BLOG 5:

Response to:

http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=1200

Should performance enhancing drugs (such as steroids) be accepted in sports?

Jasmin Guénette, MA, Academic Programs Director of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, wrote the following in his June 18, 2006 article titled "In Defence of Steroids," published in the webszine Le Québécois Libre:


"Now, should baseball-or any other professional league-ban performance-enhancing drugs? The answer is yes, if they want to...

Private companies and associations should be able to define what rules will govern them without any intervention from politicians. A private association has no obligation to accept me if I don't agree to their rules, just as I should not be forced to join any associations I don't think are fit for me. This logic should also prevail when it comes to the sale and use of steroids. If a group of people, let's say Bodybuilders and Co., think performance-enhancing drugs are OK, they should be left alone if they don't force anybody to follow their path. Sadly, this is not how things are done. Today, the debate about steroid use is widely dominated by morally superior do-gooders who believe it's not right for an athlete to use products that help him or her perform better...

I am not suggesting that people should take steroids or use other drugs. But just as I don't want other people choosing what's right for me, I don't want to choose what's right for others. This is what respect is all about; not forcing other people to think like you, to act like you and to obey laws simply because vote-seeking politicians and their allies think some products should be illegal."


Believing:

I agree with the above-mentioned statement – athletes have to buy steroids on the black market because of illegality of performance enhancing drugs. This is certainly harmful to their health since such drugs are not controlled, and their dosage is not monitored. The performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in order help the athletes not to overdose and not to cause damage to themselves.


Doubting:

I disagree with the statement because people should have some limits for their needs which are destroying their own health. If everybody would be allowed to do everything they wish, then, what would be the use of rules and restrictions? Drugs break and damage person’s health so badly that it no longer works. The government should intervene in this in order to prevent chaos in society. If there would be no punishments, how could the government guarantee the healthy generation? If drugs would be legalized in sports, this would cause the chain reaction: the illegal substances like cocaine or heroine used for pleasure would not be the barrier for people anymore because governmental permission of drugs for the sportsmen to hold the organism active and “healthy” would mean that every kind of drugs could be consumed by people.

BLOG 4:

Response to:

Kilbourne, Jean. “Targets of Cigarette Advertising.” Health 20-20 Web. Retrieved 20 Apr. 2009 < http://www.health20-20.org/article.php?id=140>.


Targets of Cigarette Advertising
Jean Kilbourne, PhD

Cigarettes are the only product advertised which are lethal when used as intended. Indeed they are a product about which nothing good can honestly be said. They are highly addictive. The damage they do to health has been documented by more than 50,000 research studies. Smoking is the single largest preventable cause of death in America. Over 1,000 people die every day because of cigarette-related diseases. In the twentieth century, more people have been killed by tobacco than by war.

Nowhere is the distorted perspective of advertising a perspective that manages to screen out almost all unpleasant reality except the strictly personal (e.g., bad breath, facial hair) more obvious than it is in cigarette ads. Contradictions abound in the world of tobacco advertising. Youthful, healthy people frolic and play with no apparent worries whatsoever. "Alive with pleasure," proclaims the ads for Newports, as if to obliterate the haunting subtext, "Dead with cancer." Macho men owe their freedom and independence, indeed their very masculinity, to their Camels and Marlboros, although the evidence indicates that cigarettes are linked with impotence, lower testosterone count, and sterility.

Most advertising is essentially myth-making. The point of almost all national advertising is not to give information but rather to establish an image for a product. Advertising does this by linking a product with a quality or attribute. These jeans will make you sexy, this detergent will save your marriage, this car will give you confidence. The links are generally false and arbitrary, but we are so surrounded by them that we come to accept them without any further thought, to believe that they are unquestionably logical and natural.

Such myth-making is always deceptive and often harmful to the consumer. In the case of cigarette advertising, however, it can be truly dangerous. It further convinces cigarette smokers, young people, and the entire society that this drug is benevolent and essential to one's happiness and success. It creates in our society a climate of denial.

Most important of all, tobacco advertising spuriously links the use of tobacco with precisely those attributes and qualities in life such things as happiness, wealth, prestige, sophistication, success, maturity, athletic ability, virility, creativity, sexual satisfaction, and others that the habitual use of drugs usually diminishes and destroys.

Cigarettes remain among the most heavily advertised products in the nation. The tobacco industry spends over two and a half billion tax-deductible dollars a year in the US alone on advertising and promotion of its products. At the same time, the industry ironically attempts to deny that this advertising has any effect on consumers. They insist that they do not target nonsmokers or young people and that the whole point of all that advertising is simply to get smokers to switch brands.

