I have no plans to dress up as a sea turtle and bang on a drum at an anti-globalization protest. But this outrageous medical experiment that in Paul Farmer's book "Pathologies of Power" caused me to wonder how we can start to set some global standards on ethics.

The experiment took place in Africa in the 1990s. The "doctors" wanted to find out if the risk of transmission of AIDS increased with an increase in the viral load. So, they found couples where one person was infected with AIDS and the other partner was not infected. They tested both partners regularly for viral load, but never told the HIV- subjects. They also did not treat the HIV+ subjects. The predictable result of the experiment was that human beings became infected with a preventable disease. Neither the original HIV+ nor the newly HIV+ partners got treatment. The results of the research study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It refers to the process of the other partner becoming infected as "seroconversion." That's a nice scientific word for 15-19 year old women contracting a deadly and preventable disease while helping scientists to get their data.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/342/13/921


Here's another place where I think liberals in this country are getting it wrong. Cultural relativism is not the answer to everything. The Nazis had a culture. The American doctors who performed the above mentioned experiments had a culture.

Think about it this way. In the United States, we have matters that are left up to the individual--religion, speech, etc and we have matters that are left up to the government--when it is OK to kill another human being and when it is not OK to kill. In the world community, there could be a similar division of decisions between nation states and the world community. Using people in medical experiments without their consent as to the nature of the experiment is just so wrong that it should never happen anywhere. Torture is just so wrong that it should never happen anywhere. Genocide is just so wrong that it should never happen anywhere.

OK, I promise to find something light for the next post.

Why the name?

The quick answer. Soju is my cat. The "virtual soapbox" thing I borrowed from my friend Robert. His blog is on salon at http://blogs.salon.com/0001517/

Fat and Mean

I just finished reading "Fat and Mean" which is interestingly on sale at Amazon.com right now for like $5.00. It's a hardcover and everything. The thesis of the book is that the growing inequality in American incomes can be attributed to the growth of the management class.

I think there's something to this. There's really no dignity in an adult person being told what to do. And most American businesses have a ton of people managing. Apparently, it's like 20% of the non-farm payroll. Managers are paid a lot more than ordinary workers. When jobs are lost to automation, they are worker bee jobs, not manager jobs. Managers have to engage in the soul killing tasks of instilling fear in their underlings and pretending to work. But, on the whole, workers suffer more. Is this the new economy?

Law as Income Redistribution

So, in considering whether law is a democratic force--a biggish topic, I thought I'd consider some bits and pieces of the puzzle and then bring it all together.

Claims in our (American) legal system can be broken down into several categories.

Basically:

(1) the other guy took something that's really mine
(2) the other guy went back on a promise
(3) the other guy was so mean/nasty/negligent that I got hurt

In the end, by and large somebody gets money from someon else to right a wrong. It is interesting what you can't make a claim for. You can't, for example, say that because I didn't go to college, my life turned to crap. You can't say I'm poor because the company I worked for shut down a factory. You can make a claim of racial or sex discrimination, but you can't make a claim of economic or class discrimination. The legal system will also not (in general) provide you with redress for claims that the government screwed up or that a politician broke a promise.

Because the goal of most legal claims is to take from one party and give to another, it can be argued that one major way in which income is redistributed in the United States is through lawsuits. Of course many lawsuits involve redistributing income between large corporations. However, most torts and workers compensation law result in the flow of money from ordinary responsible middle class citizens to insurance companies and then back down to lower middle class and poor people.

So, does that kind of distribution make us a better democracy? Is some kind of lack of massive inequality of income necessary for a democracy? Would it be better to redistribute wealth on another basis? How did the law become so central to our particular society?

What's the difference between provocative and stupid?

The President of Harvard has apologized. Which is nice. And other academics are rushing to his defense on the theory that he was merely being provocative and that presidents of major colleges should be able to be provocative.

I think these comments miss the boat. I'm a big believer in free speech and free interchange of ideas. The president of Harvard can say whatever he wants to say. He should never be slammed for simply having an idea that goes against the common wisdom. But he's an academic and a big boy. He should be able to support his position that women are not as good at science with research. And as the Economist pointed out this week, by saying that women are not as good at science, he has some degree of power to make it so. If people at Harvard come to believe that, women will get fewer chances.

So, his idea that women's brains are different when it comes to science is stupid for two reasons. (1) Science is the ultimate boy's club from middle school on. The culture does not support women in science. He contributed to that with comments that can only be described as incredibly stupid. (2) He doesn't have the scientific evidence to back it up and he is not a scientist. Despite the wonderfulness of that well-known school near Boston, being the President of Harvard doesn't turn economists into real scientists.

Another idea to chew on:

Sometimes when people do something that doesn't come naturally to them, they are able to expand on what naturally talented individuals can do. For example, there seems to be a connection between music/ foreign language learning and math. Yet, a lot of these people with this gift are not particularly empathetic or personable. So, the people who really struggle to learn these skills are often able to pass them on to others in a way that the truly talented can't.
Assuming for a moment that it is true that women are not wired for science and math. It may be true that science needs women.

