Sen. Kelly Loeffler Dumped Millions in Stock After Coronavirus Briefing

L. Markay, W. Bredderman, & S. Bordy
thedailybeast.com
Updated 20 March 20

The Senate’s newest member sold off seven figures’ worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private, all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that subsequently hammered U.S. equities.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus.

“Appreciate today’s briefing from the President’s top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak,” she tweeted about the briefing at the time.

That first transaction was a sale of stock in the company Resideo Technologies valued at between $50,001 and $100,000. The company’s stock price has fallen by more than half since then, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average overall has shed approximately 10,000 points, dropping about a third of its value.

It was the first of 29 stock transactions that Loeffler and her husband made through mid-February, all but two of which were sales. One of Loeffler’s two purchases was stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000 in Citrix, a technology company that offers teleworking software and which has seen a small bump in its stock price since Loeffler bought in as a result of coronavirus-induced market turmoil.

The info is here.

Burr moves to quell fallout from stock sales with request for Ethics probe

Jack Brewster
politico.com
Originally posted 20 March 20

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Friday asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review stock sales he made weeks before the markets began to tank in response to the coronavirus pandemic — a move designed to limit the fallout from an intensifying political crisis.

Burr, who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, defended the sales, saying he “relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks" and disputed the notion he used information that he was privy to during classified briefings on the novel coronavirus. Burr specifically name-checked CNBC’s daily health and science reporting from its Asia bureau.

“Understanding the assumption many could make in hindsight however, I spoke this morning with the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and asked him to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency,” Burr said in a statement.

Burr, who is retiring at the end of 2022, has faced calls to resign from across the ideological spectrum since ProPublica reported Thursday that he dumped between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 different transactions — a week before the stock market began plummeting amid fears of the coronavirus spreading in the U.S.

The info is here.

U.S. Ethics Office Declines to Certify Mnuchin’s Financial Disclosure

Alan Rappeport
The New York Times
Originally published April 4, 2019

The top federal ethics watchdog said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s sale of his stake in a film production business to his wife did not comply with federal ethics rules, and it would not certify his 2018 financial disclosure report as a result.

Although Mr. Mnuchin will not face penalties for failing to comply, he has been required to rewrite his federal ethics agreement and to promise to recuse himself from government matters that could affect his wife’s business.

Mr. Mnuchin in 2017 sold his stake in StormChaser Partners to his then-fiancée, Louise Linton, as part of a series of divestments before becoming Treasury secretary. Since they are now married, government ethics rules consider the asset to be owned by Mr. Mnuchin, potentially creating a conflict of interest for an official who has been negotiating for expanded access for the movie industry as part of trade talks with China.

The controversy over Mr. Mnuchin’s finances has become an unwanted distraction in recent weeks as the Trump administration has been engaged in intense negotiations with China on a wide range of trade matters. While Robert Lighthizer, President Trump’s top trade official, has been leading the talks, Mr. Mnuchin has been the point person for promoting the film industry because of his background as a Hollywood producer and investor.

The info is here.

Institutional Conflicts of Interest and Public Trust

Francisco G. Cigarroa, Bettie Sue Masters, Dan Sharphorn
JAMA. Published online November 14, 2018.
doi:10.1001/jama.2018.18482

Here is an excerpt:

It is no longer enough for institutions conducting research to only have conflict of interest policies for individual researchers, they also must directly address the growing concern about institutional conflicts of interest. Every research institution and university deserving of the public’s trust needs to have well-defined institutional conflict of interest policies. A process must be established that will ensure research is untainted by any personal financial interests of the researcher, and that no financial interests exist for the institution or the institution’s key decision makers that could cloud otherwise open and honest decisions regarding the institution’s research mission.

Education and culture are fundamental to the successful implementation of any policy. It is incumbent upon institutional decision makers and all employees involved in research to be knowledgeable about individual and institutional conflict of interest policies. It may not always be obvious to researchers that they have a perceived or real conflict of interest or bias. Therefore, it is important to establish a culture of transparency and disclosure of any outside interests that could potentially influence research and include individuals at the highest level of the institution. Policies should be clear and easy to implement and permit pathways to provide disclosure with adequate explanation, as well as information regarding how potential or real conflicts of interest are managed or eliminated. This will require the establishment of interactive databases aimed at mitigating, to the extent possible, both individual and institutional conflicts of interest.

Policies alone are not sufficient to protect an institution from conflicts of interest. Institutional compliance toward these policies and dedication toward establishing processes by which to identify, resolve, or eliminate institutional conflicts of interest are necessary. Institutions and their respective boards of trustees should be prepared to address sensitive situations when a supervisor, executive leader, or trustee is identified as contributing to an institutional conflict of interest and be prepared to direct specific actions to resolve such conflict. In this regard, it would be prudent for governance to establish an institutional conflicts of interest committee with sufficient authority to manage or eliminate perceived or real conflicts of interest affecting the institution.