In fact, only 10 percent of the nation's 55 million smokers switch brands in a given year. It is obvious that the tobacco industry needs to recruit aggressively new smokers to replace those who die or quit. A recent study published in Health Education Quarterly found that proportionally more cigarette ads were placed in women's and youth-oriented magazines than in magazines targeting other segments in the population. This suggests that the tobacco industry is responding to overall decreases in the number of smokers in this country with an increased attempt to recruit new smokers from other groups, especially young people and women.

Young people have always been an important target of the tobacco industry because marketers know that at least 75 percent of smokers are hooked before the age of 21. Many of the cigarette advertising campaigns appeal more specifically to young people by equating smoking with sexiness, glamour, and sophistication. In addition, some campaigns seem expressly designed to catch the attention of children. The current Camel campaign, for example, uses cartoon characters. Often this campaign has made light of well-established health risks with the copy "75 years and still smokin'." Although this refers superficially to the brand's 75th birthday, it certainly implies to the casual observer that one can smoke and still live to a ripe old age.

Social learning theory suggests that repeated exposure to modeled behavior can result in behavioral change in lifestyle. It is no casual coincidence that cigarette ads feature only very healthy, attractive, and youthful-looking people. Those who argue that peer pressure is the major influence on the lives of young people strangely overlook how the entire peer group as a whole is socialized. Few seem to realize that advertising is a powerful educational force, one that promotes attitudes and values as well as products.

One of the major functions of advertising in general is to induce in its consumers these early and unspoken expectancies in life. Advertising attempts to affect attitudes. According to an editorial published in a recent issue of Advertising Age, "Quite clearly, the company that has not bothered to create a favorable attitude toward its product before the potential customer goes shopping hasn't much of a chance of snaring the bulk of potential buyers."1

No wonder ads feature characters who will have special appeal to children. The current campaign for Parliament Lights, for example, uses the slogan, "The Perfect Recess." Surely recess is a word with a much more positive meaning for children than it has for adults. And the pictures in these advertisements such as of a young couple on bicycles generally support this interpretation. Other Kent ads appeal especially to young people by suggesting that cigarettes will provide "the experience you seek."

Image advertising has been especially effective on young people, who are much more likely than adults to be insecure about their images among their peers. Some of the themes developed in cigarette ads are particularly seductive, such as the linking of tobacco with maturity, sophistication, sex, and athletic ability.

Another common theme in ads aimed at young people is that cigarette smoking is a daring, gutsy thing for them to do. Many cigarette ads feature very risky activities. "Be a daredevil. Be a rebel," the ads tantalize. Research indicates that smokers are more likely than the general population to be risk-taking, extroverted, defiant, and impulsive. It is no coincidence that cigarette companies are the leading sponsors of events that appeal to risk-taking teenagers: rodeos, ballooning, and motorcycle, dirt-bike, and hot rod-racing.

The cigarette is also frequently offered as an emblem of one's independence and nonconformity. The smoker is portrayed as the man or woman who dares to defy public opinion, to stand on his or her own. "No compromise" declared one series for Winston.

Teenage girls are especially vulnerable to this kind of advertising pitch. An American Cancer Society report found that cigarette smoking among teenage girls was highly identified with an anti-authority, rebellious syndrome in relationship to the adult world. For instance, one Lucky Strike ad depicts a young, very defiant-looking woman along with the caption, "Light my Lucky."

Virginia Slims cleverly plays on this attitude as well in many of their ads. In one ad, an older, rather Victorian-looking woman is complaining about young women: "Shocking, absolutely shocking, the way young women cavort about these days," and another says, "Tsk. Tsk. Proper, decent women shouldn't have fun in the sun. In fact, they shouldn't have any fun at all." A young woman replies, "Well, shame on me, 'cause I really like to have fun." Certainly these older women are meant to represent mothers, teachers, and other adults who might advise young women, among other things, not to smoke. A rebellious adolescent thus might mistakenly interpret valid advice against smoking as an edict against having fun.

The tobacco industry is attempting to get even more mileage from this image by portraying public-health advocates as anti-smoking fanatics who want to tell everybody else what to do. It seems to be setting health officials and agencies against what it would characterize as the courageous, independent, free-thinking smoker. Thus its extraordinary public-relations campaign attempts to equate smoking with democratic freedom and the criticism of smoking with totalitarianism.

The long-running Virginia Slims campaign (and others similar to it) attempt to make an amazingly ironic equation between liberation and addiction, between freedom of choice and enslavement to tobacco. This equation is particularly self-contradictory, given that nicotine is the most addictive drug known to science, and that at least 85 percent of smokers wish they could quit their addiction. The only equality that smoking has brought to women is that they are now contracting lung cancer at the same rate as men are. One can consider cigarette smoking liberating only if one considers death the ultimate form of freedom.

