Definitely beginning to sound like Borat.

And thank goodness a professor’s gotten involved. UD gets to cover the story!

The alleged crimes of the Brooklyn man arrested Thursday for dealing in black-market kidneys were first reported by an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who learned of the man’s suspected involvement through her research.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes – whose contacts in Israel define her as the world’s leading authority on organ trading – says she heard reports that the suspect, 58-year-old Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, held donors at gunpoint after they changed their minds about the operation.

Such reports that she received from her sources compelled her to go to the authorities. She met with an FBI agent at a Manhattan hotel and gave him information about Rosenbaum, but she says that the Bureau acted only much later. The Berkeley scholar is said to have identified Rosenbaum to the FBI seven years ago as a major figure in a global human organ ring.

The anthropologist says that the man who led her to Rosenbaum says that he initially believed Rosenbaum was a man who saved the lives of people in need. According to Scheper-Hughes, that man told her he had changed his mind after meeting some of Rosenbaum’s donors – confused and impoverished people from Eastern Europe…

One out of every five adult males in some of Moldova’s poorest villages has had his kidney removed, according to Scheper-Hughes …

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I boarded a broken-down jitney
To check out a show at the Whitney.
And jumpin’ jehovah
The Salle de Moldova
Was featuring recycled kidney.

… full of nostalgia for those, like UD, who have long followed the only medical school in America with rolling prison admissions.

It’s a pretty typical story, if you follow university sports the way UD does. Gruesomely-run state with way-past-dire economy features large public university run by jocksniffers. Pointless, cost-overrun new stadium, overpaid coaches, secret deals, academic mission shot to hell, blahblah.

But sometimes things get so shameless, so squalid, that a certain perverted integrity emerges. The people who run Rutgers will run it into the ground, and damned if anyone’s going to stop them.

It’s unseemly at best that as the Rutgers University Board of Governors was approving tuition and fee hikes this week, school officials were also exulting over a pair of large donations that will pay for a nearly $5 million luxury lounge for the new football stadium.

We know all the excuses. It’s free money. The wealthy donors — two of them — wanted the money used for this specific purpose. They have the right to attach whatever strings they want. And of course the lounge will be really nice and fancy and be a helpful recruiting tool for a program that aspires to greater glory, and since it’s all private money, who cares?

But here’s how officials could have — should have — responded to the donors. They should have graciously explained that given the current economic conditions and pressures it simply wouldn’t be appropriate to accept that much money for such a frivolous project. To pursue the lounge, some of the donated money would have to redirected to another worthy cause, either in academics or even to some of the more neglected sports. Some funds could even have gone to restoring the lost sports programs that a coalition of supporters is still fighting to bring back.

And if the donors refused, school officials could have politely declined the offer and moved on. Because that luxury lounge is hardly an urgent need, or a need at all.

… Let’s remember that the $100 [million]-plus expansion of the football stadium was a boondoggle from the beginning. After the football team threw together a couple of successful seasons officials started bending over backwards trying to grow the program. The expansion project was only part of it. The school also threw silly money at head football coach Greg Schiano, including secret, lucrative provisions that eventually prompted investigations and an overhaul of the entire athletic department…

If this comment is true, all praise to the TTU law school:

[The chancellor] tried to foist the man off on the Law School. Three times he tried and three time the Law School—-both through its Dean and its Faculty (and perhaps with some help from its alums) rebuffed him. But the Law School has a bit more autonomy than does the Poly Sci Department.

Second, the ONLY good thing that can come from this bizarre appointment is that it gives the Board of Regents serious pause about continuing Hance as Chancellor…

The University of Illinois law school only had to keep unqualified students out…

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UD thanks a reader, jbb, for the link.

… always appreciates fine writing. Here’s some. Let’s see how John Kass of the Chicago Tribune does his thing.

If there were any doubts that Illinois is the diseased poster child of political corruption, those doubts are long gone. [Such a fresh, strong opening sentence, in the context of such an absurdly over the top story of statewide corruption, that SOS laughed out loud. Great start.]

Friday’s story in the Tribune exposes a widening pattern of corruption at the University of Illinois. This time, with the trading of law school admission for patronage-style jobs. [Sentence fragment! Yes, the second sentence isn’t a sentence. But that’s okay, right? The guy’s pissed, and his clipped approach fits his anger.]

So any doubts about where this state stands should be erased. What remains is the smell. [Maybe he’s heading into a bit too much figurative language — poster child, disease, smell. We might ask him to polish this by finding one metaphor — stench would certainly do it — and sticking with it.]

