EARLY diagnosis has become one of the most fundamental precepts of modern medicine. It goes something like this: The best way to keep people healthy is to find out if they have (pick one heart disease, autism, glaucoma, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or, of course, cancer — early. And the way to find these conditions early is through screening.
It is a precept that resonates with the intuition of the general public: obviously it’s better to catch and deal with problems as soon as possible. A study published with much fanfare in The New England Journal of Medicine last week contained what researchers called the best evidence yet that colonoscopies reduce deaths from colon cancer.
Recently, however, there have been rumblings within the medical profession that suggest that the enthusiasm for early diagnosis may be waning. Most prominent are recommendations against prostate cancer screening for healthy men and for reducing the frequency of breast and cervical cancer screening. Some experts even cautioned against the recent colonoscopy results, pointing out that the study participants were probably much healthier than the general population, which would make them less likely to die of colon cancer. In addition there is a concern about too much detection and treatment of early diabetes, a growing appreciation that autism has been too broadly defined and skepticism toward new guidelines for universal cholesterol screening of children.
The basic strategy behind early diagnosis is to encourage the well to get examined — to determine if they are not, in fact, sick. But is looking hard for things to be wrong a good way to promote health? The truth is, the fastest way to get heart disease, autism, glaucoma, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or cancer ... is to be screened for it. In other words, the problem is overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
Screening the apparently healthy potentially saves a few lives (although the National Cancer Institute couldn’t find any evidence for this in its recent large studies of prostate and ovarian cancer screening . But it definitely drags many others into the system needlessly — into needless appointments, needless tests, needless drugs and needless operations (not to mention all the accompanying needless insurance forms .
This process doesn’t promote health; it promotes disease. People suffer from more anxiety about their health, from drug side effects, from complications of surgery. A few die. And remember: these people felt fine when they entered the health care system.
It wasn’t always like this. In the past, doctors made diagnoses and initiated therapy only in patients who were experiencing problems. Of course, we still do that today. But increasingly we also operate under the early diagnosis precept: seeking diagnosis and initiating therapy in people who are not experiencing problems. That’s a huge change in approach, from one that focused on the sick to one that focuses on the well.
Think about it this way: in the past, you went to the doctor because you had a problem and you wanted to learn what to do about it. Now you go to the doctor because you want to stay well and you learn instead that you have a problem.
How did we get here? Or perhaps, more to the point: Who is to blame? One answer is the health care industry: By turning people into patients, screening makes a lot of money for pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and doctors. The chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society once pointed out that his hospital could make around $5,000 from each free prostate cancer screening, thanks to the ensuing biopsies, treatments and follow-up care.
A more glib response to the question of blame is: Richard Nixon. It was Nixon who said, “we need to work out a system that includes a greater emphasis on preventive care.” Preventive care was central to his administration’s promotion of health maintenance organizations and the war on cancer. But because the promotion of genuine health — largely dependent upon a healthy diet, exercise and not smoking — did not fit well in the biomedical culture, preventive care was transformed into a high-tech search for early disease.
Some doctors have long recognized that the approach is a distraction for the medical community. It’s easier to transform people into new patients than it is to treat the truly sick. It’s easier to develop new ways of testing than it is to develop better treatments. And it’s a lot easier to measure how many healthy people get tested than it is to determine how well doctors manage the chronically ill.
But the precept of early diagnosis was too intuitive, too appealing, too hard to challenge and too easy to support. The rumblings show that that’s beginning to change.
Let me be clear: early diagnosis is not always wrong. Doctors would rather see patients early in the course of their heart attack than wait until they develop low blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat. And we’d rather see women with small breast lumps than wait until they develop large breast masses. The question is how often and how far we should get ahead of symptoms.
For years now, people have been encouraged to look to medical care as the way to make them healthy. But that’s your job — you can’t contract that out. Doctors might be able to help, but so might an author of a good cookbook, a personal trainer, a cleric or a good friend. We would all be better off if the medical system got a little closer to its original mission of helping sick patients, and let the healthy be.
H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, is an author of “Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health.”
The discovery of stem cells in human ovaries means “it may one day be possible to produce an ‘unlimited’ supply of eggs,” according to the Daily Mail.
The discovery was made during animal and laboratory research looking for the existence of ‘oogenial stem cells’ (OSCs . These are specialised cells that scientists thought might develop into ‘oocytes’, which can, in turn, develop into mature eggs or ‘ova’. Research has previously found that OSCs exist in mice, but this study found that female humans possess them too. When these human OSCs were transplanted into mice they were able to develop into oocytes. Further tests using mouse OSCs demonstrated that the oocytes could then be matured and fertilised to form mouse embryos. In all, the results of this study challenge the idea that females are born with all the oocytes that they will ever have, and that no more are created after birth.
This exciting discovery of human OSCs raises questions about whether new fertility treatments could be developed using their unique properties. However, this experimental research is at a very early stage and much further study will be needed before we can understand if it can be safely used to help patients. It should also be noted that there are many reasons why both men and women may experience fertility problems and even if the findings from this study could one day be put into clinical use, it is unclear how many infertile couples would benefit.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA and Saitama Medical University, Japan. It was funded by the US National Institute on Aging, the Henry and Vivian Rosenberg Philanthropic Fund, the Sea Breeze Foundation and Vincent Memorial Hospital Research Funds. The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine.
This story was widely covered, appearing in many newspapers and on the BBC. Most of the coverage of the study was accurate. However, while this study obtained egg-producing stem cells from both healthy mice and healthy young women, it has only demonstrated that human OSCs can develop into oocytes in the laboratory and when transplanted into mice. This means the study does not provide evidence on whether these human oocytes were healthy, functioned normally or could be fertilised.
There are many reasons why both men and women may experience fertility problems, and even if the findings from this study were put into clinical use it is unclear how many infertile couples would benefit.
What kind of research was this?
There is a long-standing scientific belief that females are born with all the oocytes (immature eggs or ‘ova’ that they will have, and that after birth no more oocytes are created. However, in recent years some studies using mice have challenged this idea, indicating that types of cells called ‘female germline’ or ‘oogonial stem cells’ (OSCs can produce further oocytes in living mice. This was a laboratory- and animal-based study aiming to optimise the method of isolating OSCs, and to see if OSCs are also present in humans. Once isolated, the researchers aimed to test their growth properties and function both in the laboratory and in animal-based systems.
Laboratory and animal-based investigation is the ideal way to answer this basic scientific question. Although the researchers did some experiments with human tissue, legal and ethical reasons meant that they could not determine whether the human oocytes that the OSCs produced were functional (could be fertilised to form an embryo . In addition, much more study will be required before these exciting findings can be put to clinical use.
What did the research involve?
Previous research has found that mouse OSCs can be identified by the presence of a certain protein, called Ddx4 on their cell surface. The researchers first optimised a procedure for isolating these cells from mouse ovaries. They then used the same technique to isolate human OSCs from adult human ovaries. The human ovaries were obtained from six women aged between 22 and 33 with a genetic identity disorder who were undergoing sex reassignment. After isolating the OSCs, they tried to grow them in the laboratory.
The researchers then introduced a piece of DNA into the mouse OSCs, which would cause them to glow brightly (fluoresce , so that they could be identified. They introduced the marked OSCs into the ovaries of normal mice. It was then seen if the mouse oocytes they produced were functional.
The researchers then performed further experiments on human OSCs. They determined whether the human OSCs could form oocytes in the laboratory. They then introduced the piece of DNA coding for the fluorescent marker into the human OSCs and transplanted them into mice, to see whether oocytes would be formed.
What were the basic results?
The researchers successfully used their system to isolate OSCs from mouse and human ovaries. The OSCs produced from both these sources could be grown in the laboratory.
The fluorescently-marked mouse OSCs could form oocytes (immature egg cells when transplanted into the ovaries of normal mice. These fluorescent oocytes could mature and be fertilised to form embryos in the laboratory.
Human OSCs could form oocytes in the laboratory. In addition, after fluorescently-marked human OSCs were mixed with human ovary tissue and transplanted into mice, fluorescently-marked oocytes were formed. For legal and ethical reasons the researchers did not perform further experiments to see whether these human oocytes were functional.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers conclude that they have identified female germline or oogonial stem cells in humans, and that they have developed a process for isolating them. They say that “clear evidence for the existence of these cells in women may offer new opportunities to expand on and enhance current fertility-preservation strategies”. They note that the human ovarian tissue used in this study was cryopreserved (frozen , and allowed functional OSCs to be obtained. They also say that these findings will allow more detailed study into oogenesis (the egg-forming process in the laboratory.
Conclusion
In this exciting study, researchers were able to identify and isolate oogenial stem cells (OSCs , also known as female human germline cells. These OSCs could be grown in the laboratory and were able to form oocytes (immature eggs or ‘ova’ under laboratory conditions and when transplanted into mouse ovarian tissue. The researchers also showed that oocytes formed from isolated mouse OSCs could successfully form mouse embryos.
The results of this study, and of previous studies using mice, challenge the idea that females are born with all the oocytes that they will have, and that after birth no more oocytes are created. This challenge to conventional scientific wisdom raises questions over whether the findings could have an impact on fertility-preservation strategies. In future, OSCs could potentially be isolated from ovarian tissue either before or after it is frozen.
However, the research is at a very early stage and much further study is required. It should also be noted that there are several different reasons why both men and women may experience fertility problems. Even if the findings from this study could one day be put into clinical use, it is unclear how many infertile couples would benefit.
Analysis by Bazian
Links To The Headlines
Unlimited human eggs 'potential' for fertility treatment. BBC News, February 27 2012
Could stem cells give every woman life-long fertility? Breakthrough could lead to unlimited supply of eggs. Daily Mail, February 27 2012
Women 'have potentially endless supply of eggs'. The Daily Telegraph, February 27 2012
Human egg factory offers hope for infertile women. Metro, February 27 2012
Links To Science
White YAR, Woods DC, Takai Y et al. Oocyte formation by mitotically active germ cells purified from ovaries of reproductive-age women. Nature Medicine, Published online February 26 2012
While notable for its size alone, the 114-ton recall came under scrutiny from some food safety experts for an entirely different reason: More than two months passed between the time the recall occurred on December 31 and the time it was first publicized in the February 8 report.
On the surface, it seemed that a Class I recall -- those involving a product that could cause serious injury or death -- would have been made public as soon as it happened. Instead, this one appeared downplayed and -- to some -- downright stealthy.
In the weeks that have followed, the spinach incident has sparked a discussion about the circumstances under which recalls should or should not be made public. It's a decision that pits the benefits of public knowledge against the perils of public overreaction.
Disclosure or Discretion?
The recall in question, voluntarily issued by Texas-based Tiro Tres Farms, was never linked to any E. coli infections. Tiro Tres does not package spinach for consumers, instead distributing it in bulk to processors who repackage it as their own, and so only the processors were notified of the recall on December 31.
Microbiologist Phyllis Entis first brought the situation to attention on her website,
eFoodAlert, the day after the FDA published its information. She criticized the FDA, saying she could not understand the rationale behind not notifying the public of a Class I recall. The next day, Food Safety News ran a story of its own,
"Big Spinach Recall with No Public Notice."
It's unclear how many processors received the spinach, or how much of it made it to the supermarket and restaurant kitchens. What is known, however, is that it had passed its "best-by" date before Tiro Tres' sample tests came back positive and processors were notified. Tiro Tres had distributed this batch to processors in Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ontario and Quebec.
One processor in Pennsylvania already knew there was a problem. Avon Heights Mushroom had issued an earlier recall to customers based on its own testing. That recall was announced by the FDA on December 23. That spinach had been sold as fresh packaged spinach with a "best-by" date of December 16 under the brand names Krisp Pak, Better Brands" and Avon Heights Select.
Given that Avon Heights' recall occurred a full eight days before Tiro Tres announced a voluntary recall to other processors, it's possible that Avon's tests prompted Tiro Tres to test.
In
an interview with Fresh Cut Magazine, the owner of Tiro Tres Farms said that Avon's contaminated spinach was linked to a 27,600-pound batch, while the remaining spinach appeared to have been recalled out of caution. After inspecting Avon Heights' facility and spending three days at Tiro Tres, FDA officials could not find a source for the contamination.
No Public Benefit?
When asked why the FDA didn't publicize the Tiro Tres recall, the agency told Food Safety News that it would not have benefitted the public, considering that the spinach was well past its expiration date and was only sent to processors. It would have been up to the processors such as Avon Heights, it seems, to issue a recall to consumers if they thought it was necessary.
According to the FDA's Regulatory Procedures Manual, "It is FDA's policy that press releases are issued for Class I recalls unless specific circumstances indicate that a press release would not be beneficial to the public."