In addition to the above techniques, ads aimed at women and girls also frequently suggest that cigarettes are a form of weight control. In this way the advertisers are cashing in on the national obsession with excessive thinness for women. A primary reason that many women start and do not quit smoking is their terror of gaining weight. Ads have been playing upon this fear of obesity for a long time. In 1928 the Lucky Strike ads said, "To keep a slender figure, no one can deny . . . Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet."

With a much more well-informed public, the advertisers probably couldn't get away with such an overt and outrageous message today. They can, however, use extremely thin models and copy that includes such words as slim and slender. Virginia Slims' new superslims cigarette promises smokers "more than just a sleek shape." A recent campaign for Capri cigarettes features an attractive young woman and the headline, "The slimmest slim in town." This pitch is one major reason that cigarette smoking is on the increase among teenage girls, a group especially susceptible to the obsession with weight.

Unfortunately, these tactics seem to be working too well. The only societal group in which cigarette smoking is increasing is that of young women, and the largest new group of smokers is girls under the age of eleven. Twenty percent of young women graduating from high school smoke, versus 10 percent of the men. A Weekly Reader survey found that, although other drug use among teenagers has declined, the rate of adolescent cigarette smoking has remained essentially the same for the past five years.2

The most effective incentives against smoking for young people involve emphases on the importance of physical well-being and the need to be an independent thinker. It is also extremely important to fight the off-balanced obsession with excessive thinness for women in our society. A recent national survey of fourth-grade girls found that 80 percent of them were already on diets. This obsession with weight in itself should be regarded as a major public-health problem. In addition, we must continue to fight the sexism that makes young men desperate to appear macho and young women willing to settle for counterfeit emblems of progress rather than the real thing.

The tobacco industry has insidiously positioned itself on the side of autonomy and freedom. This is a classic example of doublespeak. Ads for tobacco often stress freedom, independence, control, and power although, ironically, it is precisely these things that addiction takes away from its users. Critics of tobacco need to expose the truth that cigarette smoking is nothing more than a dangerous addiction deliberately promoted by a callous industry devoted only to profit. We also need to do everything we can to help people, especially the young, realize that by smoking they are actually giving in to conformity rather than expressing their individuality. They are allowing themselves to be personally manipulated by a very powerful industry.

We need to educate our children and students very specifically about the risks that they take by using tobacco. Vague slogans about the effects of tobacco do more harm than good. We need to be as specific about the dangers of smoking as we have become about heart disease in recent years.

We need to begin this education as early in the lives of our children as possible. Some people feel that teaching about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs actually encourages drug use, just as some people feel that sex education leads to promiscuity. However, in both cases, the evidence suggests just the opposite.

We know that in most cases our children won't have licenses to drive until they are 16, but we certainly wouldn't want to wait until then to teach them about automobile safety (e.g., using seat belts and obeying the law) and, more important, about the values and attitudes that make people safe and courteous drivers. Imagine the chaos that would result if we simply tossed them the keys and said, "Drive responsibly" and let them go without another word.

We need to model low-risk behavior for our young people. We also need to help them find healthful ways to be euphoric and joyful, to find positive ways to achieve the things that drugs promise (and sometimes even deliver for a short time and then take away). Our drug problem is deeply related to other problems in our culture poverty, racism, sexism, glorification of violence, greed, alienation, and damage to the environment. We need to empower our young people, to help them believe they can and should make a difference in solving these problems. We need to touch the part of them that wants to be well, to be all they can be, and to be of use.

Our society needs to make a major comprehensive effort to prevent drug problems in our midst. Such an effort must include education, mass media campaigns, increased availability of treatment programs, and more effective deterrence policies. It must also include public policy changes that take into account that individuals act within social, economic, and cultural environments that profoundly influence their attitudes and choices. Such changes would include raising excise taxes on tobacco and regulating its advertising. Research has documented that the single most effective way to reduce consumption of tobacco by young people is to raise excise taxes.

In 1986 the American Medical Association decided that the evidence was sufficient to warrant the call for a total ban on cigarette advertising. Even if such a ban did not lead to an immediate decrease in actual consumption, it would clear the way for the media to report on the dangers of smoking with an honesty it has never before employed. The media's self-censorship on behalf of cigarette and alcohol advertisers is a national disgrace. The public education that is essential in solving our major drug problems is probably not possible until the media no longer depend upon the economic goodwill of the tobacco and alcohol industries.

The war that we are waging on drugs is meaningless if it does not focus also on our legalized drugs our advertised drugs since they are still not legal for young people, who are under the continuous influence of very sophisticated advertising approaches. We cannot win this war until we stop supporting the denial that is at the heart of the problem, both in individuals and in society as a whole the denial that tobacco advertising depends upon and perpetuates.

