The Cynical Coverups of the Corrupt Curers

The average citizen ought to recognize by now simply by reading the news that the cynicism of a corrupt organization is beyond morality in ways that it is difficult to measure and hard to imagine.

We juxtapose two especially depressing stories of long-term ongoing and persistent evil.

For some details of how a curer covered up bad data, see "Diabetes Drug Maker Hid Test Data on Risks, Files Indicate," by GARDINER HARRIS, "The drug giant SmithKline Beecham found in a study as early as 1999 that its diabetes medicine, Avandia, posed risks to the heart, but it never made the information public."

This cover up of data may not be a crime. Selling drugs that can cause heart problems may be legal. But the behavior described in the Times is cynical and self-serving, certainly unethical and immoral.

The Times also reports worse behavior in the unfolding child abuse scandals of the Catholic church, "Abuse Took Years to Ignite Belgian Clergy Inquiry," by DOREEN CARVAJAL and STEPHEN CASTLE.

The church purports to cure people of sin and to bring its members redemption. Surely the acts that this organization covered up were illegal, perverted and abominable.

We grew up wanting to believe the Hollywood version of corruption and evil. In that worldview the gangsters were identifiable and distinct. They belonged to the mob or the mafia or the cosa nostra. When Michael Corleone for instance in the classic film The Godfather stood in church at his child's baptism while his henchmen carried out violent acts of revenge against other mobsters, we were supposed to sense the contrast of the evil gangster in the midst of the purity of the church.

Now every day we uncover in the media how drug companies whose missions are to cure disease and churches whose missions are to cure sin -- how these institutions are corrupt in their essence and cynical in their action.

All this reminds us of a biblical verse that describes the state of affairs in the world before the great flood: "Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence (Genesis 6:11)."