Entis didn't buy it.
"[The U.S. Department of Agriculture], to its credit, notifies the public of any Class I recall [in their jurisdiction], even when the food just goes to food service or institutions. They don't use that excuse," she told Food Safety News. "I don't understand why the FDA does not do the same."
Entis added that with most contemporary pathogens tests returning results in 24 to 48 hours, she does not understand why a farm would be running tests that would not produce results until after their product had shipped out to processors, let alone expired.
Produce industry expert Jim Prevor disagreed with Entis, saying the FDA's move was justified. In a response to the situation on his website,
Perishable Pundit, he argued against announcing recalls of products that don't go directly to consumers, saying nondisclosure was the responsible path. Based on the information available at the time, Prevor said that one could assume that the spinach did not reach any customers.
"When should consumers be notified? Generally speaking, it comes down to one thing and one thing only: Is the product in the hands of a consumer? If it is, then they should issue a public recall," he told Food Safety News.
Prevor noted that recalls affect sales for the entire industry of the food in question, not just the one producer with a contaminated shipment. When the FDA warned the public specifically not to eat Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes from Colorado in the 2011 cantaloupe Listeria outbreak, cantaloupe farmers' profits suffered across the board. Announcing a big spinach recall, however specific, can hurt sales for all spinach growers.
Even then, for any spinach that might have made it to the store, the fact that the contaminated batch was already well-past its expiration date made slim prospects for catching any leftover product.
"Sometimes things are learned very late in the process, and as a result, the product is so old that it couldn't possibly still be out there to be eaten," Prevor said. "In those situations, the FDA will decide there's nothing to be gained by notifying the public. It's not that it's not announced -- all these things are announced to processors -- they're just not promoted to consumers."
Testing to Check Practices, Not to Protect Consumers
But why test for pathogens if the results don't come back until after the expiration date?
As Prevor explained, the primary purpose of pathogen testing on farms is not to protect consumers, but to make sure that the farm's practices are generally safe over time. Contamination events can be so localized that random testing will never catch every bug, he said, and anything more than random testing becomes too costly for most operations.
"Let's say we have a field of spinach with 200 million spinach leaves. If we went through and randomly picked a few to test, we might get negative tests on all, but there might be a thousand leaves in the field that are positive. To test them all, we'd have to charge $200 for a bag of spinach," he said. "There's no way to guarantee everything is 100 percent safe. If you think that's unacceptable, you're asking that we only sell cooked spinach."
Entis agreed that absolute guarantees for food safety were impossible and pathogens tests on farms were largely meant to monitor consistency in food safety, but she emphasized that a positive test result is never something to ignore.
"Speaking as a microbiologist, finding a pathogen via random testing is so difficult that when you do find one, you know you've got a problem," Entis said. "It's not a theoretical problem. It doesn't matter if someone got sick or not. If the problem is not corrected, it's only going to get worse. We've seen this happen over and over again."
While she also agreed that not all recalls needed publicizing, Entis argued in favor of greater public disclosure for the sake of better scrutiny. If companies have repeated contaminations and recalls, for example, people should have the right to know they could be dealing with an unreliable product.
"I think consumers have a right to know if a company has processed and shipped a product that turned out to be contaminated with a deadly pathogen," she said. "Try to protect the consumer so they can choose if they want to support that product in the future. How else are we supposed to become informed consumers who make informed decisions?"
Following the attention the big spinach recall received, Entis decided to look back through the last four months of FDA enforcement reports for any other unannounced Class I recalls. She
found six such recalls described in enforcement reports since November 2011.
That revelation did not surprise Prevor, who said the FDA takes a number of precautions into account before announcing recalls.
"There are a lot of different values here that have to be balanced," Prevor said. "One value -- without a doubt -- is safe food. But we also don't want broke farmers and people in a panic when they're not at risk, either."
Test and Hold to be Safe
Some farms, however, have taken it upon themselves to test and hold produce before shipping anything out.
Since transforming its food safety program in 2006, California-based Earthbound Farms has become an industry leader in foodborne illness prevention. Earthbound was involved in the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach that sickened over 200 people across 26 states and Canada and killed five.
Following the 2006 outbreak, Earthbound decided to adopt a preventative strategy for spinach and other higher-risk produce. Instead of performing random testing, they now test a sample from each pallet they ship, holding the product for 12 to 16 hours until they receive a result.
According to Will Daniels, Earthbound's senior vice president of food safety, the farm's detection system will catch 99.99 percent of E. coli, Salmonella or Shigella passing through its various testing hurdles. Simply put, they have refused to be involved with any more illnesses.
Daniels said paying for their proprietary testing system, holding space, upgraded equipment and a scientific advisory panel ends up costing roughly three additional cents per bag of spinach. The bottom line, however, outweighs any cuts to profits:
"After 2006, we knew we needed to do more," he said. "We're in the business of healthy food and healthy food doesn't carry pathogens that make people sick. This is just the right thing to do."
Like Prevor and Entis, Daniels agreed that random sampling cannot be trusted to prevent foodborne illness outbreaks. But no other farms have yet adopted the test-and-hold method to the extent of Earthbound. Implementing such an extensive system takes time and money, and beyond that, doggedness.
"Contamination is highly sporadic -- it's in one little tiny section of a field when the rest is clean," Daniels said. "When we started doing this, the criticism was, 'You're looking for a needle in a haystack.' But here we are, five years into it, and we are catching contamination and preventing it from going into our processing stream."
Earthbound detects contamination on approximately 0.15 percent of its produce -- 3,000 pounds out of the 2 million it ships each week. Whenever a contamination is detected, not only is the produce saved from potentially harming customers, but the situation gives Earthbound technicians an opportunity to study how the contamination occurred and remedy it. They have amassed a lot of their field lessons into a database of information on how pathogens behave on produce.
"Those people who criticized our program for its vigor back in 2006 are now asking me for the data," Daniels said. "From our perspective, we have lots of great evidence that suggests our program is viable. We're committed to it. We won't back away from it."
As for when recalls should be made public, Daniels kept his viewpoint uncharacteristically simple:
"If the consuming public is at risk of illness," he said, "they should be made aware."
------
Thanks to Daniel B. Cohen for contributing his knowledge of the produce industry. Photo of Will Daniels courtesy Earthbound Farms.
Claire was about to start at college when her counsellor recommended that she should not tell anyone that she was being treated for drug dependence. So she spent months leaving class early and making up excuses to sneak to the chemist to collect her methadone prescription: lying to teachers, administrators and her friends. Eventually, the pressure of the constant evasions became too much and she dropped out of the course, rather than reveal her secret.
Claire’s story is far from unusual. As her treatment counsellor had recognised, suspicion, fear and distrust of people struggling with drug problems are widespread. The result is that people with drug dependence, and their families, are suffering in silence, missing opportunities for treatment, and prolonging the process of recovery.
Research by the
UK Drug Policy Commission(UKDPC found these attitudes to be widespread, affecting those with drug problems throughout their lives. We encountered people who felt trapped in their homes because of the hostility they faced from neighbours. Being stuck indoors, without social contacts or the opportunity to find work, may be one of the hardest settings imaginable in which to fight drug dependence.
Everyday prejudice creates a host of obstacles for recovering drug users. Offers of work or housing are commonly withdrawn when it becomes known that the recipient has had a serious drug problem, even if they have stopped using. Yet employment and stable accommodation are two of the most important factors for helping people overcome dependence and stay off drugs. Anything that makes these harder to access will worsen drug problems.
Public hostility can even make it harder for people with dependence problems to get the treatment they need to help rebuild their lives. The fear of being exposed as someone with a drug problem can deter them from going to a pharmacy to collect prescriptions for methadone, for example, which could provide the stability they need to stop using street drugs.
These attitudes are not just those of an uneducated general public. Our
researchfound that many people with drug problems experience similar barriers in their dealings with the professionals who should be helping them. Some find it impossible to convince doctors or nurses that they need help, even when they are in agonising pain or suffering from long-term conditions like Hepatitis C. The suspicion of the medics is often that their patient is just looking for drugs to relieve their cravings.
Others are made to wait at pharmacies for as long as it takes to serve every other customer in the store, including those who arrive after them. For recovering drug users, treatment can mean daily visits to pharmacies. Such long waits can make it impossible for them to be reliable in keeping other appointments, such as work obligations or job interviews.
Disapproval
Such problems are not just faced by those still using drugs. Even after they have managed to overcome drug dependence, former drug users can face similar hostility and distrust. The negative attitudes they face go beyond simple disapproval. Disapproval is usually linked to a person’s behaviour, and so disappears when that behaviour changes. Social disapproval of drug use even has a useful role in dissuading some from engaging in potentially risky behaviour.
But perceptions of people with drug problems go far beyond this. They are seen as bearing a stigma, an enduring mark that defines them and which cannot be removed by their stopping using street drugs. For many people with serious drug problems, suffering not only from a debilitating health condition, but also from social exclusion, the prospect of never being able to move past the label of drug user or addict can be one more barrier to overcoming their dependence.
The families of those with drug problems are also affected by this stigma. Such is the fear of being associated with the shame of addiction, that family members may avoid situations that could lead to their being identified as the relative of a drug user, even at risk to their own well-being.
In our research, we met Patricia, a mother who avoids contact with her old friends because she is afraid they will mention her son’s drug dependence. We also spoke to Tom, the brother of someone with a drug problem, who will not seek the support he needs himself because he is worried others will find out and would think less of him and his family.
Public opinion on dependence and recovery suggests that this worry is not misplaced. In one survey of public attitudes that UKDPC carried out, we found that, while people want top-quality help to be made available to those recovering from dependence, they are nevertheless suspicious and afraid of those who have had drug problems.
More than four in five agreed that people recovering from drug dependence should be part of the normal community. But the public still wants to keep its distance, with 43 per cent of those asked saying they would not want to live next door to someone who had been dependent on drugs. More than a third felt it would be foolish to get into a serious relationship with someone who had suffered from drug dependence, even if they appeared to be fully recovered.
Beating stigma
To a certain extent, these attitudes reflect how dependence is portrayed in the media. People with drug addictions tend to labelled as “junkies” not as people with a health problem that can be addressed. The term “addict” has itself become pejorative and frames the issue in a particularly negative way.
If a media story about a drug user is not about a celebrity, it is most likely to be about a criminal, who, for example, has mugged someone or broken into a house in order to pay for drugs. And if an article features someone who used to be dependent on drugs but is now drug free or on medication, their previous addiction is invariably mentioned, even when it has no relevance to the story. The implication is that no one can truly move on from dependence.
But if television and newspapers can perpetuate attitudes that make recovery more difficult, changes in how they report such stories could be similarly effective in making recovery more achievable. A forthcoming guide for journalists and editors, produced by the Society of Editors and UKDPC, will suggest ways to reframe news stories to avoid the assumption that drug dependence is a life sentence.
But media coverage cannot stray too far from where the public is. The stigma of drug dependence will only be overcome if it is acknowledged and confronted directly.
There is a parallel with attitudes to mental health. Public perceptions of those suffering with mental illness have shifted over recent years. Nonetheless, it is still less than a decade since the
Sun
newspaper
ran a front-page storyabout boxer Frank Bruno being taken to a psychiatric hospital under the headline “Bonkers Bruno locked up”. The editor belatedly realised this was out of step with British attitudes and later editions carried the headline “Sad Bruno in mental home”. Even today, the
Time to Change campaign “Get Talking”, which aims to encourage debate about mental health, demonstrates that shifting these views takes a lot of work over a long period.
Attitudes to those who suffer from drug dependence may lag behind perceptions of other stigmatised groups. But the process has begun. Earlier this year, the Duchess of Cambridge became a patron of the charity
Action on Addiction and said specifically that she wanted to
break the stigma associated with addiction, as Princess Diana had done with Aids.
UKDPC, along with other organisations, is working on a project to determine practical measures, such as the media guide, that can make recovery and inclusion achievable for everyone.
* Names have been changed
Jefferson City, MO (KSDK - The state's Medicaid program will receive more than $289,000 to settle allegations that a St. Louis-based pharmaceutical company lied to customers by saying two drugs were approved for coverage under state and federal health care programs.
Under the agreement, KV Pharmaceutical Company, parent company of now-defunct Ethex Corporation, will pay approximately $17 million to the federal government and participating states to compensate for Ethex's conduct.
According to the suit, Ethex misrepresented the regulatory status of Nitroglycerin Extended Release Capsules (Nitroglycerin ER and Hyoscyamine Sulfate Extended Release Capsules (Hyoscyamine ER .
Despite not being covered by federal and state health care programs, the two drugs do not pose a risk to patients. At present, neither drug is on the market.
