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BERLIN (AP) ? The German manufacturer of a notorious drug that caused thousands of babies to be born with shortened arms and legs, or no limbs at all, issued its first ever apology Friday ? 50 years after pulling the drug off the market.
Gruenenthal Group's chief executive said the company wanted to apologize to mothers who took the drug during the 1950s and 1960s and to their children who suffered congenital birth defects as a result.
"We ask for forgiveness that for nearly 50 years we didn't find a way of reaching out to you from human being to human being," Harald Stock said. "We ask that you regard our long silence as a sign of the shock that your fate caused in us."
Stock spoke in the west German city of Stolberg, where the company is based, during the unveiling of a bronze statue symbolizing a child born without limbs because of thalidomide. The statue is called "the sick child" ? a name German victims group object to since all the victims are now adults. In German, the name also implies cure.
The drug is a powerful sedative and was sold under the brand name Contergan in Germany. It was given to pregnant women mostly to combat morning sickness, but led to a wave of birth defects in Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan. Thalidomide was yanked from the market in 1961 and was also found to cause defects in the eyes, ears, heart, genitals and internal organs of developing babies.
Thalidomide was never approved for use in pregnant women in the United States.
Freddie Astbury, of Liverpool, England, was born without arms or legs after his mother took thalidomide. The 52-year-old said the apology was years long overdue.
"It's a disgrace that it's taken them 50 years to apologize," said Astbury, of the Thalidomide U.K. agency, an advocacy group for survivors. "I'm gobsmacked (astounded)," he said. "For years, (Gruenenthal) have insisted they never did anything wrong and refused to talk to us."
Astbury said the drug maker should apologize not just to the people affected, but to their families. He also said the company should offer compensation. "It's time to put their money where their mouth is," he said. "For me to drive costs about 50,000 pounds ($79,000) for a car with all the adaptations," he said. "A lot of us depend on specialist care and that runs into the millions."
Astbury said he and other U.K. survivors have received some money over the years from a trust set up by thalidomide's British distributor but that Gruenenthal has never agreed to settle.
"We invite them to sit around the table with us to see how far their apology will go," he said. "I don't think they've ever realized the impact they've had on peoples' lives."
Gruenenthal settled a lawsuit in Germany in 1972 ? 11 years after stopping sales of the drug ? and voiced its regret to the victims. But for decades, the company refused to admit liability, saying it had conducted all necessary clinical trial required at the time.
Stock reiterated that position Friday, insisting that "the suffering that occurred with Contergan 50 years ago happened in a world that is completely different from today" and the pharmaceutical industry had learned a valuable lesson from the incident.
"When it developed Contergan Gruenenthal acted on the basis of the available scientific knowledge at the time and met all the industry standards for the testing of new drugs that were known in the 1950s and 1960s," he said.
A German victims group rejected the company's apology as too little, too late.
"The apology as such doesn't help us deal with our everyday life," said Ilonka Stebritz, a spokeswoman for the Association of Contergan Victims. "What we need are other things."
Stebritz said that the 1970 settlement in Germany led to the creation of a ?150 million fund for some 3,000 German victims, but that with a normal life expectancy of 85 years the money wasn't enough. In many other countries, victims are still waiting for compensation from Gruenenthal or its local distributors.
In July, an Australian woman born without arms and legs after her mother took thalidomide reached a multimillion dollar settlement with the drug's British distributor. Gruenenthal refused to settle. The lawsuit was part of a class action and more than 100 other survivors expect to have their claims heard in the next year.
Attorneys for Lynette Rowe said in a statement released Saturday that Grunenthal's apology rang hollow.
"To suggest that its long silence before today ought to be put down to 'silent shock' on its part is insulting nonsense," the statement reads. "For 50 years Grunenthal has been engaged in a calculated corporate strategy to avoid the moral, legal and financial consequences of its reckless and negligent actions of the 1950s and 1960s."
Thalidomide is still sold today, but as a treatment for multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer and leprosy. It is also being studied to see if it might be useful for other conditions including AIDS, arthritis and other cancers.
___
Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London and Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-drug-firm-makes-1st-apology-thalidomide-161625770--finance.html
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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) ? Hours after a judge ordered the Golden Nugget Atlantic City to let gamblers cash in nearly $1 million worth of chips they won in a card game where the decks were unshuffled, the casino's owner overruled his lawyers Friday and agreed to make the payments.
The judge's decision drew an angry reaction from casino officials, who called it "an ambush" and vowed to file an appeal first thing Tuesday morning.
But Tilman Fertitta, the Texas billionaire who owns the Golden Nugget, said he decided to pay the winners to make the whole thing go away.
"Without question, the mini-baccarat game that took place on April 30, 2012, allowed $10 bettors to realize a gambler's dream and enabled them to beat the house out of $1.5 million," he said. "Even though we can appeal the court's ruling and take full advantage of the appellate process and legal system, and tie the matter up in litigation for a number of years, the Golden Nugget is a people business, and is prepared to allow the gamblers ? most of whom continue to gamble at Golden Nugget ? to realize the gambler's dream of beating the house."