The Case of Dr. Oz: Ethics, Evidence, and Does Professional Self-Regulation Work?

Jon Tilburt, Megan Allyse, and Frederic Hafferty
AMA Journal of Ethics
February 2017, Volume 19, Number 2: 199-206.

Abstract

Dr. Mehmet Oz is widely known not just as a successful media personality donning the title “America’s Doctor®,” but, we suggest, also as a physician visibly out of step with his profession. A recent, unsuccessful attempt to censure Dr. Oz raises the issue of whether the medical profession can effectively self-regulate at all. It also raises concern that the medical profession’s self-regulation might be selectively activated, perhaps only when the subject of professional censure has achieved a level of public visibility. We argue here that the medical profession must look at itself with a healthy dose of self-doubt about whether it has sufficient knowledge of or handle on the less visible Dr. “Ozes” quietly operating under the profession’s presumptive endorsement.

The information is here.

The Public’s Distrust of Biotech Is Deepening. Commercialization May Be to Blame.

Jim Kozubek
undark.org
Originally published November 3, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

The high profile patent battle over the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, often valued commercially at a billion dollars, and the FDA approval of the first genetically modified medicine for $475,000 — a sale price that is 19 times the cost to manufacture it — have displayed the capacity for turning taxpayer-funded research into an aggressive money-making enterprise. More personally, genetics are being used to typify people for cancer risk and age-related diseases, schizophrenia, autism, and intelligence, none of which truly belong to diagnostic categories.

It is therefore no surprise that parents may want to protect their newborns from becoming targets of commercialization.

In truth, genome sequencing is an extension of earlier commercial sequencing tests and standard newborn screening tests. BabySeq has expanded these to 166 genes, which can theoretically predict thousands of disorders and identify several genetic risk variants. For instance, it has identified a dozen newborns to have a genetic variant associated with biotinidase deficiency, which can impact cognition, and be fixed by taking a simple vitamin. Casie Genetti, a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, noted researchers found 109 of 125 babies had at least one, and up to six, genetic variants for an autosomal recessive disorder, meaning that if they went on to have children with a partner who had a corresponding gene compromised in a similar way, it could be damaging or life-threatening for their own baby.

Part of the problem is that we all have some measure of genetic variation, and that can be either dangerous or advantageous depending on the cell type or genetic background or environment.

The article is here.

The Dark Side of Morality: Group Polarization and Moral-Belief Formation

Marcus Arvan
University of Tampa

Most of us are accustomed to thinking of morality in a positive light. Morality, we say, is a matter of “doing good” and treating ourselves and each other “rightly.” However, moral beliefs and discourse also plausibly play a role in group polarization, the tendency of social groups to divide into progressively more extreme factions, each of which regards other groups to be “wrong.” Group polarization often occurs along moral lines, and is known to have many disturbing effects, increasing racial prejudice among the already moderately prejudiced, leading group decisions to be more selfish, competitive, less trusting, and less altruistic than individual decisions, eroding public trust, leading juries to impose more severe punishments in trial, generating more extreme political decisions, and contributing to war, genocide, and other violent behavior.

This paper argues that three empirically-supported theories of group polarization predict that polarization is likely caused in substantial part by a conception of morality that I call the Discovery Model—a model which holds moral truths exist to be discovered through moral intuition, moral reasoning, or some other process.

The paper is here.

Who Oversees The President's Ethics?

Alina Selyukh and Lucia Maffei
Maine Public
Originally published March 27, 2017

President Trump continues to own hundreds of businesses around the world, and he has staffed his administration with wealthy people who have ties to a complex web of companies. Those financial entanglements have prompted government ethics experts to raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

They are worried that this president is violating the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars elected officials from benefiting from foreign governments. Also, in various legal filings and lawsuits, they have raised questions about whether the financial interests of the president and his appointees may be influencing public policy.

As NPR and other media outlets continue to cover these concerns and conflicts of interest, a question frequently arises: Who oversees the ethics of the president and other high-ranking officials? Who has the power to investigate or enforce ethics rules and laws?

The answer can be as entangled as the government bureaucracies involved. Of course, the media, whistleblowers and the courts are key elements of the accountability ecosystem. A number of agencies or government bodies also have a hand in holding presidents and appointees accountable on ethics and conflicts of interest. But a few play an outsize role — though only some of them have direct purview over the activities of the president.

Below is a reference sheet.

The article is here.

Informed Consent in Organ Donation and Abandonment of the Dead-Donor Rule

Matthew Phillip Mead
Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics 3 (2): 47–56.