Koster said citizens should report suspected Medicaid provider fraud or abuse and neglect to his Medicaid Fraud Hotline toll free at 800-286-3932, e-mail the complaint to
attorney.general@ago.mo.gov or complete a complaint form at the
Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Website.
From
GoldCore
- ECB’s Nowotny says no need for ECB base rate to move below 1% at the moment.
- S&P’s Kraemer has said the outlook on the Eurozone remains negative.
- ECB temporarily suspends use of Greek debt as collateral.
Market Re-Cap
Stocks advanced as market participants looked forward to tomorrow’s 3yr LTRO by the ECB where the street expects EU banks to borrow around EUR 400-500bln. All ten sectors traded in positive territory for much of the session, however less than impressive demand for the latest Italian government paper saw equity indices lose some of the upside traction. Of note, the ECB allotted EUR 29.469bln in 7-day operation, as well as EUR 134bln for 1-day in bridge to 3yr loans. In other new, although Portugal's finance minister announced the country has passed its 3rd bailout review by the EU/IMF, this did not stop S&P's Kraemer saying that if there is a probability of default, it is higher in Portugal than in any other Euro-Zone country.
US Headlines
Going forward, the latter half of the session sees the release of the latest Durable Goods report, S&P Case-Shiller housing data, as well as the Consumer Confidence report for the month of February.
Asian Headlines
Japanese Retail Sales rose 1.9% in January from a year earlier, the second straight monthly increase. The figures show that the growth was driven by automobile sales, which jumped 24.3% from a year earlier. (Sources
Chinese economic growth is likely to stop slowing in the second half as export growth stabilizes with a global economic recovery, according to a senior researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council. (Shanghai Securities
EU and UK Headlines
S&P downgraded Greece to Selective Default (SD from ‘CC’. S&P said that the downgrade followed the Greek government's retroactive insertion of collective action clauses (CACs . However, if the debt exchange is completed as expected, S&P will raise Greece’s credit rating to ‘CCC’. (RTRS
-S&P have said they believe Greece would face imminent outright payment default if an insufficient number of bondholders accept the exchange offer.
The EFSF outlook was changed to negative from developing by S&P; 'AA+' ratings affirmed. (RTRS S&P concluded that credit enhancements sufficient to offset what they view as the reduced creditworthiness of EFSF guarantors are not likely to be forthcoming. The negative outlook on the long-term rating also mirrors the negative outlooks of France and Austria.
The ISDA is to make a decision on Greece CDS triggers by 1700 GMT, Wednesday February 29. (FT Alphaville-More The ISDA announced that a question relating to the Hellenic Republic has been submitted to the EMEA Determinations Committee. The ISDA will decide whether to accept the question for deliberation or reject it.
The ECB have temporarily suspended the use of Greek debt as collateral, reflecting the Greek debt ratings in the light of the PSI agreements. (Sources
Standard & Poor’s Managing Director Kraemer has commented that the outlook on the Eurozone remains negative, adding that the ECB’s LTRO is not a substitute for reforms, but it does help in the immediate term. (Sources
The ECB’s Nowotny has said there is no need for ECB’s key interest rate to move below 1% at the moment, adding that the ECB is concerned about the long-term effects of loans. (Sources
German regional February CPI figures are due for release today, with Hesse, Brandenburg, Bavaria and Saxony reporting yearly CPI higher than the previous readings, with the German preliminary national reading expected at 1300GMT. (Sources
EQUITIES
European markets are trading in positive territory ahead of the North American open with some renewed risk appetite pre-empting tomorrow’s ECB 3-year LTRO.
In individual equity news, Peugeot continue to attract attention following reports that they may sell a 7% stake to General Motors, however a Peugeot spokesman has declined to comment. Company shares currently trade up 6.8%. (Sources
Barclays have been blocked from implementing two ‘highly’ abusive tax schemes that could have cost the UK treasury GBP 500mln despite the banks new code of practice in which it pledged not to engage in tax avoidance. Although the Barclays CEO has said the change in tax law will have no material impact, company shares currently trade down 1%. (FT-More
Bayer reported a below expected net for Q4 before the European market open, however reported a beat on sales for the same period. The company foresee a slight increase in underlying earnings in 2012 and stable pharmaceuticals sales for the year. Company shares are down 1%. (Sources
Lower performing stocks today include Whitbread, whose Premier Inn unit has reported slowing sales growth in a tough market for UK hotels. Company shares currently trade down 2.3%. (Sources
Top performing sectors in the BE500: Technology (+0.82% , Consumer Goods (+0.57% , Utilities (+0.51%
Worst performing sectors in the BE500: Health Care (+0.04% , Oil & Gas (+0.04% , Industrials (+0.18%
FX
EUR/USD is trading in positive territory ahead of the North American open amid market talk of Russian names buying the pair, however this remains unconfirmed.
EUR/SEK has seen some volatility earlier in the session following a spike lower after the release of better than expected retail sales and higher than expected PPI data from Sweden.
Japanese Finance Minister Azumi has reiterated his stance to the G20 that Japan will take decisive steps as needed on the JPY. (Sources
COMMODITIES
WTI crude is trading without direction following the European open with Brent futures down around USD 1.00 on the day heading back towards USD 123.00. Focus remains on the debt situation in Greece and participants await the release of API data due after the NYMEX pit close.
Oil & Gas News:
• TransCanada have said they will build the Southern leg of its USD 7bln Keystone XL pipeline first, removing a pinch-point that has led to deep price discounts for US and Canadian crude and forced refiners to rely more heavily on imports.
• Oil exploration activity in the North Sea fell by half last year to only 15 wells, the lowest level since the mid-1960s, according to the trade body Oil & Gas UK. Meanwhile, annual production has declined 18%, three times the average fall registered in recent years. The body have said up to 3bln BOE could be unlocked if the UK government announces the right incentives at next month’s budget.
• Qatar have agreed to supply 3.5mln MT per year of liquefied natural gas to Pakistan, according to a Special Assistant to the Pakistani Prime Minister.
Geopolitical News:
• India is considering taking a sovereign guarantee for Indian ships taking Iranian crude from July this year, according to India’s Shipping Secretary.
• Iran’s Foreign Minister Salehi has said there are two ways to deal with Iran’s ‘peaceful nuclear programme’ – either engagement or confrontation. The minister further commented that Iran does not seek confrontation, adding that he is confident in the peaceful nature of the country’s nuclear programme.
Nearly 180 dolphins have been found stranded this winter on the shores of Cape Cod. Image by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Last week, we
posted a story on the unusually high number of dolphins that have been stranded off the Cape Cod coastline this winter: 179 have been recorded stranded, at least 108 of which have died. That's more than half the strandings seen in an average year in just the last month.
Since the story was published, we've received several comments inquiring whether military exercises and sonar could be responsible for the surge in strandings. So we turned to some experts for an answer.
It's true that naval sonar has been linked to marine mammal beachings in the past. In March 2000, 17 whales were stranded in the Bahamas following a U.S. Navy sonar exercise. Another incident involving sonar use in a 2002 international naval exercise left 14 beaked whales stranded on the Canary Islands.
But experts say it's unlikely that sonar was a factor in the Cape Cod events.
Terrie Williams, director of the
Marine Mammal Physiology Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studies the physiological effects of sound in the ocean on marine mammals. She says sonar can cause two types of injury in deep-diving animals, such as beaked whales.
Research has indicated that sounds in the water can disorient the animals, causing them to alter their swimming paths and engage in risky diving patterns. If a deep-diving mammal rises too rapidly, it can lead to a case of "the bends," which involves nitrogen bubbles forming in the animal's body tissue, Williams says. If the bubbles lodge in the wrong place, such as the brain or neural tissues, they can obstruct blood flow, leading to bone damage.
"When I'm looking at the effects of sound on stranded animals, I look for changes in heart rate, ear bone structure ... and problems in the head," Williams said. But the sound itself can also cause cracking or damage to the ear bones. So she also searches for signs of damage caused by acoustics.
Katie Moore, manager of the marine mammal rescue effort for the
International Fund for Animal Welfare says she's seen no evidence of any of these symptoms in the dolphins she and her team have tried to rescue.
Darlene Ketten of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who has been studying the stranded dolphins in her lab, agrees. Research is still ongoing, she says, but lab analyses show no indication of animals suffering from issues related to acoustics.
"We've seen multiple different causes of death from some of the animals," Ketten said. "They're generally healthy, and there's not one single cause that we can pinpoint as of yet."
Because of their speed and the depth at which they swim, common dolphins are rarely affected by sonar, Williams said: "They are very fast animals, and give the impression that they are fairly robust when it comes to sound."
The United States Navy has operated one marine training exercise on the East Coast this year, according to U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Matt Allen. The exercise,
Operation Bold Alligator 12, occurred between Jan. 30 and Feb. 12 in and around the coasts of southern Virginia and North Carolina.
High frequency active sonar may have been used in this operation, Allen said. "This type of sonar is used for depth finding and mine location purposes, and is similar to fathometers, which are used by fisherman," he said. "But it's short range and has never been associated with marine mammal strandings."
It couldn't have affected these dolphin strandings because of the distance this sonar travels, Allen added. High frequency active sonar typically travels five nautical miles, and Cape Cod is hundreds of miles away.
Katie Moore elaborates on the subject in a post
here. "The fact is we know there has been no naval sonar activity in our region within a proximity affecting the coast of Massachusetts and these particular animals," she writes. "The acknowledged Mid-Atlantic activity is simply too far away to drive these dolphins to strand."
Marine experts have been working feverishly on the scene and in labs to determine the possible causes. So far, they've arrived at few definitive answers. Moore, who has led the rescue effort on Cape Cod, speculates that changes in the greater Gulf of Maine ecosystem, including an unusually warm winter and movement of prey, as well as the hooked shape of Cape Cod are all possible contributing factors.
But as researchers are faced with increasing pressure to find a cause for the strandings, frustration is mounting on all ends.
Critics and concerned citizens have been sending emails and voice mails to IFAW, claiming that researchers and rescuers are not telling the truth, Moore said.
"All we can tell people is what we've found based on the tests we've run and the research we're doing," she said. "But there are some people who are not going to want to believe that. I can only tell you what we know and be honest about what we've found."
But Moore says that she recognizes that it's important for people to question what is happening in the water.
"For these dolphin strandings, sometimes there are human causes behind it and sometimes there aren't," she said. "In this case, there is no human source for the strandings from what we know so far."
If you have a question on
science or technology for Just Ask, send an e-mail to science@newshour.org with "science question" in the subject line or leave it in the comments section below.
A full-time government-funded nurse in every early childhood centre and school across New Zealand would provide better health outcomes, according to the nurses’ union.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation has called for the government to introduce the proposal, one of a series of recommendations, outlined in its submission to the government’s Green Paper on Vulnerable Children.
NZNO nursing policy adviser and researcher Jill Clendon said locating a nurse at every school and early childhood centre would improve access to health care for children, young people and their families.
Ms Clendon said nurses can work with teachers and social workers in the facilities to provide preventative health education and can advocate, assess and provide brief intervention and referral while coordinating care for those experiencing difficulties.
Evidence demonstrates that health outcomes and access to health care for children improves with school-based nursing services, she said.
“Evidence from New Zealand shows that where the nurse is able to assess and focus care on the specific needs of children and whÄÂnau in a community, health outcomes improve,” she stated in the submission.
“When the nurse at a nurse-led clinic in a primary school in Auckland focused care on education and interventions for families managing asthma, skin conditions and ear conditions, significantly decreased visitation to the city’s children’s hospital was observed for ENT services and decreased visitation was observed for general medical services for children from the area.”
The government’s discussion paper is seeking feedback on how the country can better protect abused, neglected and disadvantaged children.
It comes as figures show every year an average of 10 New Zealand children die at the hands of the people closest to them while suspected abuse or neglect notifications have grown 205 per cent from 2004 to 2010.
In 2008-2009, there were 13,315 hospital admissions for children aged under five for conditions that could have been avoided and 1,286 hospital admissions for children and young people aged from newborns to 24 which were a result of assault, neglect or maltreatment.
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GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight: a report on the power of music therapy in treating brain injuries and helping patients recover.
It's a field of science and medicine which has captured new attention because of its role in helping Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords recover from her serious brain injury.
NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels reports.
SPENCER MICHELS: When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to Washington for this year's State of the Union address, it was clear she had made a dramatic recovery after being shot in the head a year ago. Her family credits music therapy for helping to get her voice back.
REP. GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, D-Ariz.: With liberty and justice for all.
SPENCER MICHELS: Giffords' treatment with specially trained music therapists has called new attention to a field that's been around at least 100 years.
While research on the neurological effects of music therapy is in its infancy, what is known is that a number of regions in the brain are activated by listening to music. And scientists say the brain responds to music by creating new pathways around damaged areas.
