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Is it ethical to sell body parts from abortions?
In his widely viewed TED talk on ethics, Harvard's Michael Sandel raises the issue of markets and their limits in civil life.
"While this section has strong focus on financial aspects for reforming childcare in Ukraine, these are just financial numbers to demonstrate that this can be done for an overall, long-term cost reduction to state budget. That is to say, simply, this reform program is at the least financially feasible. The barrier between old and new is the cost of the transitional phase.
However, it is essential to not get lost in financial numbers and budgets. These are only important to show how this will work and will end up costing less money as the new program is fleshed out and the old program is closed. Most important is the welfare of each of these children. There are at this time, for example, numerous institutions across Ukraine where children die on a daily basis from little more than lack of knowledge about how to help them. The actual cost of helping them immediately is nothing more than one-day workshops for existing staff, to demonstrate basic, simple medical interventions common in the West. These institutions are generally closed to the outside world, difficult to access due to imposed secrecy, and are mostly in very rural areas where even the closest neighbors have no idea of the reality of these facilities.
The point, again, is very simple: to protect safety, health, and security of each and every child in Ukraine. There is absolutely no reason why this cannot be done"
"Opening up the reality of that situation resulted in threats against me and anyone else interfering with that system. I came under direct assault by tax police, government's primary enforcement arm if anyone steps out of line. This is not a research activity where many, if any, other people dared to participate. UNICEF was willfully blind to the matter because it was just too dangerous to bother to intercede Powerful interests remained entrenched with enforcers to make it dangerous. Jurists were correct, in my view. It was more a mafia operation than anything else, aimed at misappropriation and laundering of large money. That was perfectly congruent with how Ukraine operated before the revolution. USAID wanted nothing to do with it, nor would they fund any organizations or activists who might try. Some things could be done and some things could not be done. Helping these children was something that could not be done. So, I exposed it and made it the central focus and metric of Ukraine's microeconomic development blueprint. In that context, it was far more difficult to ignore, dismiss, or argue about. For about six months, I really did not expect to survive. Nevertheless, Ukraine's government finally conceded the point and announced the opening of more than four hundred new treatment centers for children who were theretofore invisible under tight and deadly enforcement."
As the Death Camps for Children article revealed, Hallman had sworn to secrecy over the location and people involved at a place known as Torez. He confronted another ethical dilemma:
"I don’t know if I’m stretching ethics here or not. On the one hand, I am bound by confidentiality and respect for the Western team’s work, as well as legitimate concern that everyone could be shut out entirely via mere mention of this information publicly. At the same time, silence will continue to prolong a deadly situation."
Later In 2006, it reached the ears of the Minister for Family Youth and Sports:Yuri Pavlenko
Q: Some charitable NGOs were shocked by horrible conditions our orphans live. These orphanages were called even “death camps.” Do you know about those facts? How many times the Youth, Sport and Family Ministry has held reviews of the orphanages?
A: If such violation happens, it must be reported to the Ministry. We have agreement and close relations with the Social Policy Ministry and the Health Ministry, so we will deal with the problems.
We regularly check orphanages. Our first raids disclosed lots of violations of conditions of living, nutrition, violent treatment with children. Time and again we have been checking these institutions and every new raid reported about reduction of such violations.
Regarding the foreigners’ impressions of our orphanages even quite well, according to Ukrainian standards, orphanage where 300 kids living and 10-15 persons in a room may look horrible for foreigners. And it is horrible. We are constantly working for improvement of this situation.
In 2011, The Sunday Times published an article describing conditions in Torez
"Climb the stairs of the orphanage at Torez, Ukraine, pass through a honeycomb of rooms packed with children and there, by the window, you will find a cot from which a little boy called Anatoly stares up at you. His beautiful, long-lashed eyes are bright. His prospects could scarcely be bleaker.
Anatoly is 10 years old, yet he is the size of a toddler. Emaciated to the point where his bony legs could not possibly support him, he weighs little more than 1 stone. “He is dying,” said a nurse, Svetlana."
The Sunday Times article opens up yet another question of ethics. Hallman had argued in his treatise for business with a primary social goal for free access to shared knowledge as part of a postcapitalist approach, influenced by Peter Drucker's Post Capitalisti Soc'iety.
The model was made available on a free to use busis for those who feploy it for social benefit.
The Sunday Times be inaccessible to us as a grassroots organisation, with the consequence that these injustices were largely unknown for nearly 5 years. When they were, it would be necessary to pay a subscription for anyone to read about them.
For his work, no financial comoensation was required of Ukraine;s government. He wrote:
"US and Europe can and should help, but only after first conditions are met unilaterally by Ukraine -- the sole condition on which I released the 'Marshall Plan for Ukraine.' Those conditions are simple: take care of your children, all of them, close the orphanages and gulags, open the truth of the matter, and never try to hide any of it again. That is underway. Ukraine's government took the initiative. It is now appropriate and necessary for the US and Europe to provide interim assistance, guidance, and models to bring the core metric -- child care -- to modern, civilized standards from the barbarism that has heretofore prevailed"
this is in stark contrast with the group who displaced our social enterprise development initiative and steered around the childcare issue. Through my MP Mark Harper, I learned from Martin Davidson of the British Council expected their partners to make a financial contribution to the project,
As an organisation focussed on 'soft channel' diplomacy, they would have got that from partners like Ukraine's oligarchs, while we aligned with grassroots civic and human rights activists.
On the other hand, The British Council offers grants to support organisations willing to engage overseas in partnership
"The British Council will offer grants to as many as 9 selected UK based organisations to take part in the BIR programme in 2015-16.
"These will include travel grants to undertake scoping visits and meet with their foreign partner as well as delivery grants to undertake their joint project. The latter grants will only be awarded after the UK partner has submitted a detailed proposal which has been approved by a BiR selection committee."
I take it this means that as well as funding our own projects, we must contribute through taxation to fund another party, to do what we do. While what they do will be constrained to that which doesn't tread on the toes of wealthy partners. For example, exposing corrupt practice.
Social enterprise constrained steer around the more intractable problems in this way will become mere tokenism.