Amitai Etzioni Notes

Shameless

The makers of some of the most popular anti-depressant drugs on the market (Paxil, Zoloft, and Effexor) have refused to release details from clinical trials involving children who suffer from depression. Those who are familiar with the studies say that the drugs proved to be no more effective than a placebo. The drug companies, however, are not disclosing the results on the grounds that they are “trade secrets,” which they are (amazingly) allowed to do by law.

This secrecy is especially troubling in light of a recent report by British regulators that children who take anti-depressants may develop suicidal tendencies.

(Source: Washington Post, 1/29/04)

Re: A Double Life Stitched

In response to the entry entitled A Double Life Stitched: An Open Letter to Academics and Activists, Michael Keith wrote:

"I have been both an academic and an activist in the East End of London for the last 15 years (campaigner around criminal justice and leader of Tower Hamlets Council - by some definitions the poorest geographical part of the UK) and read an email version of 'a double life stitched.' At a particularly low moment - when some have been having a go at my particular attempts at schizophrenic engagement - I found it inspiring and thought I should thank you for writing the piece."

Michael Keith
Centre for Urban and Community Research
Goldsmiths College
University of London

Ordinary people assisting with homeland security

Senior citizens in Delray Beach, Florida (where nine of the September 11th hijackers once lived) patrol city landmarks, ready to contact headquarters if they encounter anything suspicious. These volunteers receive more than 40 hours of anti-terrorism instruction. As one volunteer, Betty Fish, puts it, “The terrorists didn’t realize they woke up a sleeping giant.”

Unpaid volunteers with the Civil Air patrol help authorities patrol the skies. As Colonel Austyn Branville says, “It's a lot cheaper to launch us than to launch a Huey helicopter for four figures an hour when you can launch us for up to $90 an hour.”

Members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary patrol the busy shipping channels of New Jersey. Ken Stanley, one of the members, says, “This is really terrific because it--it's really something solid. This is, you know, time now. We're giving back to the--to country.”

(Source: CBS Evening News, 9/28/03.)

Europe still has work to do to end anti-Semitism

In the latest sign that anti-Semitism is expanding throughout Europe, a recent poll conducted at Berlin’s technical university found that those most hostile to Jews are actually Europe’s young Muslims and far-left activists, and not the “far right.” The report, which was leaked on the internet after the EU refused to publish it, was commissioned by the EU’s own European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (which studies islamophobia as well as anti-Semitism).

This poll comes on the heels of another European survey in which 46 percent of respondents said that Jews and their nations were different and 35 percent said that Jews should stop “playing the victim” of the Holocaust.

While speaking at Rome’s city hall on the eve of a Holocaust museum fundraiser, Eli Weisel reacted to these trends by saying, “If Auschwitz couldn’t cure anti-Semitism, what will? What can? My God. Don’t we know what it means, what it meant then, what it produced?”

(Source: NPR, 1/28/04)

Dean's communitarian moment

Governor Howard Dean recently told supporters that the most important loss that the American people have suffered is to “our sense of community, the sense that we’re all in it together.”

He went on to say:

“I am tired of being divided in this country. I’m tired of being divided by race. I’m tired by being divided by gender. . . .I’m tired of being divided by income. I’m tired of being divided by sexual orientation. I’m tired of being divided by religion.”

(Source: NYTimes.com, 1/27/04)

National Service opportunities for baby boomers

Baby boomers, as they approach retirement, need “a second civic rite of passage,” writes Marc Magee, the director of the Center for Civic Enterprise at the Progressive Policy Institute, in his recent policy report, “Boomer Corps: Activating Seniors for National Service.” Magee argues, “By targeting this pool of active retirees, a large-scale national service initiative could play a critical role in how we take on the challenges of an aging society in the decades to come by enlisting baby boomers themselves into civic projects tackling the problems that their numbers create.”

Magee is right, and he points to a number of areas where baby boomer volunteers can serve society – by helping with home care services, by tutoring and mentoring children, and by organizing other seniors in volunteer service. Unfortunately, though, he seems to have overlooked one of the most pressing areas in which we need national service – homeland security. Imagine what some of these baby boomers could contribute by volunteering to help with homeland security efforts!