MEAGAN HUGHES, music therapist: Just give it a tap. There it is.
MICHAEL HENDRICKS JR., suffers from muscular dystrophy: Change it.
MEAGAN HUGHES: Change that?
MICHAEL HENDRICKS JR.: Yes.
MEAGAN HUGHES: Do you think that gets higher? It's all right?
SPENCER MICHELS: Music is now being used to help patients with a wide variety of illnesses not just brain trauma.
That's the case with 16-year-old Michael Hendricks Jr. of Pinole, California, who has muscular dystrophy, a disease that progressively weakens the muscles.
Meagan Hughes, a music therapist, has been working with him at the Benioff Children's Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco.
MEAGAN HUGHES: Due to his condition, there's a lot that he doesn't have control over. And so we use music as a means to help him get in touch with that control.
SPENCER MICHELS: Do you see it working?
MEAGAN HUGHES: I think that hopefully we all saw it working today. I think that was evidenced through Michael's smiles, through his focus on the music-making process.
MICHAEL HENDRICKS JR.: Get some food. Then I'm going home because I'm tired, because I'm tired.
SPENCER MICHELS: Hendricks' father also believes music, in his case, rap or hip-hop, is one of the few ways to reach his son.
MICHAEL HENDRICKS, father: He has got a new pair of headphones to listen to his favorite music, which is Lil Wayne and Drake. Okay? He definitely has music in his brain all the time. He loves the beats.
SPENCER MICHELS: So, can you tell if music helps in his situation, with his mood or with anything?
MICHAEL HENDRICKS: Yeah. It helps in his attitude. He kind of mellows out. And he doesn't think about his medical problems.
MEAGAN HUGHES: What did I just do with my hand when we were playing?
GIRL: You were going up and down to make this noise sound louder.
SPENCER MICHELS: Hughes works for the Center for Music National Service. The program sends therapists into hospitals and schools to expand the use of music.
The program is the brainchild of musician Kiff Gallagher, who worked on AmeriCorps in the Clinton administration.
KIFF GALLAGHER, Center for Music National Service: It's definitely been shown that music can make a positive impact on people suffering from early-onset dementia, kids with autism, with veterans who are coming back and trying to learn to walk without a limb.
SPENCER MICHELS: Music therapy professor Eric Waldon, who teaches at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., says he's seen and studied patients with brain injuries where music makes a difference, as it apparently did in former Representative Giffords' case.
ERIC WALDON, professor of music therapy, University of the Pacific: It's the rhythmic aspects of music that are providing that structure, that organization within time that are allowing her to learn to walk again or to gain speech sounds.
I think what we find in people that have had brain injuries, sometimes it's easier for them to sing words, rather than to say words. Music is providing that pathway or almost like a cerebral bypass around the damaged areas, allowing someone to regain mobility or regain speech.
SPENCER MICHELS: A growing number of studies do suggest music can aid healing in various ways.
One recent scientific paper out of Harvard showed music therapy helped stroke patients regain speech. And other studies found music may improve heart and respiratory rates and blood pressure, as well as anxiety and pain in cancer and leukemia patients.
MAN: Listen. Now, where does it go? Where does it go?
SPENCER MICHELS: Dr. Rob Goldsby, a pediatric oncologist at Benioff Children's Hospital, has seen that happen.
DR. ROB GOLDSBY, Benioff Children's Hospital: Music therapy quite literally can soothe the soul, I think helps them get through the process of cancer therapy. They have to endure the pokes and prods of exams and the multitude of tests that they have to go through, the vile chemotherapy they have to endure, the vicious radiation and surgery.
SPENCER MICHELS: But scientifically studying quantifying and proving the effects of music therapy on patients with different ailments and different treatments presents a big challenge, says Julene Johnson, a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California.
JULENE JOHNSON, University of California, San Francisco: One of the challenges in doing clinical research is actually getting a homogeneous enough group to really look at the effects of an intervention on a group of patients. I think we're still really trying to understand the mechanisms that influence the therapeutic effects of music.
SPENCER MICHELS: Johnson has been studying how music appears to lower depression rates among senior members of choirs in Finland. She says music can actually change the brain.
JULENE JOHNSON: There now are several studies showing that participating in music has an impact on the structure of the brain.
SPENCER MICHELS: And involvement in music can benefit anyone, says Heidi Clare Lambert, a fiddle player who teaches folk dancing to health professionals as a means of healing.
HEIDI CLARE LAMBERT, musician-dancer: One of the things in healing is a frame of mind, correct? You have to get the -- you have to get the will of the person. It's not about the technique. It's about enjoying, about moving, about just being in the moment.
SPENCER MICHELS: And is this in your opinion a kind of -- a form of therapy?
HEIDI CLARE LAMBERT: Absolutely, I believe unequivocally.
SPENCER MICHELS: But dancing or singing is not strictly music therapy argues Eric Waldon at the University of the Pacific.
ERIC WALDON: It isn't Johnny went to choir and Johnny got better. It's that Johnny has a music therapist, and together, with the music therapist, he got better.
SPENCER MICHELS: But Johnny taking part in a chorus actually could be therapeutic, couldn't it?
ERIC WALDON: Absolutely, it could. But it's not music therapy. The term therapy itself says that there's a therapeutic relationship and there's an intentional use of music to address non-musical goals.
SPENCER MICHELS: The University of the Pacific has one of 73 music therapy programs in the country. Students in the four-year program are already musicians when they arrive on campus.
WOMAN (singing : You say stop, and I say go, go, go.
SPENCER MICHELS: At a Stockton school for medically fragile, severely disabled children, music therapy students are trying to engage those with special needs. Even with this hard-to-reach group, Professor Waldon argues, the therapy has an effect.
ERIC WALDON: Music can provide a mechanism for children with developmental disabilities to communicate.
What we know about the brain science in general is that whenever you experience something new, new brain connections are being made. What you're doing is you're providing an opportunity for them to grow new pathways within their brain.
WOMAN (singing : Will you high-five, say hello?
Hi, Lexi. Can you high-five to say hello? Nice, smiling.
MAN: High-five. Up here.
WOMAN: Up high. Yes. Nice high-five.
SPENCER MICHELS: The fact that music often can encourage and stimulate patients who are hard to reach has spurred scientists to delve deeper into how it affects the brain and how that knowledge can be used to improve the therapy it provides.
WOMAN (singing : We're glad you're here. We're going to have some fun.
Just a typical sleepy Monday here at the Wrap. If, by "sleepy", you mean 21 separate polls taking the pulse of either the GOP primary for the presidency, or taking a distant glance at what might happen come November in the general election.
And even these numbers are subject to change, and fast. Our polling pals at PPP tweeted
earlier tonight that Rick Santorum might be staging a finishing kick that could put him back on top of the Michigan primary (though, Tom Jensen did note that Santorum will have to overcome an early vote edge for Team Romney .
Add to that a bunch of new general election data, and there's plenty to talk about. The numbers follow, with a dollop of analysis after the jump.
GOP PRIMARY DATA:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking : Romney 32, Santorum 28, Gingrich 14, Paul 12GENERAL ELECTION DATA:
NATIONAL (Politico/GWU Battleground : Santorum 36, Romney 34, Gingrich 13, Paul 7
ARIZONA (PPP : Romney 43, Santorum 26, Gingrich 18, Paul 11
ARIZONA (We Ask America : Romney 43, Santorum 27, Gingrich 21, Paul 10
MICHIGAN (American Research Group : Santorum 36, Romney 35, Paul 15, Gingrich 8
MICHIGAN (Baydoun Consulting/Foster McCollum White : Romney 39, Santorum 31, Gingrich 9, Paul 9
MICHIGAN (Mitchell Research/Rosetta Stone : Santorum 37, Romney 35, Gingrich 9, Paul 8
MICHIGAN (PPP : Romney 39, Santorum 37, Paul 13, Gingrich 9
MICHIGAN (Rasmussen : Romney 38, Santorum 36, Paul 11, Gingrich 10
MICHIGAN (We Ask America : Romney 37, Santorum 33, Paul 18, Gingrich 13
OHIO (Quinnipiac : Santorum 36, Romney 29, Gingrich 17, Paul 11
SOUTH DAKOTA (Nielson Brothers : Romney 33, Santorum 24, Gingrich 9, Paul 9
TENNESSEE (Vanderbilt University : Santorum 33, Romney 17, Paul 13, Gingrich 10
VERMONT (Castleton State College : Romney 34, Santorum 27, Paul 14, Gingrich 10
NATIONAL (Politico/GWU Battleground Poll : Obama d. Romney (53-43 ; Obama d. Santorum (53-42
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking : Romney d. Obama (45-43 ; Paul d. Obama (43-41 ; Obama d. Santorum (45-43 ; Obama d. Gingrich (49-39
NATIONAL (USA Today/Gallup : Santorum d. Obama (49-46 ; Obama tied with Romney (47-47
PENNSYLVANIA (Muhlenberg College : Obama d. Santorum (49-41 ; Obama d. Romney (48-37
SOUTH DAKOTA (Nielson Brothers : Santorum d. Obama (45-33 ; Romney d. Obama (48-39
TENNESSEE (Vanderbilt University : Santorum d. Obama (42-38 ; Romney d. Obama (42-39 ; Paul d. Obama (40-39 ; Obama d. Gingrich (41-38
VERMONT (Castleton State College : Obama d. Romney (58-33 ; Obama d. Santorum (60-31 ; Obama d. Paul (60-30 ; Obama d. Gingrich (65-24
A developing human egg.
What’s the News: Since the 1950s, it’s been generally accepted that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. One gets doled out with each menstrual cycle, and when they run out, you get menopause. But a smattering of papers over the last decade or so have indicated that that dogma might be incorrect: scientists found cells in the ovarian tissue of female mice that appear capable of producing new eggs. Now, working with donated tissue,
researchers have found similar cells in human ovaries.
Headlines hyping the find have been spreading across the web, and we feel compelled to point out that this paper doesn’t mean that
we will be able to grow fresh new eggs in Petri dishes, and it doesn’t prove that in
real, live women these cells actually mature into eggs that can develop into offspring. It does, however, provide an interesting chance to see whether egg production by these cells can be jump-started using drugs.
Everything You Need to Know About Eggs:
stem cells—cellular blank slates that can develop into more specialized cells—that will become eggs stop being produced ...
James Klugmann is a figure who for many years has appeared regularly but without distinction in the annals of the history of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB . Klugmann is known principally as the party’s own historian and as the editor of its theoretical journal
Marxism Today
(in the years before Martin Jacques transformed the publication , while his life as a communist has been depicted in familiar terms as the story of a brilliant intellectual who graduated into a dull party functionary.
The release of the file held on him by Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5 and the opening of relevant Moscow archives, however, make a reassessment of James Klugmann's career timely. For this documentation, and my researches for a forthcoming book on Klugmann, reveal that his extraordinary life included a period as an inspiring international student leader at the peak of the Spanish civil war; as the (unofficial political mentor of several of the "Cambridge five" who worked covertly for the Soviet Union within the Britiah establishment (including a short period as a reluctant spy himself ; and as the officer in the Special Operations Executive, Britain's wartime intelligence network operating behind the lines in Nazi-occupied Europe, who was largely responsible for shifting Churchill’s support behind Tito in Yugoslavia in 1943-44.
In the context of a personal and political journey that reflected the wider hopes, fears and illusions of British communism over many decades, Klugmann has long remained an elusive character. "What did one know of him?", Eric Hobsbawm asked rhetorically in his autobiography,
Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life
. Hobsbawm regarded Klugmann in the 1930s as an intellectual guru, and later became a fellow member of the CPGB's history committee, so was more familiar with him than most. But, Hobsbawm said, "He gave nothing away".
Norman John Klugmann - his full name misled more than one MI5 officer - was born on 27 February 1912 to a prosperous Jewish family in the middle-class north London district of Hampstead. At the progressive Gresham’s School he was taught by Frank McEachran (who had earlier made a big impression on WH Auden, and was the model for Hector in Alan Bennett’s play
The History Boys
. It was at Gresham’s too that Klugmann and his close friend, the future foreign-office spy Donald Maclean, first became interested in communist ideas. Both went on to win modern-languages scholarships to Cambridge.
When Klugmann arrived in Cambridge at the beginning of the 1930s there were almost 3 million unemployed in Britain and the threat of fascism was in the air. He joined the Communist Party in 1933, in his first year as a postgraduate, and that same autumn - working with John Cornford, the brilliant young poet and activist who would die in Spain three years later - took over the leadership of the university's communist student organisation.