Author, lecturer, and media analyst Jean Kilbourne, PhD, is the creator of two slide presentations and two award-winning films focusing on alcohol awareness, wellness, sexuality, and women's issues.

References
1. Bernstein, S., "Advertising Still Presells," Advertising Age, January 27, 1986, p. 17.
2. Jones, L., "U.S. Teen Drug Use Dropped in 1989, Survey Finds," American Medical News, February 23, 1990, p. 5.




Believing:

I believe that advertising for cigarettes directly manipulates our behaviour to smoke more. Ads attach images of heroism, athleticism and sexual appeal to the cigarettes they promote. It is known that cigarettes like any other drug causes enormous damages to health, and what is surprising this drug is advertised everywhere like any other soap, cosmetics or food. People try to be like the heroes who hold cigarettes in the ads: to be powerful, prestigious, glamorous, and successful. Therefore, they buy cigarettes being advertised and believe that they can perform themselves like models on TV if they smoke those drugs. Moreover, many studies examined the effect of cigarette advertising and came to conclusion that smoking has tremendously increased after the rise of tobacco ads.

Doubting:

I don’t think that cigarette ads influence people’s attitude towards buying more cigarettes. We do not buy more toothpaste or more food if we daily watch ads on different kinds of these products. Such ads help us only select or try new brand instead of the product we usually use. Like any other product, cigarette ads only switch new brands for people who already smoke. The advertising for cigarettes does not differ from any other industry’s techniques to promote its products. We do not consume more cheese or bathe more often if we regularly watch ads on various kinds of cheese or soap.

BLOG 3:

Response to:

Lee Myers, Steven. “Pervasive Corruption in Russia Is ‘Just Called Business’.” New York Times. 13 Aug. 2005. Retrieved 7 April 2009


Pervasive Corruption in Russia Is 'Just Called Business' By Steven Lee Myers

August 13, 2005, New York Times

MOSCOW, Aug. 12 - A businessman here recently formed a company to supply equipment used in new office and apartment buildings. Despite the country's construction boom, it nearly foundered. That is, until this summer, when two "intermediaries" arranged to fix the bidding for contracts from a regional government.

He has since received four new contracts, he said, and expects more. Success has its cost, though. He had paid bribes, he said, amounting to 5 to 10 percent of each contract. The largest, so far, totaled $90,000.

The amount of each bribe was punched out on a desktop calculator to avoid any paper trail. He expressed disgust but said the bribes were an unavoidable cost of doing business in Russia today.

"If you want to be competitive you have to play the game," he said, agreeing to speak in a lengthy interview only if he, his company and the regional government were not identified. He said he feared legal difficulties and being harmed or even killed.

"It used to be called bribery," he added. "Now it is just called business."

Bribery is certainly not new to Russia, but according to several recent surveys and interviews with dozens of Russians, it has surged in scale and scope in recent years under the presidency of Vladimir V. Putin, so that today it touches just about every aspect of life.

With greater urgency than ever, anticorruption campaigners and even some government officials warn that the government has become so ensnared by corruption that it threatens to undo Russia's progress since the dismantling of the Soviet Union 14 years ago.

The Indem Foundation, a research group in Moscow that has conducted the most extensive efforts to measure bribery here, estimated last month that Russians paid more than $3 billion in bribes annually and that businesses paid $316 billion - nearly 10 times the estimate of its first survey just four years ago.

The total is more than two and a half times what the government collects in budget revenues, the survey found. That means that vast amounts of Russia's wealth flow in a shadowy netherworld of corrupted officials - unreported as income, untaxed by the government and unavailable for social or economic investments.

"The weakness, inefficiency and corruption of all branches of government are the most important obstacles to further progress in reforming Russia," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D., said in June in a report commissioned by the Russian government.

Other surveys also rank Russia among the world's most corrupt nations, placing the former superpower on a par with developing countries. Transparency International, the worldwide corruption watchdog, said in its latest report that Russia was now following the path of countries like Nigeria, Azerbaijan and Libya - rich in oil but soaked by graft.

Grigory A. Satarov, the president of Indem, said in an interview that the new growth of bribery fed off the inefficiencies of Russia's still sclerotic state structures, inherited from the Communist past.

But he also blamed Putin policies that have weakened the rule of law. Fighting corruption, he argued, requires three conditions: free news media, a vibrant political opposition and a truly independent judiciary. Under Mr. Putin, he said, the Kremlin has undercut all three.

"The main thing," Mr. Satarov said, "is that all this time, Putin has not done anything to change the situation."

For businesses especially, bribery is ballooning, along with the amounts solicited, which Indem estimated to average $135,000 - a 13-fold jump from 2001. Mr. Satarov said the increasing pressure on businesses reflected the expanding role of the state in the economy during Mr. Putin's presidency.

