fukuyama and Dr. Franco Furger, provides the most comprehensive examination to date of legislative and/or regulatory answers to the challenges raised by human biotechnologies in the United States. The report's premise is that reaping the benefits of medical progress offered by biotechnology while preventing possible abuses requires that we create a new regulatory agency. Dr. Fukuyama and Dr. Furger discussed legislative developments at the national and international level and explore public attitudes towards controversial reproductive technologies.

Following their presentation, Richard Hayes of the Center for Genetics and Society, William Galston of The Brookings Institution, and Shannon Brownlee of New America Foundation discussed possible policy implications for biotechnology. Steven Clemons moderated a question and answer session.

Video of the event is available at right, while an MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below. To download a copy of the report, please click here.

This event was co-sponsored with Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Chronicle of Higher Education Cites Education Policy Program

Communications — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:58:00 -0500

New America in the News:

On the eve of the Congressional elections, a report has surfaced that reinforces the close ties between members of the student-loan industry and Republican leaders.

Now that polls show that Democrats have a good chance of gaining control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate, many lenders fear they will pay for tying their fortunes so closely to the Republican Party.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, no company has donated more money this year to the National Republican Congressional Committee than the National Education Loan Network, a major for-profit student-loan provider based in Nebraska.

Officials with the company, known as Nelnet, have given, individually and through the company's political-action committee, $153,000 this year to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the fund-raising arm of Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives. The committee's Web site says it is dedicated to "increasing the 231-member Republican majority" in that chamber.

Nelnet's three top executives each gave the panel donations of $26,700, the most individuals are allowed under the law to contribute to a national party committee in a single calendar year...

News of the contributions, first reported on Friday by Higher Ed Watch, a blog of the New America Foundation, raised eyebrows as the company has recently been accused by the U.S. Education Department's Office of Inspector General of overcharging the federal government for subsidy payments on some loans it made to students (The Chronicle, October 2)...

For the complete article, please visit The Chronicle of Higher Education website.

Michael Dannenberg Discusses EduCap Junket in The New York Times

Communications — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 01:56:00 -0400

New America in the News:

It turns out there probably will not be much talk about education on the Caribbean island of Nevis this February. The student loan company that invited university officials and their spouses to an expenses-paid education summit meeting there has canceled the event.

George Pappas, a senior vice president of the loan company, EduCap Inc., had said the purpose of the conference, which was to be held Feb. 2 to 5 at the Four Seasons Resort, was to discuss education, not loans.

But some financial aid administrators have said the conference was EduCap’s way of wooing university officials who could steer student borrowers their way, for example, by putting them on so-called preferred-lender lists...

Michael Dannenberg, director of education policy at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington, called the cancellation “but a small victory for the integrity of financial aid,” saying, “larger conflicts of interest remain.”

For the complete article, please visit The New York Times website.

Restoring Trust in Pharmaceutical Effectiveness Research

Communications — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
09/27/2006 - 9:00am

Conflicts of interest may be endemic to American medical research, but better policy could improve the chances that we draw the right conclusions about which drugs are best for which conditions and for whom. The New America Foundation invited Ross McKinney, M.D., Vice Dean of Research at Duke’s Medical School, and Jerry Hoffman, M.D., emergency department physician and professor of clinical epidemiology at UCLA, to join Schwartz Senior Fellow Shannon Brownlee to discuss the realities, incentives, and policy options before us. Len Nichols, Director of the Health Policy Program at New America, moderated.

The respective roles of research professors, medical schools, academic journals, the FDA, NIH, and pharmaceutical companies were discussed and debated. Promising policy options were considered, including changing the mix of public and private funding, more complete disclosure and access to data, as well as post-approval regulatory powers the EPA has now that arguably the FDA should. Stay tuned for future forums on these important topics, for while the discussion continued for 3 hours, we really just scratched the surface of policy change possibilities.

Video of New America's half-day conference exploring this issue and its possible solutions is available at right, while an MP3 audio can be downloaded here.

The Best Minds Money Can Buy

adminn — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:09:00 -0400

Most of us place enormous faith in our universities. We trust that they are autonomous, independent institutions committed to education, scholarship, academic freedom and the production of knowledge free from the influence of special interest groups. Right?

Wrong. In the last 25 years, the United States has given birth to a market-model university, one where professors increasingly work "for hire." Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a major academic study -- which found that antidepressants were safe and effective for pregnant women -- was tainted by undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Apparently, although the study itself was financed… more

The Baby Business

Communications — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/21/2006 - 9:30am

Over the past several decades, breakthroughs in medicine and biotechnology have begun to alter the basic process of birth. Increasingly, parents are able to protect their unborn children from potential life-threatening diseases, or give birth to children that are chosen for specific genetic qualities. Infertility treatments are pushing back the age at which women can give birth, and novel surrogacy arrangements have given couples the opportunity to have others bear their children.

This discussion will consider how governments craft policies to deal with the social, moral, and commercial challenges that accompany the advances in stem cell technology and other reproductive sciences. We will consider questions such as: Should the U.S. government follow its European counterparts in regulating reproductive medicine more closely? Should the U.S. subsidize parents who want to pursue assisted reproduction? How can the federal government align its current policies with regard to stem cell technologies, which are heavily restrictive, with its laissez-faire approach to assisted reproduction? How will private firms respond to the market opportunities that reproductive science now offers? How will firms deal with the regulatory and moral challenges that will undoubtedly accompany these scientific advances?

We've Been Publicly Financing Elections

Articles — Thu, 11 May 2006 16:20:01 -0400

How to keep track of all the scandals afflicting Congress? And what to do about them?

The most-heard diagnosis is that the problem is "money in politics." And the most-heard prescription is "campaign finance reform." But if money isn't the real source of Capitol Hill sickness, then money reform will have no effect.

The most egregious form of "money in politics," bribery, is already illegal. Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), for example, is doing 8 years in prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes.

So long as human beings are human, some of them… more