From their base at Trinity College, they recruited rapidly and expanded their public campaigning beyond the university, organising peace demonstrations and actions in support of trade unionists. The unemployed hunger-marchers who had walked from the industrially ravaged north-east reached Cambridge in early 1934, and for many privileged undergraduates the encounter with these working-class men was both a humbling experience and a formative moment in their decision to join the Communist Party. Like many of his contemporaries, Klugmann was profoundly moved by their struggle, and his awareness of class politics was heightened after being sent to the south Wales coal-mining community.
As communist student leaders, Cornford and Klugmann were very different characters. Cornford was the charismatic talisman, impatient with academic conventions and eager to connect the activities of the student party to the working-class politics of the city. Klugmann was quieter, with a warm and engaging personality, and relied on gentle if persistent persuasion. In the words of Anthony Blunt, his postgraduate tutor, he was "the pure intellectual of the party. He was the person who worked out the theoretical problems and put them across… it was primarily he who decided what organisations in Cambridge were worth penetrating and what were not".
In British universities at this time, the communists enjoyed intellectual hegemony over the student left (including respectively the Socialist Society at Cambridge and the Labour Club at Oxford , partly because the wider political context was one where the Labour Party had split with its minority leadership under Ramsay McDonald choosing to join a deeply unpopular "national government". Among those who joined the CPGB in Cambridge were Guy Burgess, Margot Heinemann, Victor Kiernan, Brian Simon, Michael Straight, and (later Eric Hobsbawm. At Oxford, the trend was similar, with figures such as Denis Healey, Iris Murdoch and Philip Toynbee attracted to communism.
The degree of political commitment amongst this generation went much deeper than the fashionable, superficial rite of passage it is often portrayed as. This was reflected in both its unprecedented internationalism, expresed in strong opposition to rising fascism across Europe, and in its contempt for a polarised, unjust and class-ridden British society.
The Communist Party's fortunes were boosted in the period by the Comintern's adoption in 1935 of a "popular front" strategy, which replaced its sectarian "class against class" line that had depicted social democratic parties such as Labour in Britain and the SPD in Germany as "social fascists". The change of course was crucial both in extending communism's appeal and in increasing the scope for broad alliances on the left. The Left Book Club, for example, had 60,000 members and 200 discussion groups by the mid-1930s, and the party exerted great influence among poets, writers and artists. Many on the left, involved in an international fight against fascism, solidarity with the hunger-marchers and the unemployed, and the beginning of the Spanish civil war, were convinced they were engaged in an epochal struggle on behalf of humanity and justice that had to be won.
Many of Klugmann’s contemporaries had direct experience of fascism in Germany and Austria; several were to fight and die in Spain, including his closest ally James Cornford. Cornford’s poems home to his last girlfriend, Margot Heinemann (who was to remain a close friend of Klugmann for the rest of his life , became symbolic of the sacrifice and idealism of his generation. James Klugmann’s own internationalism took a different turn. He had already decided to commit his life to the communist cause, and on the recommendation of the CPGB leadership he moved to Paris in 1935, ostensibly to carry out postgraduate research, but in reality to work for the World Student Assembly for Peace, Freedom and Culture (RME , a Comintern-controlled organisation with a membership of some 1,500,000 members in forty-six countries.
The peak of influence
In Paris, he divided his time between the
Bibliotheque Nationale
and the RME offices, where as the organisation's political secretary he organised student campaigns and raised "Aid for Spain" while living in a hotel in the centre of the French capital. In 1938, accompanied by his friend and Oxford communist Bernard Floud, he visited India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, China, and the United States; a remarkable tour during which he met Jawaharlal Nehru and Mao Zedong, and addressed large student gatherings on questions such as Indian independence and opposition to the "colour bar" in the United States.
But for Klugmann’s close Cambridge contemporaries, communist internationalism would have more covert implications. The arrival in 1934 of a controller working for the Soviet Union's NKVD spy agency (the forerunner to the KGB - Arnold Deutsch, who worked under the codename "Otto" - led to the recruitment of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and Michael Straight in 1934-36.
Much has been written about the treachery of the privileged Cambridge spies. Yet it is important to remember the growing dismay at the appeasement of fascism in the higher ranks of British society as well as the widespread belief among ordinary communists - not just privileged Cambridge students - that loyalty to the Soviet cause was regarded as the best way of defeating fascism. Eric Hobsbawm, who went to Cambridge just after Klugmann and worked as a translator for him in Paris, admitted in his autobiography that if Moscow had asked him to work on its behalf he would have done so. "We knew such work was going on, we knew we were not supposed to ask questions about it, we respected those who did it and most of us - certainly I - would have taken it on ourselves, if asked. The lines of loyalty in the 1930s ran not between but across countries’.
Many leading communists felt such divided loyalties. This was certainly true of Klugmann, who was an open communist and never attempted to hide his convictions. His brief and reluctant role as an NKVD agent was to torment him for the rest of his life. The release of the relevant Moscow archives confirms that he too was recruited by Deutsch in 1936.
Klugmann’s role differed from those of his contemporaries; he was seen more as a talent-spotter in identifying likely recruits - not dissimilar to his work amongst communist students at Cambridge, where his historical knowledge, political acumen and lucid explanations of Marxist ideas were highly regarded. He had also grown friendly with John Cairncross, a retiring, working-class Scot sympathetic to communism, with whom he shared an interest in German and French literature. Cairncross had been a postgraduate student at Trinity and by 1937 was now working at the foreign office. After unsuccessful attempts were made by Burgess and Blunt to recruit Cairncross, Klugmann was approached and reluctantly agreed on the approval of Harry Pollitt, the CPGB's general secretary.
On a May evening in 1937, Klugmann, who had returned briefly from Paris, introduced the unsuspecting Cairncross to "Otto" in Regent’s Park and then - according to Cairncross in his autobiography - made a hasty retreat. Cairncross was in 1999 exposed as the "fifth man" for passing the decoded "Ultra" transcripts of Nazi military plans to the Soviet Union; though he had come under suspicion much earlier, in 1951, when his signed papers were found in Guy Burgess’s flat after the latter had flown to Moscow. Cairncross never forgave Klugmann over the fellow Cambridge man's contribution to his recruitment.
A debriefing of Klugmann in 1945 conducted by Bob Stewart (who was responsible for the party’s undercover work , which was picked up by an MI5 microphone in the party’s King Street offices, reveals that Klugmann himself had been deeply troubled by his involvement in Cairncross's ensnarement by the NKVD. At the meeting he reflects on the approach from Soviet intelligence, and - evidently keen to unburden himself of the whole spying question - admits that he had "got very, very much mixed up in it. If I was told to do that and nothing else, I’m quite willing as much as anybody else. Anybody can be a hero and [accept] six years' jail, if you think what you are doing is right...".
The dilemma of whether to help Soviet intelligence troubled him greatly, leaving him "absolutely flummoxed" and having many "sleepless nights". Klugmann himself felt it was a mistake to mix two types of work (public and covert and that he would undertake such work only if it was authorised by the party. This was also Hobsbawm’s position, who told me in an interview in 2009 that it was a "bad principle to mix party work and intelligence work". The key question was: "who was giving the authority to ask for intelligence work?"
In 1940, Klugmann returned to Cambridge from Paris on the agreement of the Comintern, and enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Service Corps. However, on the recommendation of a senior officer who had been at Gresham’s, he was soon recruited to the Special Operations Executive (SOE and was shortly on a boat to Cairo to work for its Yugoslav section. He clearly impressed his superiors with his political knowledge and his ability to speak several languages, including, along the way, Serbo-Croat and Arabic. His rise through the ranks was rapid, leading him eventually to become a major, with responsibility for briefing SOE agents on intelligence missions. Thereafter there was a continuing tension between his SOE superiors' estimation of him as "hard working, trustworthy and loyal’ (in the words of Bolo Keble, his commanding officer and MI5 dispatches which continually warned that he was a security risk who should not be given access to any secret work.
The SOE refused to comply with this, on the grounds that Klugmann's knowledge of the political situation in the Balkans, including his access to the communist partisan leader General Tito, was invaluable. It is now clear that Klugmann played a major part in moving SOE strategy away from support for the royalist General Mihajlovic’s Chetniks in favour of Tito’s partisans. It is not the case, as some later sensationalist accounts have maintained, that this was done on orders from Moscow; the evidence does suggest, however, that Klugmann manipulated reports to give a more encouraging view of partisan strength. He later admitted to Stewart that securing support for the partisans was an objective of what he called "concerted political work".
In fact his political "popular front" strategy, which he had found so fruitful in student politics at Cambridge, took on a new significance in the very different circumstances of the Balkans where an alliance between the allies and Tito made military sense in defeating the Nazis. He was also able to draw on his ability as a brilliant political communicator in unofficial lectures given at a Cairo villa to groups of exiled Croatian-Canadian communist miners as they waited to be sent on missions. His SOE colleague Basil Davidson recalled Klugmann’s effect on his proteges in his memoir of the time:
"Clasping his hands together with the cigarette between his lips, he demanded greater effort….You’ve got to see that this war has become more than a war against something, against fascism. It’s become a war for something, for something much bigger. For national liberation, people’s liberation, colonial liberation".
It was a visit by Churchill himself in January 1943 which proved crucial to the change in policy. German intelligence reports intercepted by British intelligence had confirmed that partisan positions in Yugoslavia were strong, while the Chetniks in some locations were found to be collaborating with Germans. This enabled Bolo Keble, a conservative who had established an unusual friendship with Klugmann (even reportedly bundling him into a lavatory on one occasion to avoid a security check , and Captain William Deakin, the newly arrived SOE intelligence officer and friend of the British prime minister, to make their case. After a combination of Klugmann’s political insight, Deakin’s advice, and a mission to Yugoslavia by Churchill’s "special envoy" Fitzroy Maclean, the prime minister was convinced that exclusive support for Tito was the best strategy to defeat Nazi forces.
The troubled post-war
After a period working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRAA at the end of the war, Klugmann returned to London as a rising star in the Communist Party, with the prospect of a good job in the party hierarchy. He was at the peak of his influence and one of the party’s leading intellectuals. Some thought he would be given a position in the new Labour government, but in the event he edited the party journal
World News and Views
which allowed him to continue meeting anti-colonial and eastern European leaders.
However, Klugmann’s world was to change during the cold war. In the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Comintern in 1948, he was asked by Moscow to publicly denounce Tito, the communist partisan leader he knew better than anybody in the CPGB.The resultant publication
From Trotsky to Tito
was an intellectually dishonest work and marked the decline in Klugmann’s status as a revered party intellectual. After this, Eric Hobsbawm told me, Klugmann was "an intellectually broken man".
Worse was to follow. In 1956 in the wake of Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s atrocities, Hobsbawm, Klugmann and fellow members of the Communist Party history committee met with the leadership to discuss how the party should address its own history. Hobsbawm and others wanted the party’s history to be written by an independent historian sympathetic to communist ideas but who was not a party figure, while the leadership wanted a party historian. The opinion of Klugmann, one of the party’s leading full-time intellectuals, was crucial.
Hobsbawm recalls that Klugmann "sat on the far right-hand corner of the table and said nothing. He knew we were right. If we did not produce a history of our party, including the problematic bits, they would not go away". In fact, Klugmann himself was given the task of writing it. He spent two decades writing two volumes, which covered just the period until 1927 - that is, just before the most contentious era of the CPGB's short history.
Another outcome of the turmoil of 1956, which led to the party losing a quarter of its membership - among them many leading intellectuals including EP Thompson, Christopher Hill and John Saville - was the decision to set up
Marxism Today
. Klugmann was also given the task of editing the journal, initially with the help of John Gollan, who had succeeded Pollitt as general secretary.
Marxism Today
was an in-house publication which published safe if occasionally interesting articles on aspects of Marxist doctrine, and a long way from the eclectic "magazine" it was to become in the 1980s.
Klugmann was also put in charge of the party’s education programme; here, at least, he continued to excel as a lecturer at party schools and conferences, though it was a far cry from his earlier life as a full-time revolutionary. Even MI5, which had put him under close surveillance in the late 1940s - even sending special-branch officers to hear him speak on eastern Europe - seemed to lose interest in him (though by the same token the agency had less reason to pursue him . When Anthony Blunt was forced to confess he had worked for Soviet intelligence on the word of Michael Straight in the early 1960s, his old friend and pupil was one of those he protected.
Klugmann did recapture some of his earlier humanist communism during the more open 1960s. He was a pivotal figure in the Communist-Christian dialogue alongside Canon Paul Oestreicher, which brought ordinary communists and Christians together at large gatherings to discuss poverty and humanitarian causes. Klugmann’s humanist ideas were developed in a short book,
The Future of Man
, which had considerable influence among the many radical young communists who joined the party from the mid-1960s.