The state stinks, from Rich Daley’s City Hall to Springfield, and now all that’s left, for taxpayers, is the smell and the stain. [Smell, stain, stink — I guess we’re basically into liquid doodoo here. And that’s fine. If the shit fits, wear it.] Corruption and patronage, once thought to be [Drop to be.] the exclusive province of greasy politicians, now reach into the law school of the state’s premier public university. [Not sure about greasy, though greasy-palmed is I guess the referent. If you wanted to stay with flowing manure, you might say malodorous or something.]

Friday’s story details how University Chancellor Richard Herman forced the university’s law school to accept an unqualified student. That student had the backing of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The student’s relative dropped wads of campaign money on ex-Gov. Dead Meat. [Laughed again on dead meat. Though again, if you wanted to keep the primary metaphor you might say ex-Gov. Fertilizer.]

In exchange for corrupting his law school’s admissions policy, Herman wanted to get jobs for five of his law school graduates. University officials considered the law grads so far at bottom of their class that they needed political clout to get a decent salary at a good law firm. If that wasn’t possible, the U. of I. was willing to place them in government jobs.

“Yeah, I’m betting the Governorship will be open,” Heidi M. Hurd, then dean of the university’s College of Law, wrote in an e-mail to Herman on April 29, 2006, perhaps joking that Blagojevich’s time in public life was coming to an end.

What followed in her e-mail was worse.

“Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don’t pass the bar and can’t think are close enough for government work,” Hurd wrote. In another e-mail to other U. of I. officials, Hurd wrote:

“FYI: The deal is supposed to be that WE get to pick the students — and they are supposed to be bottom-of-the-class students who face a hell of a time passing the Bar and otherwise getting jobs!”

That’s law school the Chicago Way. If they can’t pass the bar on the first or second try, they’re qualified to become mayor.

The latest e-mails from Herman, Hurd and other U. of I. officials were released Thursday. The Tribune had asked for all such e-mails in April. But these somehow were forgotten, until U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald issued subpoenas. Then, magically, that which was lost was found. A miracle!

Did the U. of I. search by the light of Batman’s beacon, Diogenes’ lantern or some other powerful lamp of truth? [Once again, funny. Remember: Writing is all about control. If you’re angry, don’t spew. Find some other way to convey your rage. Humor is a fantastic way.]

Thomas Hardy, spokesman for the University and a former Tribune colleague whom I know and respect, dismisses my skepticism and deserves his say.

“We’ve made a good-faith effort to respond to the Tribune’s Freedom of Information requests, and others,” Hardy said. “Some documents were not produced that apparently should have been. We don’t know right now the reason for that, but the fact of the matter is that in collecting documents and doing interviews for the Quinn commission, we’ve come across these new e-mails and made them publicly available.”

Within days, perhaps sooner, you’ll hear a few thudding sounds, like lonely bowling balls tossed down a dark alley, and you’ll realize you’re listening to the political heads of Chancellor Herman and his crew rolling into history. [Well, we’ve switched figures bigtime, and I’m not sure how fresh and lovely the bowling ball thing is. I mean, not that shit’s fresh and lovely qua metaphor, but somehow people always like it. And yes — He could rewrite with an eye to maintaining his dominant metaphor by saying That sucking sound you hear is the head of Chancellor Herman being flushed down the toilet of history.]

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that lopping a few heads and burning the stumps will clean things up.

Not in the state where our boss Democrats in the state legislature — guys like state Senate President John Cullerton (D-DeLeo) — are still slapping themselves on the back for stopping the Illinois Reform Commission led by former assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins.

Not in the state where Mayor Daley can pretend not to know that his nephew received $68 million in city pension money to invest, and then, without telling his taxpayers, puts them on the hook for likely cost overruns in his 2016 Olympic dream.

Not in the state where — just before the patronage abuse trial of Daley’s top aides a few years ago — mayoral mouthpiece David Axelrod, now the media wizard for President Barack Obama, defended political patronage by arguing it is the grease that helps government run smoothly. [Yeah, ye olde start every paragraph with the same words — Not in the state… Fine. Works well here.]

Think about your taxes. And all the fine students denied admission to the U. of I., though they have the grades.

Think of the clout that’s been reported by this newspaper. Consider the thousands of excellent, hardworking students at the U. of I. who’ve been dishonored by the corruption of adults who are [Drop who are.] supposed to protect them.

If you’ve read carefully here and elsewhere, you know about corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, corrupt businesses. But the last line of defense for the corrupt are kinky judges.

How do you get such judges? You begin in law school, with university officials establishing corrupt practices, leveraging unqualified lawyers into jobs.

Lawyers become judges, don’t they? [Terrific conclusion, in which he clarifies the food chain by which judges become just as corrupt as everyone else in Illinois government.]