For Mr. Satarov and others, high-profile cases like the legal assault on the Yukos oil company highlighted less the government's determination to root out corruption than its desire to assert its control over valuable economic assets.

In fact, the conviction of Yukos's former chairman, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, on tax evasion charges that he and his supporters called politically motivated may have had an opposite effect.

According to a very wealthy and prominent Moscow businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of prosecution or political retaliation, as well as others interviewed, bribes have increasingly become a necessity, either to win contracts or to keep inspectors and prosecutors at bay.

The magnitude and scope of this kind corruption make Russia different today from even the recent past, the Moscow businessman said. In the early years of Russia's post-Soviet transition, lingering fear of Soviet control and a romantic optimism for a normal democracy limited corruption to some extent.

"There are no romantics now," he said, "and the old fear is not there anymore."

A recent survey by the World Bank reported that 78 percent of businesses in Russia reported having to pay bribes. Another survey, by the Foreign Investment Advisory Council, created in 1994 by the Russian government and prominent foreign corporations, found that 71 percent considered corruption the biggest barrier to foreign investment.

Mr. Satarov said one major businessman had told him of having to pay monthly bribes to five federal ministries. Fully half of the businessman's profits went to bribes, Mr. Satarov recounted. "He said, 'When it reaches 70 percent I'm going to close the business.' "

A business consultant who until recently worked with the European Union on economic development projects in Kaliningrad and Moscow said he had endured repeated encounters with bribe-seeking officials, who demanded cash, gifts or the hiring of unqualified relatives.

In an interview, the consultant, who agreed to discuss the issue only if not identified because of fears of retribution, said it was necessary to understand bribery in the context of the Russian government.

"Corruption is not a virus infecting the system," he explained, saying that was how bribery was viewed in Europe or the United States: as an aberration that must be isolated and cut out. "It is the system itself that is corrupt."

Indeed, Russia has evolved from its Soviet past in such a way that for many, paying "a little something" is not even considered bribery anymore. Rather, bribes are seen more as a fee for resolving seemingly intractable problems or overcoming bureaucratic delays, one that supplements the meager incomes of otherwise honest civil servants.

"It's not their fault, but the government's inability to provide a decent living," Yaroslav D. Lissovolik, the chief economist at United Financial Group, said. He last paid a bribe - "a couple of dollars," he said - to receive the results of lab tests at a state clinic, where state health care is free only in theory.

The O.E.C.D. report concluded that government officials actually complicated legislation or regulations deliberately to increase opportunities for bribery. Or as the businessman in construction put it: "The law is like the Bible. They interpret it any way they like."

An American businessman married to a Russian woman recounted his own example. He said he had to pay nearly $1,000 in bribes to resolve a Catch-22 involving his infant daughter. She could not receive a Russian passport unless she was registered with the local police. She could not be registered, though, unless she had a passport.

"That perfect problem was solved with a larger sum than I want to remember," he said, agreeing to tell the story only if not identified, because of American laws against bribery.

As a result of its necessity, bribery has become accepted practice.

Bribes have become almost obligatory, for instance, for admission to Russia's universities, even those supposedly available at no cost to those who qualify. The Indem study estimated that $583 million was spent annually in bribes to deans, professors and others involved in securing admission. The foundation, along with the Moscow Higher School of Economics, estimated that students paid bribes as high as $30,000 to $40,000 to enter the most prestigious universities.

Young men of draft age also routinely pay to receive a deferment, either on medical or other grounds, to avoid service in a military roiled by the war in Chechnya and a particularly gruesome form of hazing for new recruits.

One young man in Yekaterinburg said in an interview that the going rate in central Russia was $1,500, and that he and several peers had paid it gladly. In Moscow it is said to be $5,000. According to the Defense Ministry, fewer than 10 percent of eligible men are drafted.

The police have the reputation of being the most notoriously corrupt. Sergei S., a lawyer with a prominent law firm, recalled the time recently when his girlfriend was at the wheel in Moscow and, without question, absolutely drunk when an officer waved the car over. She avoided arrest after Sergei went to an automatic bank machine, escorted by the officer, and withdrew $300.

"The most horrible thing," he said, agreeing to discuss the experience only if neither his last name nor his law firm was identified, "is it is absolutely normal."

Indem's survey uncovered one positive trend: the number of Russians willing to pay bribes has fallen since 2001, suggesting a growing popular frustration with the solicitations. Still, 53 percent of those surveyed said they would pay a bribe.

Mr. Putin's critics and even some supporters charge that the government has done little to combat corruption seriously because it extends to the upper tiers of government, something the president himself has acknowledged, sometimes bluntly.

