The Ethical Barometer

On Monday morning, March 16, 2009, the Barometer was sitting in a waiting room with three other women who were also there for the annual face-off with GE torture racks that are gender-specific. Sitting in our pink gowns that open at the front, we are generally a quiet lot. Continue reading →

In an interview with The Financial Times, Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE and the father of shareholder value, said, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.  Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… Continue reading →

Daniel L. Bibb, a former assistant district attorney in New York City, told a newspaper last year that he deliberately lost a rehearing on the evidence in the murder convictions of two men for killing a bouncer outside a New York City night club.  Defense lawyers say he gave them evidence and held back on cross-examination.  Mr. Bibb, who believed the convicted men to be innocent, said he threw the case after his superiors could not be persuaded that the men were innocent.  Mr. Bibb also said he could not afford to be out of work and that he did not want the men to remain in prison as he pursued other avenues.  “I know I did the right thing.”  The Barometer is not so sure. Continue reading →

So said Dr. Richard Grimm, a Minnesota researcher who accepted $798,000 or so from drug companies between 1997 and 2005.  No, Dr. Grimm, no one assumes any such thing.  It’s the disclosure that matters.  Lewis Morris, the general counsel for the inspector general’s office in the Department of Health and Human Services, in announcing upcoming civil and criminal charges against doctors who demand consulting fees from pharmas in exchange for using their products, countered.  “Somehow physicians think they’re different from the rest of us.  But money works on them just like everybody else.”  Called a conflict, you either don’t take the money or you Continue reading →

What a day the Barometer is having!  Ethical leadership from the mouths of babes.  They look as if they are 12, those first-year Harvard medical students on the cover of the Business Section of the March 3, 2009 New York Times. But these four students began a movement that has resulted in a rule:  Harvard professor-physicians must now disclose their relationships with pharmaceutical firms to the Hardvard med students.  With this disclosure, students can understand why their pharmacology prof favors one cholesterol drug over another or why the prof was short on discussion when it comes to side effects.  Bless you, future physicians, for understanding the Barometer’s simple rule:  There are only two ways to manage conflicts of interest:  Don’t do it or Disclose.  Harvard has progressed to the latter, thanks to its students.  Well done.