… they’re engineering raises for their many diploma mill graduates.

Hey, even the superintendent graduated from one!

She tried to keep the guys off.

The woman shows a healthy sense of irony. (“Any more phone calls to make to influential people just to make sure they feel the love?”)  She’s even clever at making up words (Provostian!).

But the dean of the law school at outed, clouted University of Illinois wasn’t able to fight off the governor (Blago at the time) and his cloutslaves at UI. Heidi Hurd was forced to admit a whole raft of the well-connected.

At one point in March 2007, Hurd asked staffers to collect data about how the clouted students performed at law school to provide a weapon against their admittance.

Admissions dean Paul Pless reported that the school admitted at least 24 “SI,” or special interest, students during a four-year span. He said they had lower grades and standardized test scores than the general applicant pool and they lagged behind their classmates once admitted. On average, they maintained a 2.86 grade point average during their first year compared with the 3.2 grade point average for the overall class, he said. One faced “formal disciplinary charges” and left the school.

But their dislike of the program didn’t stop administrators from accepting the students.

“I’ll do my best to keep the number of Provostian admits to a minimum, and extract payment for them,” Hurd wrote to her admissions staff in 2003.

Payment here meant guaranteed jobs in Blago’s government. A perfect fit! And after all, as the immortal Roman Hruska reminded us, the mediocre too are entitled to representation.

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UD is very grateful to Wendy and James for the link.

… about the continued hagiography coming out of Kansas State University as its revered leader Jon Wefald finally retires. The saint of KSU is a panting jocksniffer who has handed much of KSU’s money to a dirtily run football program. He has also engaged in nepotism and conflict of interest.

Wefald is your basic long-running banana republic leader. Power went to his head. The Topeka Capital-Journal provides details of his conflict of interest. [Note: I got the newspaper wrong originally; I’ve corrected that, and I thank my readers for the correction. I can’t get the link to work at the moment, however. I’m working on it.]

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Here’s the link.

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And here’s the renaissance.

It’s Jersey.

Crime pays.

… What Cornell [University] is putting into Cayuga’s waters and possibly ending up in the water glasses at graduation dinners could become important table discussion.

Cornell plans to deliver a liquefied brew of animal carcasses and veterinary medical waste to the Ithaca Wastewater Treatment plant. There, the material would be treated and discharged into Cayuga Lake. The lake is the source of drinking water for thousands of county residents, businesses and visitors – like those Cornell families staying in area hotels this weekend.

For more than a month, Cornell has refused to disclose the components of its liquefied brew of dead animals and medical waste. In early April, The Ithaca Journal requested under the New York Freedom of Information Law that Cornell provide details on the chemical and biological ingredients of the waste.

Cornell argues New York’s FOIL does not apply to the university. Even though New York taxpayers fund many of the university’s programs and several state schools are located on its campus, Cornell claims it is a private institution and not subject to FOIL.

… Cornell’s brew of animal carcasses and waste is generated by the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. That state college also houses the New York State Animal Health Diagnostic Center and the New York State Diagnostic Lab. Note the word “state” in the previous sentence.

… The list of possibilities of what may be in the Cornell waste is broad and is a significant public health and safety concern. We’ve asked Cornell to provide documents that detail the chemicals and/or materials that the waste might contain, including:

* Anesthetics, carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic agents and chemotherapeutic agents.

* Contraceptives, drugs, pharmaceuticals and other therapeutic agents.

* Dyes, formaldehyde, formalin, other tissue preservatives, phenol and phenolic compounds.

* Sterilizing solutions, immunization agents or laboratory chemicals.

* Mercury, lead, silver, iodine or other heavy and non-heavy metals and metalloids.

* Persistent compounds of potential environmental or public health concern or volatile organic chemicals.

* Radioactive solutions, tracers or elements…

the ithaca journal

… Wall Street Journal article about the devastating consequences of doping tens of thousands of children with anti-psychotics, but it should.  This is his legacy.

Harvard University, which continues to employ Biederman, should also take a bow.

The growth in antipsychotic-drug prescriptions for children is slowing as state Medicaid agencies heighten their scrutiny of usage and doctors grow more wary of the powerful medications.

The softening in sales for children is the first sign that litigation, reaction to improper marketing tactics, and concern about side effects may be affecting what had been a fast-growing children’s drug segment.

… Antipsychotics have faced heightened scrutiny and investigation over the past year. In November, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee asked the FDA to research children’s use of the drugs and expressed concern about possible side effects such as weight gain and increased diabetes risk. And 11 state attorneys general are investigating alleged marketing of Eli Lilly & Co.’s antipsychotic Zyprexa for uses the FDA hasn’t approved.