Abstract

There has been considerable discussion regarding the ethics of organ transplantation and the dead-donor rule (DDR). Much of the medical and philosophical literature reveals inherent difficulties in definitions of death and the appropriate time to begin organ procurement. In this essay, an argument is presented for abandoning the DDR and switching to a practice in which donors are informed of the conditions under which their organs will be removed, rather than the current practice of requiring a declaration of death. Informed organ donation consent (IODC) would allow for greater transparency in the organ procurement process and alleviate many of the ethical concerns raised in the literature today surrounding these practices. This has the potential to improve public trust of organ procurement and increase the numbers of donors.

The article is here.

The Ethics of Large-Scale Genomic Research

Benjamin E. Berkman, Zachary E. Shapiro, Lisa Eckstein, Elizabeth R. Pike
Chapter in Ethical Reasoning in Big Data
Part of the series Computational Social Sciences pp 53-69

Abstract

The potential for big data to advance our understanding of human disease has been particularly heralded in the field of genomics. Recent technological advances have accelerated the massive data generation capabilities of genomic research, which has allowed researchers to undertake larger scale genomic research, with significantly more participants, further spurring the generation of massive amounts of data. The advance of technology has also triggered a significant reduction in cost, allowing large-scale genomic research to be increasingly feasible, even for smaller research sites. The rise of genetic research has triggered the creation of many large-scale genomic repositories (LSGRs) some of which contain the genomic information of millions of research participants. While LSGRs have genuine potential, they also have raised a number of ethical concerns. Most prominently, commentators have raised questions about the privacy implications of LSGRs, given that all genomic data is theoretically re-identifiable. Privacy can be further threatened by the possibility of aggregation of data sets, which can give rise to unexpected, and potentially sensitive, information. Beyond privacy concerns, LSGRs also raise questions about participant autonomy, public trust in research, and justice. In this chapter, we explore these ethical challenges, with the goal of elucidating which ones require closer scrutiny and perhaps policy action. Our analysis suggests that caution is warranted before any major policies are implemented. Much attention has been directed at privacy concerns raised by LSGRs, but perhaps for the wrong reasons, and perhaps at the expense of other relevant concerns. We do not think that there is yet sufficient evidence to motivate enactment of major policy changes in order to safeguard welfare interests, although there might be some stronger reasons to worry about subjects’ non-welfare interests. We also believe that LSGRs raise genuine concerns about autonomy and justice. Big data research, and LSGRs in particular, have the potential to radically advance our understanding of human disease. While these new research resources raise important ethical concerns, any policies implemented concerning LSGRs should be carefully tailored to ensure that research is not unduly burdened.

The abstract to the book chapter is here.

You may want to contact the author for a copy for personal use.

Utah hiring crisis team to manage health data breach

Personal Data: Health Agency ramps up efforts to help victims, rebuild public trust

By Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune

Originally published May 14, 2012

The state of Utah is hiring a public relations firm to handle "crisis communications" in the wake of a health data breach that put the personal information of 780,000 people at risk.

The contract will be short-lived and will cost between $100,000 and $200,000, according to a solicitation published on May 11.

It calls for building a communications plan to "rebuild trust with the public, specifically those who were directly impacted by the breach and those who rely on the [Utah Department of Health] for critical health services."

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this lead.

Research misconduct in the UK: Time to Act

By Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief, and Elizabeth Wager, Chair
British Medical Journal

Research misconduct can harm patients, distort the evidence base, misdirect research effort, waste funds, and damage public trust in science. Countries all over the developed world are now recognising the need to set up systems to deter, detect, and investigate research misconduct. Why does the United Kingdom have no plans to do the same?

As Aniket Tavare outlines in the linked feature (doi:10.1136/ bmj.d8212), high profile cases of misconduct have led the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Poland, among others, to create formal mechanisms for overseeing research integrity. In most countries responsibility lies with the institutions, but oversight varies greatly, and it is unclear which systems are most effective and efficient. None is perfect—the remit of the US Office of Research Integrity is limited to publicly funded health research; Australia’s recently established Research Integrity Committee is already being criticised for lacking teeth. But each system shows that the problem has been acknowledged, that institutions accept primary responsibility, and that governments and funders are seriously committed to tackling misconduct openly and with a range of statutory powers.

In contrast, the UK has no official national body. The UK Research Integrity Office was established in 2006 and has done some useful things. But its function has always been advisory, and now that the major funders represented by Research Councils UK (RCUK) have decided not to continue the funding, it relies on voluntary funding from institutions. The Research Integrity Futures Working Group, set up by RCUK and Universities UK (UUK) and other bodies, has also apparently come to nothing. The working group’s report commissioned in 2009 called for an independent advisory body, similar to the

UK Research Integrity Office but operating across all research sectors and with a stronger monitoring and preventive function. But RCUK pleaded budget cuts and decided not to implement the  recommendations.  It says it is working with UUK on a “concordat” to take some aspects forward, but two years on nothing has been announced.

The entire editorial can be found in the public domain.

BMJ 2012;344:d8357 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d8357