"The state as a whole and the law enforcement bodies, unfortunately, are still afflicted with corruption and inefficiency," Mr. Putin said in an interview on state television last year. The corruption, he added, reaches to the "highest level, where we are talking about hundreds, tens of thousands, perhaps millions" of dollars.

Aleksandr Y. Lebedev, a wealthy financier and a member of the lower house of Parliament in the pro-Putin party, United Russia, said in an interview that corruption would flourish until drastic measures were taken, like the seizure of assets at home and abroad. "You find deputy ministers who have houses and yachts," he said. "I know ministers who are millionaires."

At the same time, Mr. Putin's government has not completely ignored the problem. It has announced a series of modest anticorruption measures, increasing salaries for law enforcement and other security officials and toughening penalties for seemingly petty crimes, like issuing a false passport.

The latter was a consequence of the deadly wave of terrorist attacks in August and September of last year. Two passenger airliners exploded in flight on Aug. 24, killing 90 people, after a bribe of roughly $34 enabled at least one of two suicide bombers to board at a Moscow airport.

"The people on those planes were not only the victims of terrorism," Yelena A. Panfilova, director of the Moscow branch of Transparency International, said. "They were victims of corruption." Yet as shocking as it was at the time, she said, the disclosure hardly surprised her.

When Transparency International applied to register its branch in 2000, an official in the Justice Ministry solicited a $300 "fee" to correct supposed problems in the application that Ms. Panfilova said did not exist.

"I said, 'Do you know who we are?' " she recalled.




Believing:

The New York Times is a reliable source of information proven by experts, and one could believe that the situation in Russia described in the news is true. Moreover, Russia was a “communist bloc”, and we know about “Soviets propaganda” where the government officials are corrupt making bigger and bigger fortunes for themselves from the workers’ efforts. During the Communist years, it is stated that Communist Party existed above the law and that they were criminals who were buying their way into legal community with bribes during election campaign and document tampering. I think this trend still exists, and, therefore, we can assume Russia as a corrupt country.


Doubting:

Media is so engaged in depicting Russia as a dangerous enemy and in occasional sensational events to support this idea that it seems to have lost interest in the contemporary developments in the policy there. Although the above-mentioned article in The New York Times talks about a businessman who had to pay bribes to the government, it lacks his name and the name of the company. Furthermore, the businessman had to pay $90,000 to the officials which I think is not a small amount. If he had to, why did he pay this amount of money instead of going to another country with no corrupt government where he could have invested these funds to a new production? This sensational news hits the headlines, but lacks the evidence and logic interrelationship between the events. The economic boom in oil and gas sector experienced in Russia today and its new increasing partnerships with Western companies who are prospering in Russia do not appear to make a lot of headlines of the US newspapers.

BLOG 2:

Response to:

Moore, Tristana. “Guide to Europe's pension woes: Germany.” BBC News Web. 17 Aug. 2007. Retrieved 3 Apr. 2009 .

GERMANY - TRISTANA MOORE

Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and at the same time, people are living longer. Recently, the pensions debate has become a political hot potato.
In March, the German parliament voted to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 as part of a reform programme aimed at tackling rapid population ageing and spiralling pension costs.
The government is hoping that by keeping people in jobs longer, it will reduce the burden on the state pension fund.
But the decision has been heavily criticised by trade unions and groups representing Germany's 20 million pensioners.
Such was the level of public anger that many demonstrations were staged against the government's plans in Berlin and other German cities.
The head of the DGB trade union federation, Michael Sommer, said the new law was tantamount to lowering retirement benefits.
Opposition politicians argued that the changes would lead to higher unemployment and increased pensioner poverty.
Germany currently has one of the highest levels of public spending on pensions in the 30 countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
The system provides a high level of cover, but it is widely believed to be unaffordable in the long term.
Most Germans stop working on average at the age of 63. Critics say it is still too easy for workers to take early retirement and they claim that many companies encourage early retirement schemes.
Given growing concerns over the demographic time-bomb, some pensioner groups have argued that those people retiring now are receiving state pension benefits which are around 10% less than they were in the past.
According to some surveys, one in three pensioners from 2030 will not be able to make ends meet if they rely on their normal pension scheme.



Believing:

I believe that the extending of the retirement age is a good solution to the problem of ageing in Europe. It is well-known that pensions partly originate from the taxes taken out of the salaries of employed. This is a sort of deposit young employed people make in order to secure themselves in older age. The current deposits are used for current pension payments, while the next ones – for future pensions. Since there are no younger people anymore, and the number of the elderly is increasing, there is a danger for the pension systems in the country because the government does not own enough funds to support older people. By the extending of the retirement age, the government could reduce the number of retired and pay out the pension. Moreover, for the retiring people, working in their old age could be seen as a small recompense for their physical and mental exhaustion. Extended working could be an opportunity for older people to stay active and integrated in a rewarding social environment.