In January, Eli Lilly agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle allegations it improperly marketed Zyprexa. The company also agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge of promoting the drug for unapproved uses.

A Lilly spokesman declined to comment on ongoing litigation and said the company doesn’t track the drug’s use in children.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. agreed to pay $515 million in September 2007 to settle allegations it promoted Abilify for use in children. The FDA didn’t approve of the use of the drug in children older than 10 until 2008.

… Some states began moving to require special approval before they would cover a claim for an antipsychotic. A group of 16 states started studying the use of psychiatric medication in children in 2007 in an effort they dubbed “too many, too much, too young” …

******************************************

Via Alliance for Human Research Protection.

Well, yes, when people die because dangerous drugs have won approval based on lies medical school professors in the pay of drug companies have told about them, that’s certainly a disservice.

Prominent cardiologist Dr Marvin Konstam (Tufts University Medical Center, Boston, MA) agreed to be lead author on a 2001 Circulation paper about the COX-2 inhibitor rofecoxib (Vioxx, Merck), which was written in-house by Merck scientists, according to claims made in a federal court in Australia last week. The paper was designed to deflect safety criticisms, some experts believe, following the publication of an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) two months previously that first demonstrated an increase in cardiovascular side effects with the drug.

This is very significant, says Dr Steve Nissen (Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio), who was an author on the JAMA paper. “During the three years after publication of the Konstam manuscript, millions of patients around the world were prescribed rofecoxib by physicians who believed that the drug was safe. In this case, a ghostwritten article caused great harm to the public health.”

Pretty ugly stuff, huh? Only comes out when there’s a big lawsuit from the injured… or their survivors.

But think of it from Konstam’s perspective. He makes money, gets another publication, and doesn’t have to lift a finger.

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UPDATE: Colin, a reader, adds important information to this post. UD is very grateful. It goes without saying that these are enormously complicated stories, and UD is happy to pass along details, amendments, etc.

Merck pulled the drug the day after an internal study – much like the kind attacked above – found that taking the drug for more than 18 months in a row raised the risk of cardiac problems. This is also true of other drugs in the class – but only Merck reacted, and thus exposed itself to all the lawsuits, most of which, by the way, they have won; the other drugs remain on sale. (As a side note, the FDA asked Merck to sell Vioxx with a new warning label, and the company refused.) I very much take the point about ghost-writing, but in the case of Vioxx the system did work: professional scientists employed by a drug company conducted a scientific study, reported its negative results to management, and action was taken promptly despite the huge financial consequences. None of this, of course, answers the point about academic scientists putting their names to things they did not write, but I still think it’s important to have all the facts of the case.

…on this blog, because I’m about universities. But don’t lose sight of the larger sleazy picture.

… ass? Merkins aren’t made for that purpose.

Thus Ezra Merkin’s attempt to cover his ass in the Madoff matter by having his sister write a New York Times opinion piece minimizing his involvement was doomed to fail.

Yet the real question is how she managed to get the piece published at all. It’s rank conflict of interest, an attempt by a protective sister to twist the facts of her brother’s culpability.

Gawker and the Jewish Journal, among others, have expressed amazement at what looks to UD like simple corruption on the part of the NYT. Daphne Merkin’s a longtime contributor to the newspaper, no doubt a friend of some on the editorial board, and they’re doing a friend a favor by letting her try to influence the many lawsuits currently being filed against her brother.

It’s disillusioning for poor UD. She never thought of the New York Times as a provincial newspaper.

… close up.

Faculty outrage over well-publicized administrative bonuses there has reached the boiling point, including some in the faculty senate calling for a vote of no confidence in Clemson president James Barker and provost Doris Helms, who saw her pay increase by 32.8 percent over the past two years.

Adding fuel to that already burning fire was news earlier this month that Barker’s son was recently hired in the Office of Marketing Services to make $51,000 and Board of Trustees vice chairman Joseph Swann’s daughter, attorney Erin Swann who works in Barker’s office, received a 24.2 percent raise. The information came out of a faculty senate meeting on Tuesday, March 10, in which Clemson French professor emeritus John Bednar brought the personnel and raise issues to the floor and issued strong condemnations of Clemson’s leadership.

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Over the past two years, Clemson gave pay raises ranging from 10 percent to 100 percent to 99 people — only 46 of whom were faculty members; the majority of those raises went to administrators, coaches and extension employee[s]. The university also has come under fire — rightly so — for hiring the president’s son and giving a 24 percent raise to a lawyer whose father is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Background, if you can stomach it, here.