...“Super People,” the writer James Atlas has called them—the
stereotypical ultra-high-achieving elite college students of today.
A
double major, a sport, a musical instrument, a couple of foreign
languages, service work in distant corners of the globe, a few hobbies
thrown in for good measure: They have mastered them all, and with a
serene self-assurance that leaves adults and peers alike in awe. A
friend who teaches at a top university once asked her class to memorize
30 lines of the eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope. Nearly every
single kid got every single line correct.
It was a thing of wonder, she
said, like watching thoroughbreds circle a track.
These
enviable youngsters appear to be the winners in the race we have made
of childhood.
But the reality is very different, as I have witnessed in
many of my own students and heard from the hundreds of young people whom
I have spoken with on campuses or who have written to me over the last
few years.
Our system of elite education manufactures young people who
are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and
lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose:
trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction,
great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it...
A 1975 image of smallpox. Two
of six vials of smallpox stored at the National Institutes of Health
since 1954 contained live virus capable of infecting people, it was
announced Friday.CDC, via Associated Press
After
potentially serious back-to-back laboratory accidents, federal health
officials announced Friday that they had temporarily closed the flu and
anthrax laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta and halted shipments of all infectious agents from the
agency’s highest-security labs.
The
accidents, and the C.D.C.’s emphatic response to them, could have
important consequences for the many laboratories that store high-risk
agents and the few that, even more controversially, specialize in making
them more dangerous for research purposes.
If
the C.D.C. — which the agency’s director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, called
“the reference laboratory to the world” — had multiple accidents that
could, in theory, have killed both staff members and people outside,
there will undoubtedly be calls for stricter controls on other
university, military and private laboratories.
In one episode last month, at least 62 C.D.C. employees may have been exposed to
live anthrax bacteria after potentially infectious samples were sent to
laboratories unequipped to handle them. Employees not wearing
protective gear worked with bacteria that were supposed to have been
killed but may not have been. All were offered a vaccine and
antibiotics, and the agency said it believed no one was in danger.
In
a second accident, disclosed Friday, a C.D.C. lab accidentally
contaminated a relatively benign flu sample with a dangerous H5N1 bird
flu strain that has killed 386 people since 2003. Fortunately, a United
States Agriculture Department laboratory realized that the strain was
more dangerous than expected and alerted the C.D.C.
All
the samples will be destroyed as soon as the genomes of the virus in
them can be sequenced. The N.I.H. will scour its freezers and storerooms
for other dangerous material, he said.
“These
events revealed totally unacceptable behavior,” Dr. Frieden said. “They
should never have happened. I’m upset, I’m angry, I’ve lost sleep over
this, and I’m working on it until the issue is resolved.”
The
anthrax and flu labs will remain closed until new procedures are
imposed, Dr. Frieden said. For the flu lab, that will be finished in
time for vaccine preparation for next winter’s flu season, he said.
Dr.
William Schaffner, the head of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt
University’s medical school, said he thought all American labs should
stop shipping all hazardous agents until they have reviewed their safety
procedures. Although there is no obvious way to force them to do that,
he said, the federal grants that most labs depend on “could be the
stick.”
Dr.
Frieden himself suggested that the accidents had implications for labs
beyond his agency, arguing that the world needs to reduce to absolute
minimums the number of labs handling dangerous agents, the number of
staff members involved and the number of agents circulating.
Scientists
doing the most controversial work — efforts to make pathogens more
lethal or more transmissible — say the research helps predict mutations
that might arise in nature so that vaccines can be created. But other
scientists feel that creating superstrains is unacceptably dangerous
because lab accidents are more common than is often acknowledged, as Dr.
Frieden’s announcement indicated.
The revelations at the C.D.C. renewed calls for a moratorium by opponents of such “gain of function” research.
“This
has been a nonstop series of bombshells, and this news about
contamination with H5N1 is just incredible,” said Peter Hale, founder of
the Foundation for Vaccine Research, which lobbies for more funding for
vaccines but opposes “gain of function” research. “You can have all the
safety procedures in the world, but you can’t provide for human error.”
