LOL. For-profit Ponce med school isn’t at all into full disclosure. Its CEO boasts of his Cambridge U. MBA, but what he got was one of those flimsy dippy give us all your money Executive MBAs where you show up once a month for a couple of years and then get to put Cambridge on your resume.

Guy says Ponce is all about social justice – helping non-traditional students get into medicine – but hello it’s for profit and charges big bucks…

At least Ponce has a sense of humor, what with choosing a woman convicted of Medicare fraud to teach its students medical ethics. She’s on probation at the moment, and has been barred forever from practicing in Illinois.

On the eve of the Sunshine Act’s introduction, Newsweek revisits the sordid situation at university medical schools in regard to conflict of interest with big pharma. Starting in September, American consumers will have access to information about “all payments and other valuables given by Big Pharma to physicians and teaching hospitals.”

This blog has over the years covered so many greed-crazed COI’ers at so many university medical schools that you’d think UD just copies and pastes everything that shows up on Google News. In fact, she’s extremely selective, posting only about those stories involving arrant – sometimes fatal – disregard of patients, plus immense pharma payouts. She’d link you to a few of these stories right now, but they have a triggering effect on her.

Meanwhile, it’s good to keep in mind that med school COI mischief doesn’t stop with the stuff the Sunshine Act illuminates. Given last year’s bad publicity about George Washington University’s business school (this article, which summarizes events, also features the latest form of fallout), one might forget that in 2009 its med school was also in trouble — both on probation and headed by a

provost and vice president for health affairs, [who] also has received money and stock options for serving on the board of directors of Universal Health Services, which owns the university hospital.

Williams was paid nearly $680,000 in annual compensation by GWU, according to the university’s 2006 tax returns, its most recent, and UHS reported in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that he received compensation from the company that calendar year of $122,000, including stock options.

Because he has a stake in the company’s profitability, some at the school complained that Williams had no incentive to push for spending on new equipment and programs at the school. Others said it was not appropriate for Williams to be paid so well when the tax-exempt school is one of the most expensive in the country.

GWU leaders asked Williams to resign from the corporation board and this month accepted his resignation, effective by the end of the academic year.

Ain’t nuthin the Sunshine Act can do about this popular form of self-enrichment.

Leana Wen, a doctor at George Washington University Hospital, introduces herself to patients like this:

“I’m Dr. Leana Wen. I’m your doctor. I belong to an initiative called ‘Who’s My Doctor?’ that aims for transparency in medicine. I accept no money from drug companies or device companies.

“I do not make any more from ordering more tests or procedures on you, and I also don’t make more for ordering less. I’m telling you this so that you can be sure that everything I do for you is in your best interest.”

A bit awkward as an opening gambit, to be sure, but part of the anti-conflict of interest, full disclosure movement of which Wen has been a part since med school (Wen was president of the indispensable AMSA). As a faculty member at a university whose hospital was recently so rife with conflict of interest at the top that it became a national scandal – it was even put on probation for reasons probably related to its distracted-by-money managers – Wen could not be better placed to draw attention to the still COI-mad profession of medicine.

The major power players of Washington DC are of course particularly prone to market corruptions, as in the latest case of a high-ranking professor/FDA chairwoman having to be pulled back from an embrace with industry:

Dr. Lynn Drake, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and current chairwoman of the panel that advises the FDA on drugs to treat skin and eye conditions, is scheduled to speak at a conference whose stated aim is to help companies “walk away with strategies to successfully present before a committee and avoid potential roadblocks.”

In a letter sent on Thursday to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, founder of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, called on the agency to either require that Drake not attend the meeting, or remove her from her position as chairwoman of the Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee.

… Wolfe said Drake’s participation in the conference, which is being sponsored by PharmApprove, a consulting company, and costs up to $2,199 to attend, “raises concerns that the advisory committee member is approaching the work of the committee from a pro-industry perspective.”

… It is urgent that the FDA develop and articulate a written policy applicable to all advisory committee members to avoid repetition of this type of shameful episode, which could undermine public confidence in FDA advisory committees and in the agency itself,” he said.

Wolfe also drew attention to Drake’s curriculum vita, which is posted on the FDA’s website and which he said contains 32 items that are redacted under an exemption designed to protect trade secrets and other confidential business information. He said he has made a Freedom of Information request for an unredacted copy of the CV, “because the full CV may further elucidate Drake’s background and relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.”

Drake says she had no idea what she was signing up for.

“Either she is naive and signs up for things without knowing very much about them or she actually didn’t know the title of the session she was going to be a speaker on,” [Wolfe] said. “Those things are not really very likely.”

