Security breach at North Shore Univ. Hospital

By Sarah Wallace
WABC-TV New York
Originally published on April 11, 2012

Eyewitness News has an exclusive investigation into a major security breach at one of the area's largest hospitals.


Eyewitness News has learned that patients at North Shore University Hospital have been notified that their private health records, including social security numbers and insurance information, have been stolen.
New York State Police are saying this is an ongoing and widespread probe.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.

Protecting Psychologists Who Harm: The APA's Latest Wrong Turn

By Roy Eidelson
Truth-out.org
Opinion

Shortly after learning about the American Psychological Association's (APA) late February announcement of its new Member-Initiated Task Force to Reconcile Policies Related to Psychologists' Involvement in National Security Settings, I found my thoughts turning to the School of the Americas, Blackwater and perhaps even more surprisingly, the Patagonian toothfish. Those may seem like a strange threesome, but they share one important thing in common. All have undergone a thorough repackaging and renaming in a marketing effort aimed at obscuring - but not altering - some ugly truth.

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What can annulment of the PENS Report accomplish? First, annulment will serve to indisputably repudiate the illegitimate process by which the military-intelligence establishment took control over the core ethics of psychology as a profession. Second, annulment will set the stage for a long-overdue transparent, broad-based and independent examination - by psychologists, by human rights advocates, by national security experts and by ethicists - of whether or not it is ethical for psychologists to serve in aggressive operational roles in national security settings. More than a decade has passed since the attacks of 9/11, yet this fundamental question has never been honestly and openly addressed. Indeed, the PENS Report was strategically designed to take this question off the table - by offering the mere pretense of meaningful discussion and debate.

The entire story is here.

A blog post referencing the member-initiated task force is here.

A blog post referencing the PENS report is here.

Baptist Blogger Accuses SBC Ethics Agency Head of Plagiarism

By Greg Horton
ethicsdaily.com
Originally published April 16, 2012

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been accused of plagiarism by a Baptist blogger.

Aaron Weaver, a doctoral student at Baylor University, posted a partial transcript of Land's March 31 radio show in which Land quoted liberally from a March 29 Washington Times column written by Jeffrey Kuhner without attributing the quotes to him.

Land used Kuhner's material about Trayvon Martin, the media and racism on his radio show – Richard Land Live! – often quoting entire paragraphs without attribution.

The entire post is here.

Growing up drugged

For the first time ever, millions of today's adults were raised on psychotropic medications. What does that mean?

By Kaitlin Bell Barnett
Salon.com
Originally published April 7, 2012

Here are some exerpts:

For the first time in history, millions of young Americans are in a position not unlike Andrew’s: they have grown up taking psychotropic medications that have shaped their experiences and relationships, their emotions and personalities and, perhaps most fundamentally, their very sense of themselves. In “Listening to Prozac,” psychiatrist Peter Kramer’s best-selling meditation on the drug’s wide-ranging impact on personality, Kramer said that “medication rewrites history.” He was referring to the way people interpret their personal histories once they have begun medication; what they thought was set in stone was now open to reevaluation. What, then, is medication’s effect on young people, for whom there is much less history to rewrite? Kramer published his book in 1993, at a time of feverish — and, I think, somewhat excessive — excitement about Prozac and the other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants, or SSRIs, that quickly followed on its heels and were heralded as revolutionary treatments for a variety of psychiatric problems.

For most people, I suspect, medications are perhaps less like a total rewriting of the past than a palimpsest. They reshape some of one’s interpretations about oneself and one’s life but allow traces of experience and markers of identity to remain. The earlier in life the drugs are begun, the fewer and fainter those traces and markers are likely to be. All told, the psychopharmacological revolution of the last quarter century has had a vast impact on the lives and outlook of my generation — the first generation to grow up taking psychotropic medications. It is therefore vital for us to look at how medication has changed what it feels like to grow up and to become an adult.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Tom Fink for this information.

Military's increased use of medications under fire

Army has seen eightfold increase since 2005
by Kim Murphy
The Los Angeles Times
Originally published April 8, 2012

U.S. Air Force pilot Patrick Burke’s day started in the cockpit of a B-1B bomber near the Persian Gulf and proceeded across nine time zones as he ferried the aircraft home to South Dakota.

Every four hours during the 19-hour flight, Burke swallowed a tablet of Dexedrine, the prescribed amphetamine known as “go pills.” After landing, he went out for dinner and drinks with a fellow crewman. They were driving back to Ellsworth Air Force Base when Burke began striking his friend in the head.

“Jack Bauer told me this was going to happen – you guys are trying to kidnap me!” he yelled, as if he were a character in the TV show “24.”

When the woman giving them a lift pulled the car over, Burke leaped on her and wrestled her to the ground. “Me and my platoon are looking for terrorists,” he told her before grabbing her keys, driving away and crashing into a guardrail.

Burke was charged with auto theft, drunken driving and two counts of assault. But in October, a court-martial judge found the young lieutenant not guilty “by reason of lack of mental responsibility” – the almost unprecedented equivalent, at least in modern-day military courts, of an insanity acquittal.

The entire story is here.

Court Upends 9-Year Fight on Housing Mentally Ill

By Mosi Secret

The New York Times

Originally published April 6, 2012

A federal appeals court, ruling on procedural grounds, struck down on Friday a judge’s order that New York State transfer thousands of mentally ill adults in New York City from institutional group homes into their own homes and apartments. In doing so, the court brought a nine-year legal battle to an abrupt end without resolving the underlying issues of how the state cares for such patients.

Though the lower court judge had ruled the current system violated federal law by warehousing people with mental illness in far more restrictive conditions than necessary, the appellate panel said the nonprofit organization that began the litigation, Disability Advocates, did not have legal standing to sue.

The panel, comprising three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, acknowledged that its decision essentially reset the long-running battle to its starting point.

The entire story is here.

2 Former Kaplan Employees Settle Lawsuit and Withdraw Whistle-Blower Case

By Goldie Blumenstyk
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published on April 11, 2012

Two former employees of a Kaplan-owned college in Pennsylvania who alleged in a 2006 federal whistle-blower lawsuit that the company had falsified graduation and job-placement rates and had paid illegal bonuses to student recruiters have withdrawn their suit. The two also reached a settlement with Kaplan on an employment-discrimination claim alleging that the company had fired them in retaliation for saying they would report wrongdoing.

The terms of the settlement are confidential.

The entire story is here.

WellCare Health Plans whistle-blower to receive about $21 million

By Jeff Harrington

Tampa Bay Times

Originally published on April 4, 2012

Whistle-blower Sean Hellein will receive nearly $21 million for triggering a successful federal inquiry into Medicare and Medicaid fraud at his former Tampa employer, WellCare Health Plans.

Hellein in late February withdrew his objections to a pending $137.5 million civil settlement with WellCare. But the size of his payout was unclear until Tuesday, when U.S. Attorney Robert O'Neill announced the settlement of all four lawsuits initiated by whistle-blowers.

The entire story is here.

Tenet to pay almost $43 million to settle false claims

Reuters

Originally published April 10, 2012

Tenet Healthcare Corp has agreed to pay almost $43 million to settle allegations that it overbilled the federal Medicare healthcare program for treating patients at certain rehabilitation facilities, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

The entire story is here.