Yet in reality, the period offered only glimpses of the James Klugmann of the 1930s and 1940s. Like the party itself, Klugmann lacked the courage or vision to tackle head on some of the difficult questions of the time. Pete Carter, leader of the Young Communist League who had been inspired by Klugmann, came to realise that "whilst he was dedicated to the party he was also a bit scared. He wasn’t confrontational in any way. After a while I found that James was planting the bullets for me to fire. He had terrible differences with the leadership of the party, with (Reuben Falber and (Johnny Gollan but he would never say anything to them".
Eric Hobsbawm told me that Klugmann lacked "civic courage" in the political positions he adopted; while Martin Jacques, who succeeded Klugmann as editor of
Marxism Today
in 1977, says he was "extraordinarily timid" and "fundamentally unreliable": "he would never step out of line and take anyone on". Jacques says Klugmann was regarded as an "exotic figure" who provided some "intellectual decoration", but became increasingly marginal to the big strategic debates and divisions that were developing and would eventually split the party.
Klugmann was also a tormented figure. His earlier fears that his covert work may become public remained with him. After ignoring him in the 1940s and 1950s, MI5 renewed their interest in Klugmann when John Cairncross, whom Blunt had admitted was the "fifth man", was offered a deal whereby he could return to Britain from exile in Rome if he was able to extract a confession from Klugmann. Cairncross was unable to do so, but his approach and the suicide of the Labour MP Bernard Floud, Klugmann’s old friend and student comrade in the late 1930s - after being interrogated by MI5 who needed security clearance before being appointed as a minister, though there has never been any evidence that Floud was a spy - must have preyed further on Klugmann’s mind as he reconsidered the past.
Klugmann’s asthma and general ill-health had deteriorated, and he retired from the editorship of
Marxism Today
in early 1977. In August of that year, Andrew Boyle, who was completing
The Climate of Treason
, the book which led to the public exposure of Anthony Blunt in 1979, met Klugmann in a pub near the party offices in King Street, Covent Garden. Klugmann would not be drawn on Boyle’s questions on Maclean, Burgess and Blunt, but he impressed the author as having the "true spirit of the missionary", as someone who talked of the "exhilaration and adventure" of the 1930s when he truly believed revolution was near, but who was now "not looking forward" to completing the latest volume of the party’s history, the only task left for him. Three weeks later he was dead.
Mike Jempson is a former Wapping resident, writing in a personal capacity.
Michael Delaney was only 19 when he was killed, crushed beneath the wheels of a TNT lorry under police escort from Murdoch’s Wapping printworks, on the night of 10 January 1987. I had known him since he was a child.
With the launch of the
Sunday Sun,
Murdoch wants to put the past behind him and start afresh with pledges of ‘a new bond of trust’ with his readers and ‘the values of decency’. It is just the latest in a long line of cynical ploys by the wily old dingo. His baleful influence has blighted many lives. Right now he needs to bolster morale among staff battered by recent arrests over phone hacking and scandalised by the disclosure of their sources to the police, and to try and win friends and influence people at a time when his power seems to be on the wane.
Until recently politicians of all persuasions pandered to his every whim to win the patronage of his papers. In 1981 he had no problem persuading MPs not to refer his purchase of
The Times
and
The Sunday Times
to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, then wiped out more than 500 jobs. All his papers provided a platform for the deregulation agenda he shared with Ronald Reagan and Mrs Thatcher. He aimed his guns in particular at the BBC to help make room on the airwaves for his Sky satellite services.
Upwards of 5,000 more jobs were lost when he shifted his titles to Wapping in 1986, a move characterised by deceit, blackmail and bullyboy tactics. It began with false claims that he would print a new title
The London Post
there; continued with secret deals to bus in electricians from outside London to run the machinery; then blue collar staff were issued with an ultimatum - work to new inferior contracts or face the sack. Then journalists were offered ?2,000 to cross picket lines and work behind the razor wire and security cameras that surrounded his new East London headquarters.
When the inevitable industrial dispute began, Murdoch boosted the fortunes of transport company TNT to deliver his titles direct to retailers, breaking up the nationwide distribution system shared by other publications and doing away with many more jobs.
While the media focussed on the pitched battles between pickets and police on the streets of Wapping, behind the scenes despair, deprivation and depression was wrecking the lives of his former workers. And when one Transport and General Workers Union driver refused to cross the picket lines
The Sun
tried to destroy him. Even when castigated by the Press Council, it still insisted on calling him ‘A lying trucker’.
And while the policeman in charge, Wyn Jones, whose career ended with a conviction for theft, denied that his road blocks and barricades had put Wapping residents under siege, those who lived around the plant were only too conscious that something wicked was in their midst.
The people of Liverpool were to learn that too. When almost 100 Liverpool football supporters died in the Hillsborough disaster in April 1989,
The Sun
proclaimed ‘The Truth. Some fans picked pockets of victims ... Some fans urinated on the brave cops … Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life’.
It was lies. Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie ‘apologised because Rupert Murdoch told me to’ but stood by his indecent claims. Subsequent editors and the Murdochs have unreservedly apologised, but sales of his newspapers slumped in the city and Liverpool’s ‘Don’t buy The Sun’ campaign continues to this day.
Countless others have had cause to regret the prurient and sensationalist approach of Murdoch’s tabloids - they seek lowest common denominators to shock, sneer and sell wherever in the world he profiteers through the press.
Now that Murdoch is back in Britain apologising left right and centre for past transgressions, in the hope that punters and politicians alike will forgive and forget, perhaps he should show a bit of decency about that nasty incident in East London for which there has never been adequate explanation or apology.
Its victim, like Milly Dowler, is no longer able to tell Mr Murdoch what he thinks.
That night, Michael Delaney had been out with three friends celebrating his birthday of the previous week. They were on their way home, crossing the junction of Butcher Row and Commercial Road in Stepney, one of the preferred routes for Murdoch’s delivery boys. What happened next, according to the jury at an inquest in April that year, was an ‘unlawful killing’.
There was a red light at the junction and Michael tried to remonstrate with the lorry driver, but the lorry drove off dragging Michael under its wheels. The lorry would not stop again until it reached the Heston Services on the M4. Michael’s body was left lying in the road, until an ambulance took him to the London Hospital, where he died in the early hours of 11 January. Meanwhile his companions had been taken off to Leman Street Police station.
The driver, a Robert Higgins, was not called to give evidence at the inquest, but was seen by Michael’s distraught family during the lunch break, laughing and drinking in a nearby pub with one Inspector Pickard of Leman St Police Station. His co-driver did speak at the inquest and was visibly upset when he recalled that dreadful night.
Despite the inquest verdict the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to proceed with a trial on the grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’, and the inquest verdict was quashed in the High Court a year later. The first the family heard about it was on the TV news.
Given what is now known about the unhealthily close relationships between News International and the Metropolitan Police over the years, the whole sad saga deserves a full investigation.
Sir Paul Stephenson, who resigned as head of the Met under a cloud last summer, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that almost 25% of the Met’s public affairs unit had previously worked for Murdoch papers. Former Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, who resigned after allegations of impropriety, became a columnist for
The Times
, and a former
News of the World
editor Neil Wallis was hired by the Met as a communications consultant, at a time when questions were being asked about the full extent of phone hacking by his old paper.
Another of Stephenson’s colleagues, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, also resigned over the phone hacking scandal in July 2011. All three senior officers are still under investigation, along with about three dozen Murdoch employees, police officers and civil servants arrested as part of police investigations into aspects of the hacking scandal.
These sensational facts may never merit attention in Murdoch’s
Sun
but they deserve to be recalled at the Leveson Inquiry. Will Michael Delaney’s fate get a mention? Perhaps those scandalised by the cover-up over his death will ensure that Murdoch never forgets the young man who died so
The Sun
could hit the streets.
The big question still to be answered is whether law officers and Murdoch’s News International conspired to avoid a prosecution that might have revealed how and why Michael Delaney died.
announced that it now also supports vaccinations for boys as well. According to Monday’s online version of the AAP’s publication Pediatrics, boys aged 11 and 12 should receive three routine immunizations against HPV, a revision of the organization’s previous stance on the issue which it had termed a “permissive recommendation.” “The American Academy of Pediatrics has reviewed updated data provided by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on vaccine efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness as well as programmatic considerations and supports this recommendation,” read the opening lines of the new official policy statement. “[AAP now] recommends immunization against human papillomavirus (HPV for all 11- through 12-year-old children as part of the adolescent immunization platform.” With each of the three necessary HPV shots costing around $130, the policy revision is generally seen as a bid to end health insurance companies’ refusal to cover HPV immunization for boys. The AAP also noted that Gardasil – produced by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. – is currently the only version of the vaccine approved for males. After the HPV vaccines first won approval for young girls in 2007, Texas Governor Rick Perry made national headlines by issuing an executive order requiring that Texas girls receive the immunization. Following a firestorm of political controversy over parental rights, the Texas Legislation promptly shot down Perry’s initiative. Other controversies have hovered around the question of the potential side effects of the vaccines, concerns that medical experts have said are purely political and not supported by scientific evidence. The AAP noted in its new policy statement that “no discernible, vaccine-specific adverse effect, with the exception of rare anaphylaxis [severe allergic reaction] to vaccine components, has been detected” in relation to the HPV immunization regimen. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP has corroborated the AAP’s claim regarding the safety of the vaccine. Of the approximately 40 million HPV vaccinations that have been administered in the past five years, says the NVICP, a total of nine claims have been filed for HPV-vaccine-related deaths and 163 claims filed for injuries. Of these, a mere 25 claims have been deemed related to the vaccine and compensated while another 33 have been dismissed as baseless. According the American Social Health Association, HPV is currently the most common sexually transmitted disease the United States. The organization has estimated that some 75–80% of all sexually active Americans are infected with the virus at some point in their lifetime, though low-risk strains may often go unnoticed. In the year 2,000 alone there were approximately 6.2 million new HPV infection in U.S. citizens aged 15–44, the vast majority of which were contracted by young people between the ages of 15 and 24. While most strains of HPV are resolved without serious or even noticeable health concerns, several strains have been linked with the development of cancer in both women and men. The push in recent years to get kids immunized against HPV at an early age is a result of the discovery that the vaccines are only effective against cancer if they are administered before the virus is acquired. --- On the Net:
Category: Health News
Created: 2/27/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/27/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 2/24/2012 2:05:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/27/2012
When we speak about “widows” there is a general assumption that we are talking about elderly women, and it is elderly widows who have received the most attention from ngos. But widows are of all ages. Some are young mothers, and some are girls as young as eight or nine years old. After more than a decade of campaigning by organisations such as HelpAge International, older women (the majority of whom are widows recently won UN recognition of their needs when
CEDAW required governments to report on the
status of older women in their annual reporting to the Committee.
By contrast, the millions of child widows have no such champions. They are mostly to be found, uncounted and unheard, living in remote rural areas, especially in Africa and South Asia where traditions, customs and discriminatory interpretations of religious codes often dominate over any modern age-of-marriage legislation. Widowhood in these contexts is a "social death".
Little reliable data on child widows is available. They have received scant attention from the UN, their governments, or international human rights monitors. Even UNICEF which has programmes designed to reduce
child marriagesand ensure that the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC is implemented in UN member states, has failed to make the logical step to address child widowhood.
Yet here we have young girls, widowed as children, some as young as eight years old deprived of their human rights to health, education, protection from sexual violence and economic exploitation. These violations persist in spite of their rights being enshrined in the CRC, the CEDAW and the
Beijing Platform for Action which have been agreed by almost all UN member states. In the very poorest communities, for example in rural
Afghanistan, Ethiopia,Yemen and
Tanzania, thousands of little girls have been forcibly married, often before they reach the menarche, and widowed before they reach adulthood. They will have suffered much, physically and psychologically, prematurely pregnant, and giving birth long before their bodies are ready for such events. They have been denied a childhood. With no one to protect them, their futures are bleak as they bear the triple disabilities of gender, marital status, and being underage.
The huge
increasein widows of all ages, particularly due to armed conflict, HIV and AIDS, has also contributed to an increase in child-marriage, leading inevitably to child widowhood. Widowed mothers cannot afford to maintain their daughters, let alone educate them. The traditional practices of both “bride price” and dowry operate to the disadvantage of the daughters of widows. In the first case, the child bride may have greater value than an adult woman, especially in the context of the AIDS pandemic and the
myththat the virgin bride can cure AIDS in the husband. The perpetuation of child-marriage and resultant child-widowhood, in the context of extreme rural poverty, is one of the factors in the transmission of the AIDS virus. The younger the girl, the higher her
risk of infection. In relation to dowry, a landless, impoverished widow without any assets will have limited choices when looking for a partner for her daughter so that the girl child may be given or sold to a sick, disabled or far older man.