At
the C.D.C. itself, Dr. Frieden said, staff members who knowingly failed
to follow procedures or who failed to report dangerous incidents will
be disciplined. A committee of experts will be convened to revise
procedures.
In
the flu-related incident, a C.D.C. lab accidentally contaminated a
sample of less-dangerous H9N2 bird flu, which it was preparing for
shipment to an Agriculture Department laboratory, with the H5N1 bird flu
strain.
Though
the contamination was discovered on May 23, Dr. Frieden said that he
was dismayed to discover that senior C.D.C. officials were not informed
until July 7, and that he was told only 48 hours ago.
Nonetheless,
he said, “we have a high degree of confidence that no one was exposed.”
The flu material was handled in high-biosafety-level labs in both
agencies, and the workers wore breathing apparatuses.
In theory, the flu-related accident could have been much worse than the anthrax one.
Anthrax
can kill those who inhale it, but is not normally transmitted between
humans, so an infected laboratory worker presumably could not have gone
home and passed it on. H5N1 bird flu has killed about 60 percent of
those known to have caught it, almost always after contact with poultry.
Although it does not easily jump from person to person, it is thought
to have done so several times.
The
anthrax episode took place on June 5 in the agency’s bioterrorism rapid
response lab as part of testing a new mass spectrometry method.
The
new C.D.C. report found several errors: A scientist used a dangerous
anthrax strain when a safer one would have sufficed, had not read
relevant studies and used an unapproved chemical killing method.
The
error was discovered by accident. The door to an autoclave that would
have sterilized samples taken for safety tests was stuck, so they were
left in an incubator for days longer than normal. Only then did a lab
technician notice that bacteria believed to be dead were growing.
Later
tests done at the C.D.C. and at a Michigan State Health Department lab
as part of the investigation confirmed that the chemical method would
have killed any live, growing anthrax in the samples that were sent out,
but might not have killed all spores, which are surrounded by a hard
shell and can also be lethal.
Although
anthrax terrifies laymen, “when you work with it day in and day out,
you can get a little careless,” Dr. Frieden said. “The culture of safety
needs to improve at some C.D.C. laboratories.”
Two UC San Diego women’s rowing coaches are accused of providing prescription drugs to student-athletes and other unethical behavior, according to a statement released by the NCAA Division II Committee on Infractions on Tuesday.
The former coaches are accused of provided prescription drugs to students and knowingly allowing ineligible student-athletes to participate in rowing. Both coaches also lied about the incident when questioned by ethics officers, according to NCAA.
NCAA does not name the coaches in their statement, but the UCSD website shows that Pattie Pinkerton served as head coach during the time accused.
“The University of California, San Diego failed to monitor its women’s rowing program and two of the coaches acted unethically,” the NCAA statement read.
The former head coach allegedly provided a prescription anti-inflammatory drug to six student-athletes more than 20 times between 2010-2012. The NCAA also claims that the coach told student-athletes not to talk about the drugs provided, and also directed students where to obtain the anti-inflammatory on their own.
The statement also claims at least five women’s rowing student-athletes practiced, competed or traveled with the team while ineligible at the direction of Pinkerton. The former assistant coach was also allegedly aware of the misconduct.
Penalties for the coaches include public reprimand, a year of probation and a fine. In addition, Pinkerton is restricted from athletically related duties for three years if she is employed by a NCAA school. The unnamed assistant head coach would have to attend NCAA Regional Rules seminar if employed by an NCAA school.
The results from 2010-2012 for the women’s rowing team at UCSD will also be dropped, according to NCAA.v
UCSD issued a statement Tuesday, saying they worked with the NCAA throughout the investigation and regret the violations.
"We have instituted additional checks and balances to ensure adherence to NCAA rules, and will be better as a result of the steps taken to ensure a situation of this nature does not occur again," the statement read. "Some of our changes include amending the reporting structure for spring sport supervision in order to enhance monitoring and ensure compliance, as well as adding bystander intervention education for our assistant coaches and student-athletes."
