I'm glad the NYTimes wrote about the Armstrong conundrum this weekend http://nyti.ms/cFneqp because I wanted to write about this during the Tour de France but I got distracted with my son.

The article is well balanced but poses a big question in my mind - how good do you have to be to make up for the bad?

I'm not suggesting that the federal investigation in to Armstrong will prove him guilty of doping - no one as yet knows whether he did - but the investigator is the same one who took Jones and Bonds down, so if Armstrong has something to hide it will not be hidden for long.

The tougher question is the implications of being found guilty.

Here's a guy who has given millions of dollars to the Cancer cause. He has been very involved on all levels of cancer research and his foundation is one of the most powerful and proactive foundations in the area of cancer. Perhaps his most important contribution is captured in this quote "Lance Armstrong has done more to destigmatize cancer than anyone"

Interestingly, if you go by Shakespearian wisdom "He doth protest too much"  then you have to question whether Nike's increased activity around Armstrong's Livestrong campaign recently is a coincidence or a building up of equity to help Lance get through a difficult probe and potentially negative conclusion.

Taking the thought of Good divided by Bad = ? a little further, friends of mine have been helping Rwanda in the last 5 years as President Kagame helps the country recover from the awful genocide it experienced. My friends have been working specifically with President Kagame's wife, who has been a key player in building up health programs in Rwanda and it makes obvious sense that helping her is a good thing. Except there's one niggling problem in this logic. Recently, there have been some strange goings on in Rwanda with opposition candidates for the Presidential election and Army officers going missing. You then see Kagame win the election with a victory vote above 90%. You have to start questioning whether you can continue to help this guy but in the back of your mind, you see that the country has improved because of him.

The same of course is true with Russia but no need for me to cover old ground there.

My point is this. How do we assess these situations? Bad is bad for sure but does the bad need to be assessed in the context of the good? Logic will tell you that bad outweighs any good - no matter how good the good is. That has to be true when lives are lost and that thinking is consistent with many diplomatic actions in the world but it makes it harder when you are talking about athletic achievements and fairness in competition versus a global initiative to help people live through cancer.

Interesting times ahead for Livestrong.