It is also true that general population studies don't tell the whole story. There are a lot of unique individuals in the world. If the next Albert Einstein is a little girl right now. She needs to be told that she is not less feminine for liking science. She needs to be told that she can live a fulfilling life. She needs to be told that she is not a freak. She needs to be told that the president of Harvard is a stupid ass.

Where did the democrats go wrong?

Short answer: moral values

The Democrats have gotten side tracked by the issues surrounding victimhood. It provides an easy if unappealing morality to say that the exercise of power to create suffering is bad and victims are therefore good. If you are a victim, your job is to lie there bleeding on the railroad tracks of life. While being a victim is the professional occupation of many morose 13 year olds, it is an unappealing way to view yourself as an adult. To put it bluntly, there's no percentage in this view of morality.

Republicans have come up with a Christian/hedonist cocktail that appeals to the mass of American voters. In the Republican world view believing in God is good, families are good, and taxes are bad. It is no great sacrifice to believe that you don't really die and to believe that your close personal relationships are a substitute for caring for strangers. It is certainly no sacrifice to believe that you should be paying lower taxes. In this version, Jesus was nailed up on the cross so that we could all be comfortable. It's a little far from the actual Bible, but what the heck.

Americans being Americans, a strictly victim based philosophy will never work. The Democrats will be better off appealing to our sense of ourselves as powerful and free. A powerful and free people has certain responsibilities. The Republicans need to be painted as selfish and petty and hedonistic. Their ideas certainly are. And that means the Democrats need to stop being so selfish themselves. ...

What's wrong with Harvard?

From an AP wire story--

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The president of Harvard University prompted criticism for suggesting that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

He offered some incredibly fine scientific evidence....no really..... He gave his little girl two trucks and she named one truck Daddy and another truck Baby. This shows that women may not have the right kind of brains for science. Q.E.D.

My personal theory is that there are innate differences between people who eventually go to or work at Harvard and other people. Harvard people say things like "a school near Boston." Other people call it Harvard. I bet this can be proven scientifically because I've seen it happen numerous times in my short lifetime. If I have a child, and the child starts calling it " a school near Boston," I will be able to predict with some accuracy that the child will go to Harvard.

Another pet theory of mine is that economists aren't real scientists or even very scientifically minded. I can show that by just pointing to the president of Harvard....

Is law democratic?

I want to think about this one for a while. So, I'm very open to comments. But the basic issue is that lawyers make their living by having privileged access to courts and by having access to legal learning. How does this square with the idea that in a democracy, the people make the laws?

In a democratic society, if people decide who gets to make the laws, why do they have so little say in how the laws are enforced? Is it a weird paradox that the united states has more lawyers per capita than any other country? Is it a natural outgrowth of democracy to have this many lawyers? Or is it a sign that our democracy is in trouble?

Just something I want to ponder.......

Is George W. Bush evil?

When George W. Bush was first elected (appointed) president, I beleived that while he wasn't nice and he wasn't smart, it was dangerous and irresponsible to call the man evil. But now, the whole question has been reopened for me due to various events including torture, murder, and plans that seemed designed to create poverty. Since Evil is hard to define and largely a theological question, I'll break down my thinking on this.

Does Evil Exist? What is Evil

This is a tricky question. You could also ask does good exist? It is usually easier to define something as good and then see evil as it's opposite. So, if life is good, murder is bad. For people with very black and white world views, including many religious conservatives, the grey areas are not at all troubling. For example, a religious conservative would say life is good, murder is bad--abortion is bad, murderers should get the death penalty. A liberal christian might say life is good, murder is wrong--the death penalty is wrong.

So, my personal sense of the nature of evil is based on my personal values. Life is good. Freedom is good. Murder is bad. Torture is bad. Poverty is bad because it takes a way freedom. Education is good because it gives you the ability to do something with your freedom.

Is George W. Bush evil?

Caveat: George Bush may not be a knowing actor. So, if he has some sort of brain damage from the drugs he did or if he has no idea what his administration is doing or the importance of his decisions, he can't properly be called evil.

That said, here's the case. If Iraq is an unjust war, then the 100,000 Iraqis who are dead were murdered. Torture is a clear violation of human rights and we have disavowed the Geneva Convention under this administration. Spending 40 million on an inagural celebration when children in this country are malnourished and when a large tidal wave has just killed 150,000 people is a poor choice.

Ethics is something that plays itself out in choices. If you have a choice, you have an opportunity to make an ethically good or bad decision. As President of the United States after September 11, George W. Bush had more choices that most Presidents. He chose badly. We are now a divided country and a country that does not act on the values we purportedly all agree on--life and freedom. How, we'll ever have a sane discussion on the values we don't agree on--I don't know.