I mean, it’s pretty clear she got caught because Wolfe happened to read a promotional brochure for the conference (which will cost you two thou to attend… or maybe less now…)…

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

UPDATE: Things don’t look much better these days at GWU’s med school.

Among schools with the weakest [Clinical Conflict of Interest] policies: Saint Louis University School of Medicine, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medical College, University of Nebraska College of Medicine, and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

… but meanwhile there’s a blog about universities to maintain, and I just happen to have some stuff here that I think you might like…

Close to home, there’s the fun story of one of the fraternities at UD‘s place of business, George Washington University. We’ve had to pay a lot of attention to fraternities on this blog, given the hilarious disconnect between what many of these cults broadcast about themselves and what they actually are/do. The American university frat story is a subset of the American university big-time sports story, in which these closely allied units grab our elbow and direct their alcoholic breath to our face in order to bray about their charity car washes and team work and brotherly love and inspirational school spirit. And we buy it, which is pretty remarkable…

So yet another GW frat has been shut down or suspended or whatever (happens constantly), but this time it’s not about the routine gruesome party or trashed hotel.

The chapter was under investigation after DC Leaks hacked the personal email account of a White House staffer and alumnus, which included messages from Pi Kappa Phi’s Listserv from February 2015 to June 2016. GW’s Greek life official said in a message sent to students that the chapter was shut down after officials found information that showed the group had violated University standards.

No, it’s not Clinton/Weiner-level; but you gotta admit in its own small way it’s kind of impressive. A just-graduated GW person, fraternity prez, moves too quickly to the White House, still “being dead in his sins and the uncircumcision of his flesh,” (Colossians 2:13), and his frat-prez correspondence gets a high-level hack, which if you’re GWU you’re likely to find a mite embarrassing.

Pi Kappa Phi was [already] under disciplinary and social probation until Dec. 31, 2015 for hosting a registered off-campus event with alcohol where several attendees – some of whom were underage – had to be treated at a hospital for overconsumption of alcohol. The chapter had been on social restriction until June 30.

But that’s a trifle here. That’s like… Aren’t all fraternities under social restriction? Let’s get to the good stuff.

The email hack included Listserv messages instructing members to watch out for puking pledges, [and to] contribute to a slush fund; [the messages also included] anti-semitic remarks calling members “Jewish” for not donating to philanthropic events.

“This is such a bad violation of recruitment policies [responded our man] and nationals could royally fuck us if they wanted to… I’m not being a narc but you gotta at least keep a clean paper,” he wrote.

An April 2016 email reprimanded two fraternity members for yelling “fuck you you fucking faggot” at their gay neighbor for 20 minutes during a party, which allegedly led the neighbor to consider pressing criminal charges.

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

And here’s something from the big-time sports part of the frat/sports industrial complex.

The University of Memphis. Put university memphis in this blog’s search engine and feast your eyes on one of America’s most lurid locations of any kind, much less a university location. Memphis, like Auburn and Clemson and Baylor, is one of those schools that UD grudgingly admires for their determination to be faithful to what they truly are: totally amoral football-game-makers. Scummy cheating coaches flying high on zillion dollar salaries; broad-shouldered who-gives-a-shit trustees; recruits who spend so much time on the field, or playing video games, or shooting guns, that UD worries they might not have enough time to get their schoolwork done…

University of Memphis football players Jae’Lon Oglesby and Kam Prewitt fought Tuesday night over video games and Prewitt was later taken to a local hospital because of injuries to his mouth, according to a university incident report obtained Thursday morning.

Oglesby told university police that the fight took place between 9 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Carpenter Complex, a residential building on campus. Oglesby said he then left the complex and returned to his apartment, which is located off campus on Patterson Street. Officers subsequently visited Prewitt’s apartment to check on him and determined that he needed medical attention, according to the university incident report.

Gunshots were fired at a car belonging to Oglesby after 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to a police report. Oglesby told officers that he did not see who fired the shot but that he had been in an altercation with Prewitt earlier in the day.

And that was Tuesday night! Homework night! Imagine what they’re up to on Saturday.

Wow, finally things get SO bad at the University of Louisville that a trustee squawks. UL is one of the very worst universities this blog has chronicled over the last few years. (See my University of Louisville posts here.) It’s sort of got everything wrong with it: gross-out athletics, of course; but mismanagement, employee crime, Medicare fraud, low graduation rates, Bobby Petrino, Marius Ratajczak, Robert Felner, outrageous dean turnover, medical school on probation, strangely generous separation agreements…

PLUS, it turns out

The University of Louisville’s program to provide continuing medical education for doctors has been placed on probation by its accrediting body less than two months after a different agency put UofL’s medical school on notice.