A Double Life Stitched: An Open Letter to Academics and Activists

It was like being called to the principal's office. I was a young assistant professor at Columbia University in the early 1960s, a recent graduate of the University of California-Berkeley. I had $300 to my name, a newborn baby, and a used pram that doubled up as his bed. I was told to see the chair, who warned me that if I wanted to be a sociologist I had to stop all this social work, that the discipline was laboring to be recognized as a science, and my activism was undermining it. The last thing we need is another C. Wright Mills. I was active in the peace movement and had just published a movie review.

After long deliberations I concluded that I really had no choice. I could not silence my public voice and I yearned to be an academic sociologist (and badly needed to make a living). I decided to try to get away with doing both.

Looking back on the decades that followed, I have wondered if I would have delivered more if I had spent all of my time either sticking to my sociological knitting or to public work. In retrospect, I say to those who are inclined to follow a similar course that the price one pays for a double life is worth paying and that it brings some handsome dividends, albeit not necessarily the kind you can cash in at the bank.

Doctors without Moral Borders

In 2001 the cost of drugs in the United States rose 17 percent to $155 billion, and 25 percent of that increase was due to a shift among physicians towards prescribing more expensive drugs. One reason for this shift might be the fact that the pharmaceutical industry spends more money on marketing and administration than it does on research and development.

In response to the dubious connection between marketers and doctors (who receive everything from free pens to free samples), one doctor has launched a campaign encouraging doctors to turn down hand-outs from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Robert Goodman of Columbia University is the founder of nofreelunch.org, which provides doctors with information about the practices of pharmaceutical companies and even sells paraphernalia to help doctors lower the costs for patients who rely on free samples. The site also hosts a “pen amnesty” program, where doctors can trade in their free promotional pens in exchange for pens with the No Free Lunch logo.

(Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/9/04)

Re: Nipping NIMBY in the bud

We recently asked:

People cry NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) on a wide range of unwanted developments. Recently, NIMBY complaints have been heard against everything from the cross country transportation of radioactive material to neighborhood opposition to the opening of a nearby emergency homeless shelter. How can we overcome NIMBY?

Here is one of the responses we received.

"Your question 'How can we overcome NIMBY?' assumes that 'not in my back yard' is always an illegitimate response to a proposal. But I doubt that this is true. First, if there is a proposal to impose a special burden on people in a particular area, they may have a legitimate interest in blocking it. Our political system does not forbid or discourage people from trying to protect their own legitimate interests. Second, it is true that the community as a whole may be better off if some people are disadvantaged in some way and that the greater good may justify the imposition of these disadvantages on some. Nonetheless, if some people have already born a disproportionate share of these burdens in their area, they may have a plausible claim that further burdens are unjust, that is someone else's turn to accept some of the costs of social improvement. Finally, even if people have not been victims of past burdens, the imposition of new ones may require some form of compensation for the kinds of dangers or disadvantages that they are now being asked to accept.

The key point is that we should not automatically dismiss the 'nimby' response as necessarily uncivil or selfish. It may be exactly the right response, and we may need to think more about how we distribute burdens and whether we compensate people for bearing them."

Stephen Nathanson
Professor of Philosophy
Northeastern University

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The rest of the responses are presented below.

Gibson doesn't keep his promise

Last week the leaders of the Simon Weisenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League, Rabbi Marvin Hier and Abraham Foxman, shared their reaction after viewing The Passion of Christ, despite Mel Gibson’s wishes that they not be allowed to see the film. In fact, Hier was forced to secure a copy of the film from an unidentified source and Foxman had to sneak into a screening to which he wasn’t invited in order to see the movie.

The two men reported that one scene depicts a Jewish high priest wishing a curse on his own people by uttering the following passage from the New Testament: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” This passage has been criticized by the Pope, and according to one expert, it is usually left out of even the most “noxious” Passion Plays. Gibson had originally decided to remove the scene from the film, but he seems to have reinserted it into the version of the film that he has been screening.

(Source: New York Times, 1/23/04)

For more discussion of The Passion of Christ, click here.