There are as yet only a few statistics on this issue, so hidden are the lifestyles of child widows, and researchers are aware that they may endanger girls they have interviewed by publishing their names and locations. In 2011,
Yemi Ipaye made a documentary for the BBC on child widows of Nepal. She showed in her film how difficult it was to get these children to talk openly about their experiences, and she herself worried that she was putting the young girls’ safety at risk. For, in describing what was happening to them, they were accusing their dead husband’s family of violence and exploitation.
Nepal is believed to have one of the highest numbers of child widows in the world, but maybe it is simply one of the few countries where the widows’ organisation
Women for Human Rights -Single Women's Group(WHR SWG has attempted not only count them, but to address their plight with rescue, protection, shelter, food, health care, education and income-generating schemes. The life-styles of the “
bekalayas”,
as they are called, are harshly restricted: they cannot wear coloured saris or decorations; they must wear white; they are prohibited from attending festivals or family celebrations like weddings; and they may not eat fish or meat. WHR-SWG has helped groups of them to defy these discriminatory social customs by setting up widows' self help cooperatives, wear coloured clothes and bangles, as well as joining literacy and training schemes for income-generation, including instruction in non traditional areas of work such as bicycle repairs, mobile phone maintenance and driving.
The common practice of the husband's brother "inheriting" the widow was originally intended to protect a widow and her children, but today, in the context of poverty and AIDS, it has become another form of oppression. A girl widow, unable to return to her birth parents, may end up as a domestic or agriculture slave in her husband’s family. The UN
Slavery Fund has just now approved a research project by Forum for Community Change and Development, a widows’ NGO in
South Sudan.
In Maniganj, just outside Dhaka, I met very young widows, married as mere children to old widowers. When these elderly men died, the girls suffered physical and sexual abuse from step-sons, were denied any access to property or land and became destitute. In Dhaka itself, I also met young child widows who had escaped violence from the husband’s family members by migrating to the cities to live in the slums to scavenge, beg, and survive by sex-work.
In Afghanistan, a Human Rights Watch
reportin 2009 found that
80% of marriages are forced unions with young girls, many as the result of the tradition of
badal
where parents exchange children at birth, or
baad
, where a girl is given in compensation for a tort or crime such as a debt, or a murder.
In 2010 Yana Mohammad reported to UNCSW that in rural Iraq prostitution and trafficking rings are targeting widows’ daughters. In both Afghanistan and in Iraq, young girls, including young widows who have offended the culture by fleeing forced re-marriages, can find themselves in prison, without charge. Officials justify this on the grounds that they are “protecting” the women, for example from the revenge of an "honour killing". A
studyundertaken by the UN in 2009 on the arbitrary imprisonment of women revealed that in 30 out of 34 Iraqi provinces, women who made a complaint to the authorities were themselves arrested on the grounds of
zina
(dishonour , and imprisoned, often for years. In other countries, parents are influenced to arrange early marriage on the justification that is it a means of “protecting” girls from rape, abduction, and kidnap.
The most effective international mechanism to hold governments to
account is CEDAW. In 2010, Widows for Peace through Democracy presented a
dossier on discrimination against widows to the CEDAW Committee in Geneva. The dossier referred to child widows and asked for a General Recommendation on Widowhood. We have also applied on behalf of the widows of Tanzania, through the Tanzania Women's Legal Aid Centre (
WLAC to obtain a decision from the Committee for an "Inquiry" ( using the CEDAW Optional Protocol Article 8 . The draft report contains several case studies of child widows and their sufferings, and the full report will be presented to CEDAW in July, 2012. If the CEDAW Committee is convinced by the evidence submitted, it sends investigators to the country and requires its governments to eliminate the discrimination "using all appropriate methods".
Meanwhile, at the UN Commission on the Status of Women currently underway in New York, four partner organisations - Widows for Peace through Democracy (
UK , Women for Human Rights - Single Women group (
Nepal , The Women's Development Organisation, Enugu (
Nigeria and Guild of Service (
India - will hold a roundtable on '
Rural Widows: inheritance, land and property rights; roles, needs, access to services and justice'
. We will be highlighting the tragedy of the neglected child widows who have no big organisations to speak up for them, to reveal the conditions of their lives, and galvanise governments to address the human rights violations perpetrated against them.
After a couple dozen successes, Howard Tullman is building Flashpoint Academy, which he calls the front seat of the world stage.
From the moment he queues up a movie, boots his computer, and hits the treadmill at 4 a.m.—unfathomably refreshed after three hours' sleep—Tullman is a blur. By 8 a.m., having consumed several newspapers, watched half a film (he sees about 120 a year for professional reasons , and cleared his first 100 e-mails, he arrives at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, the showplace digital-media-arts college he built one summer in Chicago while all the normal people were at the beach. On a typical day, he might brainstorm with Fortune 500 executives in his ADD-décor office; sit in on a commercial being shot by students on a sound stage at Chicago's Merchandise Mart; lead tours for celebrities such as Bill Clinton, Quentin Tarantino, or the documentarian Ken Burns; counsel a graduate on his or her first start-up; hunker down with managers from one of the half a dozen companies he invests in; tinker with the incubator he is building to house 15 of his own product ideas; and teach a class at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. Notice how I said and? Not or. Phew.
I rise from my chair to follow Tullman out of his office, and by the time I reach the door, he is already down at the end of a long hallway, greeting Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and an old chum, here to tour Tribeca Flashpoint Academy and discuss projects of mutual interest. "I have 22 minutes," says Emanuel, who briefly lodged in Tullman's West Loop loft after leaving his White House job to run for Richard Daley's old seat. The two charge around the school for 15 minutes, then settle in to Tullman's office to talk about job training and how youthful they appear in various photos.
At 66, Tullman is a tie-and-socks-optional kind of guy on whom a ponytail would not look amiss. Tribeca Flashpoint Academy is the latest in a long string of companies he has launched, led, or salvaged. And like the autumnal work of a prolific writer, it draws on many of his favorite themes—technology, pop culture, education, professionalism—while refreshing a tired genre.
That genre—or rather, that industry (clarity trumps metaphor, as the storytelling-obsessed Tullman would tell you —is vocational education. "It's a shame that the United States is the only country in the world where it's considered downscale and horrible to go to any kind of vocational school," says Tullman, pecking at his computer, which is wired to a large screen that barrages visitors to his office with wow-inducing videos and applications created by Flashpoint students and faculty. "Everyplace else, there are apprenticeships, vocational training, all kinds of paths to be successful. We need that here."
Tullman believes training young people to fill tomorrow's jobs is this country's best shot at reducing unemployment and staying globally competitive. Tomorrow's jobs, of course, is code for technology, a subject, Tullman argues, traditional four-year colleges teach poorly because faculty aren't in the field keeping current and students don't work across departments in interdisciplinary teams, as happens in the real world. "Part One was that every other school was teaching in these silos with tenured faculty who weren't learning new technologies," says Tullman, explaining what attracted him to the idea for Flashpoint, which was brought to him in 2007 by Ric Landry, the company's co-founder. "Part Two was you had a group of kids that were only interested in digital and were not going to go to a four-year liberal-arts school and end up with their futures in hock."
Flashpoint offers a two-year associate's degree. Starting Day One, students from all five departments (film and broadcast; recording arts; animation and visual effects; games and interactive media; design and visual communication collaborate on class assignments and on custom projects for the likes of Microsoft, Disney, and Neiman Marcus. Tullman spends much of his time wrangling those projects, which gild students' portfolios and introduce them to potential employers. "We are totally responsive to what the industry needs," says Tullman, who on the day I visit meets with the CEO of a small business developing a localized entertainment service for inner-city McDonald's franchises, representatives from a Fortune 100 consumer-products company plotting their mobile strategy, and executives from the Chicago arts and entertainment complex Navy Pier, who are soliciting ideas for a $150 million renovation. (See above: Phew.
Tullman envisions thousands of disaffected, keyboard-addicted kids emerging from their bedrooms and flocking to Flashpoint, where they learn to be both creative technicians and—equally important, he insists—responsible employees. In that sense, the school has the aura of a social enterprise. It is, however, an accredited, for-profit institution that will start making money this year. In 2011, Flashpoint had revenue of $12 million with 600 students; by 2014, Tullman anticipates, enrollment will hit 1,000. There is talk of distance learning as well as campuses in New York City and other domestic and international locations. Tuition is $25,000 a year, with more than half of students receiving financial aid.
Flashpoint's biggest investor is Tribeca Enterprises, co-founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in the wake of 9/11 as a way to answer atrocity with art. Owner and operator of the Tribeca Film Festival and other ventures, the organization has invested $16 million, according to Tullman, for a 50 percent stake in Flashpoint. "Flashpoint is a front seat on the world stage of what's the Next Big Thing," says Hatkoff. "If it's exciting and state of the art, they're either using it or they created it."
Flashpoint fits neatly within Tribeca's mission: to encourage innovation in the creation and delivery of narrative. But Hatkoff and his partners were also struck by the intensity and track record of Tullman, who may be the most accomplished entrepreneur you've never heard of. "What Howard has built over the course of his career is just extraordinary," says Hatkoff. "I had never seen a resumé like his before. I had to read it in two sittings."
Tullman's mind moves even faster than he does. "You're having a conversation with him, and suddenly you feel like you've missed a sentence, and your brain races after him," says Barbara Pollack, a frequent business collaborator and friend since childhood. "With Howard, you're always catching up."
Pollack—a member of the Flashpoint start-up team who is now a marketing and design consultant—is part of a devoted coterie that follows Tullman from company to company, responding whenever he blows the new-venture whistle. It is by necessity a hardy bunch; reporting to this guy is no Sunday in a hammock. Tullman works 80 to 100 hours a week, and while he doesn't expect employees to do the same, no one drops in his estimation by being the last person out the door. He is infamous for pounding out e-mails late into the night and for publicizing mistakes. "It's a harsh theory," Tullman concedes. "But if you share that mistake with the whole company, then everybody learns from it. And that person develops an incrementally thicker skin." He also announces his own errors, though those are "rarer than hen's teeth," he says.
Although public admonitions apply chiefly to serious lapses, Tullman is a proud sweater of the small stuff. "I always try to spend a portion of the day micromanaging something," he says. "Just to let people know I'm interested. ERNIE!" he barks out the door to Flashpoint's senior vice president of operations, Ernesto Paras. (For a guy so loaded up with communications technology, Tullman sure shouts a lot. "I was just saying to Leigh that you and I are going to go into the screening room and bring up the lights on the chairs and the carpeting. Because I think I saw some spills and stuff." Paras informs his boss that someone is already on the way to clean and freshen the fabric. "I think I've communicated my enthusiasm on that subject," says Tullman with satisfaction.
("I catch a lot of things before he does," Paras, another Tullman loyalist, tells me later. "Because he does so many tours around campus, I know he's going to catch everything. We each want to be the one to notify the other of a problem. It's like a game."
That desire to win on matters large and small was bred in the blood. Tullman is the oldest of six children, raised by an apparel-salesman father and a homemaker mother whose quixotic pursuit of a city council seat (she was a Democrat; the district, in New Providence, New Jersey, overwhelmingly Republican modeled perseverance and competitiveness for her brood. Sibling rivalry raged intensely, especially between Tullman and his youngest brother, Glen, who is now CEO of Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, a public company with revenue of $1.4 billion, also in Chicago. That's CEO, not founder, Tullman points out. "My brother certainly regards himself an entrepreneur, too," he says. "Only in our darkest and closest conversations do I remind him that he's never started anything."
Tullman developed his nose-to-grindstone ethos in the 1960s at Northwestern Law School, where he assembled defense testimony for the trial of the Chicago Seven and presided over the law review. After graduation, he spent 10 years helping one of his professors and a partner build a law firm. It was while organizing class actions representing tens of thousands of plaintiffs that he succumbed to the imperative and allure of information management.
A lot of Tullman's stories from his entrepreneurial career start out, "A couple of guys came to see me." The first two guys approached him in 1980. They had an embryonic idea to make money on the spread between how much auto insurers were willing to pay for replacement cars—based on often-inflated book value—and how much car dealers charged. Tullman swiftly changed up that model: He wanted to do a database service that would help insurers assess the actual value of cars as determined by real-time sales in the market. He agreed to launch the business, but only if his co-founders raised enough money to make it worth his while. Thus was another Tullman tenet born: The entrepreneur's stake in a start-up should be his time, and only his time. "This idea that you have to go into hock and mortgage your home and starve is bullshit," says Tullman. "I tell entrepreneurs this all the time. If these VCs come along and say, 'Would you work for $5?' find different partners."