Doubting:

However, this causes problems for those people who do not remain physically fit to meet the requirements of the workplace. This could be reflected on the quality of their performance. Furthermore, this reform raises issues for those companies who wish to stay competitive in today’s global business because older people are seen as less productive and more expensive. It is known that older people are not able to keep up with the continuously changing standards since they tend to be less mobile and less flexible than younger ones. Another problem can arise for young people who wish to enter the workforce. They will be limited in joining the working lives because there are enough employees over the age of 65. There will be no vacant places for young dynamic people which will limit the number of their applications and motivation because the older staff is still working.

BLOG 1:

Response to:

Belien, Paul. "Health Care Cuts in Europe." Brussels Journal. 23 Nov. 2005. Retrieved 3 Apr. 2009.

Health Care Cuts in Europe

From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2005-11-23 00:08

When conversations turn to health care, I am always reminded of my grandfather. He was 91 when he died. He had never been ill. He had never needed medical treatment in his whole life. Upon reaching his nineties, however, he required prostate surgery.

Like all Belgians, my grandfather had paid wage-related contributions to cover health insurance throughout his entire professional life. The Belgian health care system is a so-called pay-as-you-go system. Today’s young and healthy do not set money aside for their own future needs, but are compelled to pay for today’s sick and elderly. As my grandfather had never needed much health care, he had been a net contributor to the system. Now was the first time he was going to claim something back.

He had his operation in May. In November he was dead. The prostate operation had gone fine, but afterwards the hospital had given him an antibiotic drug that caused complete deafness. Though there were other, but costlier, drugs available, the hospital gave the old man the cheapest one. They knew about the side-effects, but it did not strike them as an unreasonable and unjust thing to do. Why should it? A man who has already had 90 healthy years of life surely has no right to complain about deafness when some people get more seriously ill or die at a far younger age. When my grandfather left the hospital he was completely deaf. He lost his will to live. Six months later, he was dead.

In many Western European countries, health care is the fastest growing segment of government spending. Over the past forty years there has been a significant increase in health-care spending. According to the latest OECD figures (2003), Western European countries spend between 7.3 and 11.5% of their gross domestic product on health care. Ten years ago it was between 6.9 and 9.9%. In 1960 it was only around 4%.

Source: OECD

Much of the rise in Europe’s health-care costs is caused by factors beyond government control, such as demographic evolution. Another important cause of rising expenditure, however, is the advancement of better and newer – but more expensive – medical technology.

There are only two ways to keep the present government-run European health-care systems going. One can either drastically increase the financial burden on those at the paying end of the system – the young and healthy of today – or one can drastically limit the quality and the availability of health care for those at the receiving end – the sick and the elderly.

For decades governments increased the financial burden on the working population. When this burden became intolerable, they shifted their policies towards cutting back quality. In Europe there are medical treatments, operations or drugs which are not available to persons above a certain age, or to persons who are considered too sick, or to anyone at all. Political authorities, claiming to be the guardians of solidarity in society, decide who is allowed to get what kind of treatment, operation or drug. Soon euthanasia might be the price the solidarity principle of the welfare state imposes on those people whose health care is costing society the most. Politicians in Belgium and the Netherlands have already granted their citizens a “right to die” by means of a lethal (and cheap) euthanasia injection. Is this a new “freedom” that the state, which is constantly restricting every other aspect of our lives, generously bestows on us? Or does it boil down to “economic euthanasia,” which enables governments to save money by eliminating those that cost the welfare state too much?

Other ways in which many governments in Europe have tried to control health-care spending has been by drawing up “negative lists” of drugs which doctors are not allowed to prescribe. Drugs are put on the “negative” list not because they are harmful, but because they are high-quality goods that are deemed too expensive.

For almost a decade now, governments have been stifling medical innovation in Europe. Last month the American drug company Pfizer decided not to build a new plant in Belgium because the Belgian government has been constantly raising taxation on pharmaceuticals. The government wants to reduce pharmaceutical expenditure by limiting drugs. They reckon that by limiting supply, demand will go down. In the same way, European governments discourage young people from becoming doctors, dentists or nurses. Many countries allow only a limited number of people to study for a medical profession, despite the fact that, due to the demographic development and the growing number of elderly, more doctors and nurses will be needed in the future.