I say it turns out because the complaining trustee, who understandably tried to resign from this disgraceful school’s BOT but was basically forced to stay on by the governor of the state (!), said that the last straw was finding out about the latest UL unit to go on probation from the newspapers. Wouldn’t want to tell your trustees what’s going on. Not when it’s this bad. And UD‘s betting that a lot of people have a lot of money invested, as it were, in UL’s continuing to operate as – it seems to her – a kind of quasi-criminal enterprise.

Indeed, there must be a lot of raised eyebrows at UL today. You expect trustees, of all people, to just sit there.

Florida’s universities never disappoint. This blog would be a bore without the bizarre stories coming out of the sunshine state almost on a daily basis.

Here’s one, from the University of South Florida, a goldmine of the grotesque.

USF Health officials are reviewing the actions of a University doctor who withheld evidence from authorities in a murder investigation, said USF Health spokeswoman Anne DeLotto Baier.

Dr. David Ciesla, associate professor of surgery and director of the trauma/critical care division for the USF medical school, kept a bullet he discovered while performing surgery April 21 on murder suspect Thomas Ford McCoy, Jr.

Ciesla, who is still a USF employee, was sentenced to two years’ probation and 100 community service hours Aug. 17.

… Dr. Sergio Alvarez, a second-year plastic surgery resident at USF, assisted Ciesla while he performed surgery on McCoy, who was shot by a deputy U.S. marshal.

Alvarez said in an interview with Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agents that Ciesla saw the bullet near the liver during the operation and said, “There it is.”

After Alvarez spotted the bullet and agreed, Ciesla said, “No, it’s not.”

Alvarez said Ciesla took his eyes off the patient, looked at him, and said, “You didn’t see a bullet.”

Alvarez told the FDLE agents he did not continue the conversation, but had his eyes on Ciesla during the entire surgery because he was “a little taken by the whole incident.”

As Ciesla was preparing to leave the operating table, Ciesla said, “Oh, I almost forgot. This is what we do with bullets.”

Ciesla reached his hand into the patient’s abdomen and withdrew the bullet, Alvarez said to the FDLE.

“I saw him push the (bullet) into the palm of his right hand,” Alvarez said. “I saw him place what he had in his right hand into his right pocket.”

After the surgery, Ciesla told agents who had been assigned to collect evidence in the operating room that he did not remove a bullet from McCoy during surgery, according to FDLE reports.

“There were two (agents) in the operating room and one outside the door,” said Susan Shaffi, a third-year surgery resident at the time who also assisted Ciesla the day of the incident.

Shaffi said to FDLE agents that she heard Ciesla tell agents after the surgery, “They’re in the liver. We don’t go after bullets in the liver.”…

He’s his department’s representative to the USF faculty council…. UD likes to think of him giving updates to the assembly while rattling all the bullets in his labcoat …

————————

Update: More on pockets.

As pressure mounted during the summer from an all-consuming admissions scandal, University of Illinois President B. Joseph White carried in his pocket a motivational card reminding him to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

White has resigned.

… at the Alliance for Human Research Protection, who have written a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association people asking for Bonnie and Clyde to be let go.

A nonprofit group that monitors industry links to medical research called for the suspension of the top two editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and an investigation into allegations that they threatened a researcher who criticized a study published in the journal.

The Alliance for Human Research Protection, which is often critical of industry-academic ties, made the requests in a letter it sent Wednesday to the AMA and the journal, also known as JAMA.

“We are deeply concerned about the unbecoming and unethical conduct of the editor in chief and executive deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who were reported to have used unprofessional and intimidating tactics against a conscientious academic,” the alliance wrote in a letter requesting the investigation. Many doctors and academics have criticized JAMA’s reaction to the academic, Jonathan Leo, on Internet blogs recently.

The AMA and JAMA said they were reviewing the letter and declined further comment. Jordan J. Cohen, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, who is chairman of JAMA’s oversight committee, hasn’t returned telephone and email messages this week…

Perhaps Cohen hasn’t returned calls because he’s too busy dealing with his medical school being on probation.

It’s the only med school in the United States on probation.

Between the JAMA editors and the unresponsive Jordan Cohen, I’m truly beginning to wonder about this organization.

Background on the come an’ git me, coppers! editors of JAMA here.

Attention has shifted to its medical school, but George Washington University’s basketball program, as a Washington Times columnist points out, also looks a bit gruesome close up.