Tullman named that first business Certified Collateral Corporation. ("It was completely meaningless but sounded like an insurance kind of thing." In 1983, he took CCC public, then sold it for $100 million and segued into a company he had already started to exploit underutilized resources. While running CCC, Tullman had observed how quiet the offices got after 4 p.m., when the firm's insurance-adjuster clients went home. So he paid employees to stay late conducting customer-satisfaction surveys for car manufacturers, hospitals, and restaurant chains. "You could do all the verticals except hotels," says Tullman, "because you didn't want to call some guy's home and ask his wife how the night at the motel was." He sold that second business, Original Research, in 1990.
Listening to Tullman recount his biography, I start to experience that time-lapse sensation again. So many ventures. So many stories. So many battery changes for my microrecorder. If I were a Tribeca Flashpoint student, I would chronicle the entrepreneur's next decade in a dazzling multimedia presentation. But because all I have are words, and a limited number of those, I'm going to condense the '90s into something more utilitarian: a timeline. Imagine what follows as a series of slides illustrated with artful photography. Hell, imagine video while you're at it. And a soundtrack. Maybe something anthemy, by Queen.
1990: Eager Enterprises, a venture fund investing in early real estate and employment databases
1991: Information Kinetics/Career Network, a service aggregating college-student resumés on CD-ROMs, for distribution to employers
1991: ICOM Simulations, a developer of computer games
1992: COIN, an automotive information systems company (this was a turnaround rather than a start-up
1993: Monumental Art and Events, a marketing firm producing paintings and memorabilia commemorating major national events
1993: Imagination Pilots, a developer of computer games based on entertainment properties, such as Where's Waldo? and assorted action movies
1994: Information America, a database and legal-data aggregation company
1995: Swinging on a Star, a Broadway musical Tullman produced
1996: The Cobalt Group, a provider of e-commerce and Web services to car dealerships
1996: JamTV (later tunes.com , originally a producer of live-music webcasts, later a cluster of sites for prominent entertainment publishers, including rollingstone.com, thesource.com, and downbeatjazz.com
Which brings us to the Education Decade. (End soundtrack.
We are tooling around Chicago in a black SUV, on a drive-by tour of past triumphs. Rolling around in the back are stacks of the 64-ounce plastic cups Tullman brings to his local 7-Eleven every morning for Diet Coke. The store downsized its Double Gulp to 62 ounces a few years ago, but Tullman keeps bringing in his old cups and insists the proprietors serve him the extra 2 ounces for the same price. (They also supply him with special tokens so he doesn't have to wait for change. We collected the vehicle from a parking garage, where it occupies a first-floor space with no cars on either side. The garage owner created the space especially for Tullman, who didn't want to climb stairs or squeeze past anything to get to the driver's door. "My rule of thumb is that someone is going to have the best seat in the house," says Tullman, as we shoot past Stop signs with an air kiss. "It may not be me. But shame on me if I don't ask for it. In every speech I give to entrepreneurs, I ask them not to make it easy for other people to say no and not to compromise."
Tullman points out an imposing brick structure standing in splendid isolation near the Chicago River. Once, it was a research kitchen for Sara Lee; today, the building houses Kendall College, an award-winning culinary school that Tullman rescued from near collapse in 2003. Named president of Kendall with a mandate to save it, sell it, or shut it down, Tullman pared the curriculum of subjects such as law enforcement and athletics, secured a lucrative contract to train Navy cooks, unloaded the dilapidated 70-year-old campus in suburban Evanston for $10 million, bought the state-of-the-art Sara Lee facility, and raised another $50 million to finance it all. The strategic and financial turnaround took 100 days; the renovation and relocation a further three months. In 2006, Tullman arranged the profitable sale of Kendall to Laureate Education, which operates campus-based and online universities.
Two blocks from Kendall, we pass the former site of Experiencia, Tullman's second education venture. In 2005, Tullman, Pollack, and a couple of investors transformed 20,000 square feet of industrial space into a miniature city for inner-city schoolchildren to operate. Every day for three years, 240 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders took over Experiencia's diminutive storefronts, its snack shops, its government agencies, and its newspaper and radio station to learn about real work in the real world. Another floor, devoted to science, featured 100 live animals and a special-effects-driven natural-disaster simulation. "I did it half because it was good for the kids and half because it was completely amazing to build my own city," says Tullman. But the Chicago schools couldn't support the program, so Tullman sold the space to the Girl Scouts, who use it for workshops and camps.
Which brings us to Tribeca Flashpoint Academy. The idea originated in 2007 with Landry, also an investor and serial entrepreneur. His son, an aspiring filmmaker, had enrolled in a four-year arts and media college and been disappointed. "He went to school for almost two years and never touched a piece of equipment," says Landry, who stepped down as chairman of Flashpoint last year. "I started looking for schools that really trained students to go to work in digital media and found a hole in the market." An education-industry novice, Landry sought out Tullman, whose resumé also boasts a stint as chairman of the Princeton Review, on the recommendation of a mutual friend. Tullman relished the prospect of preparing students for more lucrative careers than Kendall had generally provided. "Instead of chefs, they could become digital filmmakers and go to work for Pixar or Disney," Tullman says. "This time around, we would train people to be financial successes as well as doing things they were excited about."
While Paula Froehle, enlisted by Landry as Flashpoint's academic dean, recruited faculty and staff, Tullman chased students. Persuading parents to spend $25,000 on a school that didn't exist yet was no easy sell. Tullman figured the most likely targets were kids like Landry's son, who had gone the four-year route and regretted it. He created marketing material, writing and designing 57 ads in 57 weeks that ran in Chicago's free newspaper, The Reader, and other publications. ("If you're sitting at a college that's a mistake for you, now is the time to fix it," reads one ad. "Sending my son to a traditional four-year school is a waste of his time and my money," goes another. That first year, 107 students, most in their early to mid-20s, took a leap of faith.
In late May 2007, Tullman and Landry—who had raised $10 million from angel investors—took over three floors in a stately, century-old office building across from Daley Plaza. The space, a former domestic-violence court constructed with Kevlar walls to prevent bullets passing through, was a wasteland: rubble-strewn floors, bins heaped with drywall, electrical conduits dangling everywhere. Cue renovation montage. Three months later, Flashpoint Academy (De Niro et al. were not yet in the picture welcomed its first students to a facility equipped with technology so new, much of it wasn't yet on the market. "I didn't think Howard could move faster than he did at Kendall," says Paras, who was the IT director at the culinary school. "But this was faster."
Some of Flashpoint's technology—cameras, software, editing tools—comes courtesy of Microsoft, Canon, and other companies that are eager to test new products with the budding digerati who represent their next-generation customers. Some was developed specifically for Flashpoint. An interactive storyboard that also plays videos, for example, was designed by a company called PolyVision, with input from Flashpoint's staff and students. There are game labs and screening rooms and editing facilities. The live-music studios and sound-design suites, where recording majors create effects for other students' films and—as one of the school's outside projects—lay down tracks for the popular games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, are built on foam, and the ceilings hang on springs, to dampen the noise.
At this point, I have to address the paintings. Tullman, who is married to an artist and has two grown daughters, is a voracious collector of contemporary representational art. Hundreds of canvases—large, loud, challenging verging on pugnacious—adorn every wall in the school. They stand out against the otherwise-cool, professional décor like (I'm gonna steal from Raymond Chandler "a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake." In fact, a painting of a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake would look right at home here. The art is meant to stimulate students, who at some point in their two years must choose an artwork and incorporate it into a story or video game. "I want them to understand that digital stuff can become sterile pretty easily," says Tullman. "There is excellence in analog."
Just after noon, Tullman sits in a darkened classroom watching for the first time a trippy video about projection mapping. Devin Wambolt, a second-year visual-effects major, narrates as his onscreen self assembles a blocky structure from boxes and paper. The student explains how he used camera, projector, and 3-D software to create a perpetually mutating three-dimensional canvas. As he speaks, the structure writhes into life, bathed in pulsing psychedelics and distorted real-time images. "Very cool," murmurs Tullman, the possibilities already percolating in his brain. Ninety minutes later, he is in a meeting pitching Wambolt's technology, among other ideas, to the team leading the renovation of Navy Pier.
Flashpoint fields roughly 70 inquiries a week from individuals and organizations wanting help producing a video, a mobile application, or an interactive marketing tool. They seek out the school for its speed of execution, youthful talent (its students represent the demographic clients often want to reach , and low price (most projects cost about 25 percent of what a professional production company charges . Flashpoint accepts 30 to 50 projects each year and assigns them to student teams, with faculty oversight. "We select projects for three major reasons," says Edward Glassman, vice president of marketing and business development. "First, we want our students to have that killer material in their portfolios so they can get a job. Second, it goes a long way for our brand to be associated with Microsoft or Sony or McDonald's. Finally, it's great outreach to prospective students."
Certainly, the school benefits when Tyra Banks yells, "Holla, Flashpoint!" on Good Morning America. Banks is one of several celebrities to bring projects to the school, which designed the cover for her novel, Modelland, featuring a computer-generated eye. Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose appeared in a no-texting-while-driving PSA created by Flashpoint for AT&T Illinois.
Projects like these feed the school's scholarship fund, but the end game is jobs. Roger Ebert and his wife, Chaz, collaborated with Flashpoint on the pilot for the most recent incarnation of their film-review program, Ebert Presents At the Movies. They have since hired several Flashpoint students as interns and offered full-time employment to two, including a broadcast major who is now an associate producer. Overall, the school's graduate placement rate is 75 percent. Intent on minting graduates who are, first and foremost, great employees, Flashpoint evaluates students not only on technical prowess but also on such attributes as accountability, respect, collaboration, initiative, and attentiveness. Performance in those areas is tracked on a public graph, and the plummiest projects go to the most professionally behaved. "These standards are incredibly important to employers—in many cases just as important as technical know-how," says Glassman.
Inevitably, a few members of each class breathe in the entrepreneurial spores Tullman leaves in his wake and go on to start, or try to start, companies. In the sprawling Merchandise Mart, about half a mile from the school, Flashpoint maintains—in addition to a full-scale sound stage used for commercial and student productions—20,000 square feet of unfinished space for start-ups. Most of the embryonic tech companies clustered in this cavernous, public-garage-Spartan room are unaffiliated with Flashpoint. (Tullman offers them only cheap rent and free advice. An exception is Tap.Me, which manages the display of advertising in video games. Tap.Me's founders met and bonded while building an Xbox game at Flashpoint. Tullman hasn't invested but did drill the team on presenting to venture capitalists. It has so far raised $1.4 million.
Justin Moore, a co-founder of Tap.Me, is exactly the kind of student Tullman wants to attract. He graduated from MIT with a degree in mechanical engineering but, finding no careers that interested him, enrolled at Flashpoint in its first year, hoping for a fresh start. "I loved it," says Moore. "I learned different stuff than I did at MIT: interpersonal skills, team-management skills, communication skills. At MIT, it was, How do you formulate solutions to problems? Flashpoint was, How do you organize and get people together to actually execute? And just seeing it as a new business in action, I got really jazzed up to start my own."
Tullman expects start-ups like Tap.Me will provide projects for Flashpoint students and also, someday, employment for graduates. Another potential employer is the quasi-incubator Hydrbox, which so far consists of Tullman, a developer, and 15 product ideas Tullman came up with while he was busy not sleeping. They include a cool technology that lets T-shirts transmit messages to mobile phones and a mechanism for managing information using your subconscious that Tullman patiently went over with me three times and I still didn't get. Tullman plans to see which innovations gain traction and then hire sales teams around them, while keeping administration and research and development centralized. "We're essentially rapid prototyping new businesses," he says.
Tullman thinks some of the technologies percolating in Hydrbox are potentially substantial companies, which he might lead at the same time as Flashpoint or possibly after it. When he launched the school, Tullman estimated he would stay seven years. That means he has three to go. He likes to move on, and then on, and then on, which he concedes may be why he is not better known. "I prefer to expand and enhance and enrich what the business is doing rather than continue to build above a certain level," he says. "A lot of famous CEOs run public companies, and I can tell you it was not fun to run a public company the times I've done that. I wouldn't even want to sit on the board of a public company."
I ask him if he's happy, and he shrugs off the question: "There's a word, anhedonic, that fits me," he says. "I'm doing important and worthwhile work. I'm pleased with what I've accomplished. There are moments of exuberance. But I would never say I am happy.
"I live to try and figure out how to be most productive," he continues. "The question to ask, every minute of your life, is, 'Is what I am doing moving something forward? Is it advancing me? Is it advancing something important?' If not, it may not be a good use of my time."
Category: Health News
Created: 2/25/2012 11:01:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/27/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 2/27/2012 10:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/27/2012
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