Last week young physiotherapists demonstrated in the streets of Brussels. In Belgium physiotherapists, like doctors and dentists, need a licence to be allowed to set up a practice. Without a licence, the services provided by these medical professions are not reimbursed by the sickness fund – and without such reimbursement it is impossible to get any patients. The government has just limited the annual number of physiotherapy licences to 270. As 410 young people completed their (4-year) physiotherapy studies this year, it means that 140 of them will not be able to use their degree, unless they leave Belgium. The minister of Education says this is the fault of the universities: they are required to make the exams more difficult so that only the government prescribed number of 270 students can pass.

As is often the case, many of continental Europe’s policies are of German origin. In the early 1990s the German government, in a move designed to cut health-care costs, limited – and in some cases completely blocked – access to new drugs and medical technology. Since 1993 the German government has set separate budgets for each segment of the health-care market, with provisions of heavy sanctions if these budgets are exceeded. The 1993 pharmaceutical budget was set at $15 billion – a 9.1% cut from 1992. The government ruled that money spent over the budget would be taken out of doctors’ incomes. This caused a 25% drop in spending on medicine. Similarly, the sale of the seven largest research-intensive drug manufacturers fell by 16.5%, while the sales of generics (copycat drugs which are cheap because they were developped at least 15 years ago and hence no longer protected by patents) rose by 36%.

While these measures were successful in the field of cost control, they had devastating consequences for the pharmaceutical industry. The German pharmaceutical companies, no longer keen on developing new drugs, saw their world-wide share of drug patents drop to 8% from 16%. Doctors, afraid that they would have to pay the pharmaceutical bills out of their own pockets, started to refer their patients to specialists and hospitals. Patients with minor illnesses, requiring common and cheaper medicines were helped, but the doctors would “dump” their more serious cases instead of treating them in more costly ways. As a result, in 1993 Germany saw an increase of 10% in hospital patients and 9% in referrals to specialists.

The next year a similar phenomenon occurred at the level of the hospitals. They, too, were assigned budgets that they were not allowed to exceed. Consequently German hospitals, faced with patients who might cost too much, referred them to university clinics, which by law are not allowed to refuse patients. “Patients are being turned away, acutely ill patients are wandering from clinic to clinic, and expensive drugs are being withheld from cancer sufferers,” the German weekly Der Spiegel wrote in 1994 (April 11). “Money is being saved – even if it costs lives to do so. Whenever possible many hospitals are turning away expensive patients covered by the sickness funds. The only good patient is a cheap patient.”

Unfortunately, the German system has become the European model. Politicians in neighbouring welfare states, noticing the drop in German health expenditure, started to follow the German example. The only thing that mattered in their eyes was cost control. Many adopted the policy of adding drug volume control to price control and finally to prescription control. France introduced so-called negative recommendations, telling doctors what they are allowed to prescribe and what not. These recommendations have been made compulsory and doctors risk heavy financial penalties if they go against them.

At the root of these decisions is the understandable desire of governments to control health-care costs. But rationing is clearly not the answer. What many governments in Western Europe have overlooked is that there is nothing wrong with a society devoting more of its resources to health care. This even appears to be an indication of prosperity. The higher and the more developed a society becomes, the more its citizens are willing to spend on keeping healthy. Modern technology makes everything cheaper except the highest quality of medical care, which is constantly improving. To try to limit access to this technology in the name of “cost-control” is irresponsible.

Meanwhile, the larger and more fundamental problem of how to finance the health-care systems is not adressed. Instead of funding the provisions of today’s sick with taxes from today’s healthy and young, people should be building up reserves for their own future liabilities. What Europe needs is to replace its pay-as-you-go systems by privatized and capitalized health-care systems. This, however, would imply that the governments relinquish control over the system, which is the very last thing they are willing to do.

Believing:

I agree with the article that older people should be able to get appropriate treatment from the state even if the costs for medicines are too high. Nowadays, European governments are showing more concern for cost than effective medicine. The goal of the health-care policy is to help individuals to get healthy and to provide qualitative care for every individual. The current reform transforms health care into a consumer good because it depends on the salary of the person: people who earn enough are able to rely on the appropriate help from the state according to their high level of income. This creates division among the population. Health care should not let someone suffer or die only because the person is poor.

Doubting:

On the other hand, one has to accept the health-care reform on cutting back quality and paying only cheaper medicaments for older people whose illnesses require more expensive treatment. Europeans are getting older, and such a demographic shift also places a significant burden on a health-care system which challenges its sustainability. Heart disease, dementia, and arthritis are diseases common to the elderly. Since older people frequently face the risk of having these conditions, they require a lot of engagement from the doctors and health care, and their growth will also demand more health-care expenditures from the state to support them. European governments are no longer able to pay expensive drugs for the growing older population. As a result, they only pay the cheaper ones. It is the only way to cope with an ageing population which imposes tremendous financial pressures on the state that is no longer to support the huge numbers of the elderly.