May 13, 2015
Once, California had abundant water and few recognized the challenge of global warming. . Governor Brown, recognizing that it is impossible to simply roll back the clock on these problems, is leading California to confront this changed reality with enormous efforts that have uncertain outcomes. But there is one problem in which the governor could roll back the clock to when California worked better: higher education.
Once, California’s three sector system of higher education – its Community Colleges, California State University, and the University of California – formed a high quality integrated system of accessible opportunity in which any California student could find an appropriate seat to advance their dreams. California had the best higher education system in the world, while it cost the state less, per student, than other states spent on higher education. And the system’s graduates built California.
Now, after years of budget cuts and privatization, students are paying more for less. The combination of high costs, increasing out-of-state students, and muddled Legislative policy is forcing students out of UC into CSU and the Community Colleges, which are, in turn, forcing the Community Colleges’ traditional students in to for-profit “colleges” that cost taxpayers billions and leave students with nothing but debt.
May 12, 2015
Last Thursday, the UCSF Library we released over 16,000 previously confidential RJ Reynolds documents on LTDL.
In addition, they have moved the new IDDL site out of beta (note the new URL minus the "beta" - https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/). and will retire the old LTDL and DIDA sites in June. Please give us your continued feedback on the new site - we want to make this site as usable and robust as possible but we can't do that without your input.
Rachel Taketa
Industry Documents Projects
UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management
415-514-1796
[email protected]
May 12, 2015
Lorillard Tobacco's Jonathan Heck is one of the industry's leading experts on menthol, was appointed by the FDA to serve on it's Tobacco Products Scientific Committee, and is a primary author of the industry's submission to the FDA that argues that menthol is harmless.
Daniel Stevens and I just published a short paper in Tobacco Control's Industry Watch section pointing out that Heck used his employees to help him answer questions on his recertification exam as a toxicologist. The official at the American Board of Toxicology who later said this was ok, Wallace Hayes, was a vice president at RJ Reynolds.
The FDA needs to do a better job of investigating the ethics of the people it puts on TPSAC. It (and the courts) also has to consider such ethical breaches when deciding how much credence to give industry submissions in regulatory (and judicial) proceedings.
You can read the paper here.
May 9, 2015
This week a new comedy staring James Marsden and Jack Black opened. The review of the movie in the San Francisco Chronicle included a still from the movie clearly showing Marsden smoking a cigarette (top photo) but the ads for the movie and its official website show the same image (albiet with some photoshopping of the background and Black's jacket) of the two actors (bottom photo), this time with a toothpick in Marsden's mouth.
What's going on?
May 6, 2015
Several people have emailed me asking what I think about the summary of Mitch Zeller's comments at the SFATA conference published by Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog on May 5, 2015: