A three-part investigative series by The Baltimore Sun looks at the drug buprenorphine which is now being commonly prescribed to addicts to help them kick their addictions. It has shown great promise with opiate addictions by curbing withdrawal symptoms. But in plentiful supply, it is now showing up on the streets where abusers are using [...]
Archive for December, 2007
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Alleged doping aligns with boosts in stats, paychecks
December 17th, 2007 
rescntr Ben Poston, Derrick Nunnally and Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel built a database of every player named in the Mitchell Report. The reporters analyzed statistical performance before and after the players allegedly began taking drugs and found that more than half the 90 players named in the report showed an improvement in performance [...]
Cheating rampant on Army exams
December 17th, 2007 rescntr Bryan Bender and Kevin Baron of The Boston Globe spent five-months investigating the Army’s testing program “which verifies that soldiers have learned certain military skills and helps them amass promotion points.” Cheating had been suspected since 1999, but the Army did not acknowledge the problem until June 2007. The Globe‘s investigation learned that the Army [...]
Rural business loans lead to huge losses for USDA
December 14th, 2007 rescntr Gilbert Gaul continued with The Washington Post‘s investigation of the USDA’s farm subsidy loan program and found many shortcomings. Small companies that go out of business often default on their loans; since the 1970s, the loan program has seen nearly $1.5 billion in losses. Gaul used individual examples of USDA loans to illustrate broader problems [...]
College bowl system lines pockets
December 14th, 2007 rescntr Brent Schrotenboer of The San Diego Union-Tribune dissected the college football bowl system to reveal the lucrative financial structure that helps explain the system’s staying power. The investigation checked IRS records for 19 current bowl games to find that net assets grew by 85 percent from 2001-2005, up from $3.4 million to $6.3 million The [...]
Mood-altering drugs prescribed frequently to foster kids
December 13th, 2007 rescntr Gary Craig from the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle investigated the growing use of mood-altering prescription drugs among youth in foster care and uncovered cases of children as young as one year old being prescribed psychotropic drugs. The investigation revealed many trends in the prescribing of these drugs, and disturbing statistics about their prevalence in [...]
Insiders profit from FDA’s Fast Track
December 10th, 2007 rescntr A seven-month investigation by The Plain Dealer‘s Joel Rutchick and Brie Zeltner into the FDA’s Fast Track drug review program has proven benefits to investors while doing little or nothing to speed up the availability of new medical treatments, compared to expedited review options that already existed before the drug industry lobbied to create Fast [...]
Lives saved but valuables lost at Denver Health
December 7th, 2007 rescntr An investigation by Deborah Sherman of KUSA-Denver looked into the problem of personal property lost at Denver Health. In addition to personal affects such as purses, identification and clothing, the lost items also included a prosthetic eye and dentures. In 2006, 368 pieces of property were reported missing from the Denver Health ER. A hospital [...]
Danger of common chemical downplayed
December 7th, 2007 rescntr In a second installment of “Chemical Fallout,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak found that the chemical industry has funded much of the science claiming that the popular chemical bisphenol A is safe. The reporters built a database of 258 scientific studies spanning 20 years of research into the chemical [...]
Emergency response times lagging in Ohio’s Delaware County
December 7th, 2007 rescntr An investigation by Paul Aker of WBNS in Columbus, Ohio, shows that Delaware County’s emergency response times fall short of the industry standard. The National Fire Protection Association’s voluntary guidelines call for processing 99 percent of calls within 90 seconds. In Delaware County, the 911 center’s interim director told Aker he wants to see dispatches [...]
