[Joseph] Biederman, along with Charles Nemeroff, who was then at Emory University, and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford (the 116th President of the American Psychiatric Association) are in many ways poster boys for [pharma corruption]. Ironically, it was Schatzberg, during his presidency in 2009, who responded vehemently to Allen Frances’s criticisms of the DSM 5 task force by pointing to the $10,000 in royalties Frances was still receiving from DSM IV. Apparently, the $4.8 million in stock options Schatzberg had in a drug development company, or the fat fees he received from such companies as Pfizer, had no similar distorting effect on his judgment — just as the $960,000 Charles Nemeroff received from GlaxoSmithKline (while reporting only $35,000 to his university) had no influence on him. And just as the millions of dollars that Biederman and his associates at Harvard received for creating a new diagnosis and a massive new market for antidepressants and second-generation antipsychotics among young children (drugs associated with massive weight gain, metabolic disorders, diabetes, and premature death) had nothing to do with their behavior!

Nemeroff is now at the University of Miami, but that’s not a scandal because Miami isn’t a respectable university. The scandal lies at respectable places like Stanford and Harvard, which will “turn a blind eye to ethical failings if the money on offer is sufficiently tempting.”

The place was founded in 1863 by the Poor Sisters of Saint Francis. This charitable lot opened a soup kitchen during the Great Depression that fed hundreds of people a day. Over the years it’s been sold and sold again, and it’s had lots of financial trouble along the way and presumably compromised somewhat on care … But the story has a happy ending!

Hoboken University Hospital (UD can’t figure out what the “university” is doing in the name, but as long as the word is there, University Diaries will write about it) has recently been sold to investors – featured on the front page of today’s New York Times – who do things like this:

“Their model is to charge exorbitant rates, particularly for emergency room services, and if the insurance companies don’t pay them, they threaten to go after the member for the balance of billing,” said Carl King, head of national networks for Aetna, whose in-network contract was also ended by Bayonne in 2008.

And now their hospitals are doing great! They’re taking struggling non-profits once affiliated with shabby little charitable outfits like those poor sisters and turned them into HUGE profit centers! Look at what’s going on in another of their hospitals – the most expensive hospital in the United States!

Aetna’s internal data showed that Bayonne Medical’s emergency room charges jumped again in 2012 and are running 6 to 12 times as high as those of surrounding hospitals. Last fall, [the chief investor in Bayonne Medical] bought the designer Tory Burch’s oceanside home in Southampton for $11 million, according to public records.

Yes, the story of this hospital’s transformation from a modest charitable endeavor devoted to healing to a cutting-edge collections agency is America’s Story.

The groups we saw walking around with maps [this morning] are members of the American Volksport Association, or others tagging along on walks this group is organizing (in particular their local club Annapolis Amblers). Today’s 10k walk is Kensington-Garrett Park. They are directed from Penn Place on Rokeby and then up on Argyle, but before that they are directed to take a little sidetrip a bit further on Rokeby to see the garden sculptures of Ferdinand the Bull. So today hundreds of people will walk on Rokeby to our house, look at the bulls, and then turn around go back, and take Argyle uphill, a special trip just to see our house.

And as investors take their money out of the firm (unlike Brown, which stands stalwart behind Cohen, the investors recognize a sinking ship when they see one), SAC has said in a letter that it’s not going to cooperate with the SEC investigators “unconditionally” anymore.

So… things are fraying at SAC… but Brown University, which has had trouble with trustees, not to mention presidents, before, is apparently going to play the game out, thus solidifying its reputation as the academic institutional embodiment of American greed and illegality.

HEADLINE #1:

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA
ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT DEBT
EXPECTED TO REACH $13M

HEADLINE #2:

BUILDING ENROLLMENT, FOOTBALL TEAM,
PART OF PLAN FOR NEW UNIVERSITY OF
HAWAII WEST OAHU CHANCELLOR

And what a chancellor!

[With Rockne] Freitas’ background as a [football] star at Oregon State University and his many years in the NFL, as well as being instrumental in bumping up UH football to the Mountain West Conference, anything is possible.

UD thanks Josh.

Yes, fraternity members encouraged a classmate to drink himself to death…

On the other hand, when he started to die they dropped him at the local hospital…

Even more nobly, before they abandoned him in the lobby one student taped a piece of paper onto his body with information about how much he’d had to drink. The world will little note, nor long remember, exactly what the student wrote, but it can never forget what he did …

Similarly, after an exploding beer bottle someone threw into a bonfire badly burned two women, ASU students “helped extinguish the girls’ flaming skin.” Then they “kicked them out of the party to avoid getting into trouble.”

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These are the sorts of moral scenarios philosophy professors like to use in their classrooms. They’re stories with a rich ambiguity that can provoke valuable discussion.

After cheering while a friend drinks himself to the point of death, should you

1. put him away in a room to die or sleep it off?
2. take him to the hospital?
3. put clothes on him? (he only had on a bathing suit)
4. stay long enough to talk to a doctor or nurse?
5. abandon him?
6. stick a note on him and then abandon him?

After setting off an explosion that grievously injures two people, should you

1. douse their flames?
2. throw them out into the night?