Trusting

Bernie Madoff.  Pfizer.  Peanut butter.  Banks.  The former Governor of Illinois.  The list could go on for institutions and people who seemed to have broken our trust in just the past two months!

Today, we learn another saga in the pharmaceutical companies paying researchers.  In this case, a noted anesthesiologist who had published research about post-operative pain killers, admitted that he fabricated results which were beneficial to Pfizer.  Of course, Pfizer paid for his work.  

The large pharmaceutical company denies any involvement, and in fact, they probably didn't sit down with this researcher and demand certain results, but he clearly wasn't stupid and realized the more his result showed success in post-operative pain relief with Pfizer's non-narcotic drugs, the more likely he would get continued funding, prestige, and probably a larger salary than most anesthesiologists.  

It seems that many of the foundations of our lives are crumbling under daily revelations that our fundamental systems are not working.  Financial institutions, using our deposits, speculated wildly, made irresponsible loans, preyed on people with teaser loan rates, and awarded huge bonuses for short term success and long term devastation.  Our food supply system is broken.  Sucked in by our own greed or need to sustain income levels in order to just keep up, we handed money to not one but many many suave and cultured "investment advisors" who concocted elaborate Ponzi-schemes which eluded regulators for years.  And government officials, from Illinois to Washington, DC, continue to flaunt their power and avoid accountability.

All of this makes things like the Ford Pinto or Chevrolet Corvair seem contained.  We managed to catch those problems, convince the auto companies to build safer cars, and everyone believed they could trust again.  

Now, well now, who would you trust?  

Our collective cultural belief in trust, that people will do the right thing, is broken.  There are somethings government can begin to fix, like insuring that food production is safe, enforcing banking regulations (or creating a new regulatory structure), increasing ethics oversight on government officials, perhaps even increasing government funding for health research.  But really, trust is a covenant between each of us.  We must find ways to put aside our own greed and understand that concept.  Because, as all our mother's once said, when trust is broken....