The casino also will let gamblers keep more than a half-million dollars it already paid them from the same disputed games.
"I wasn't cheating," one of the gamblers, 51-year-old Michael Cho of Ellicott City, Md., said after the judge's ruling. "I didn't do anything illegal. It wasn't right for them to get the money."
The dispute stems from numerous games of mini-baccarat held at the casino earlier this year. Unbeknownst to either the players or the casino, the cards put into use for the games were not shuffled as their manufacturer, Gemaco Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., had promised.
Over a speakerphone in the judge's chambers, the company's attorney, Jeffrey Mazzola, acknowledged the company had erred.
"There was a mistake made at the Gemaco facility, which we freely admitted," he told the judge. "This was a one-time, isolated mistake, but it occurred. It's supposed to be a game of chance. It changed from a game of chance to a windfall for the individual players. What we have now is individual players coming to the court asking for a free payday based on a mistake that took place."
Lawyers for the Golden Nugget said the pattern of cards became apparent to players, who had been wagering $10 a hand and suddenly upped their bets to $5,000 a hand. The cards did not come out of the chute in numerical order, such as 2-3-4-5. Rather, they came out in a predetermined pattern that the manufacturer lists as a proprietary secret, the attorneys said.
But it did become obvious to the players.
"Anybody could see that ? that was the dream we all look for," Cho said.
But Cho said he and the other gamblers still faced risk because they had no idea how long the pattern would endure. It lasted at least 41 hands, during which the players won more than $1.5 million. Despite its suspicion that a sophisticated cheating operation was under way, the casino did not stop the games.
"We took a chance on every hand we bet, that it wouldn't change," he said. "We didn't know if it was going to change. That's called gambling."
The Golden Nugget had sought a ruling barring the gamblers from cashing in more than $977,000 worth of chips they won from the game but still have in their possession. The casino also wanted the judge to order the return of more than $500,000 in winnings it paid out to some of the winners immediately after the games.
The judge denied both requests, saying there will be time to address those issues as the lawsuits filed by both sides come to trial. He agreed that the gamblers did nothing wrong, and even though they discerned a pattern, the judge said there was no guarantee it would not change at any moment. Fertitta said the payments to the gamblers would occur on the condition that both sides dropped litigation against the other.
"It was a rigged game," casino attorney Louis Barbone said. "We walked in that day believing everything was on the up-and-up. We walked out $1.5 million in the hole."
The casino claims the vendor's failure to shuffle the cards made them "defective" and in violation of state gambling regulations mandating fair odds for both the casino and its customers.
Fertitta said the proper course for Golden Nugget to recoup its losses was through litigation with the card manufacturer.
"We have a company we can go back against that has admitted fault," he said. "But that's our problem."
___
Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
Source: http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/national/AC-casino-to-pay-winners-in-unshuffled-card-case_29983107
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| Home | Apple Stock | Tracked Sites | TechNN | | E-Mail | Sherlock Plugin Close Left Panel | Login | Subscribe to MacSurfer's Headline News Poll | Most Popular | Talking Heads | A Year Ago Today | Checked 4:15 PM; Last Updated 4:15 PM CDT; 21:15 GMT | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| MacLegion 2012 Fall Bundle totals over $514.05 of software for just $49.99. The bundle includes such programs as Data Recovery Guru, MacFamilyTree, PDF Nomad, DiskAid, and FX Photo Studio, among others... Tim Cook, Larry Page in secret meeting. Are they working out a patent agreement, or other business talk? Cast your vote in "Today's Poll..." in the left column below or go straight to the results here. Friday Highlights: Samsung scores victory over Apple in Japan pertaining to music and video syncing between gadgets/servers, but the US win likely signals "fundamental shift in industry innovation", with additional reports in our Apple/Macintosh, and Op/Ed sections; meanwhile, in Germany, Apple vs. Motorola ruling is postponed; and reported talks between Tim Cook and Google's Larry Page are rumored to signal patent detente, or concessions whereby Google licenses proper patents from Apple, but Forbes' Anthony Kosner hopes the truce includes app standards; and in the EU, it appears Apple and publishers are offering antitrust concessions, perhaps heralding the return of cheaper e-books; MacMost shows you how to optimize your OS X dock, while Mactuts+ details methods to change the look of OS X; it seems iPad, more than iPhone, is now what's jazzing consumers; maybe a sign of surrender to the better company, Sony said to mimic Apple's business model; Apple Gazette has a run through of Steve Jobs' most outrageous moments; if iPhone 5 is LTE, this report suggests Verizon will see new customers defecting from AT&T; remember Qualcomm? Apparently they're all settled pertaining to patents, thus are insulated from effects of Apple vs. Samsung; South Africa may finally get the iTunes store!; Sprint fires back at Verizon's sharable data plans in this funny advertisement; Apple readying suppliers for iPad mini display; and the latest, purported, pictures of iPhone 5 have it sandwiched between iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 to show off its design?more in our Hardware/Software section; looks like Sharp is "lagging" in iPhone display production; iPad mini supposedly in iOS App developer logs; Ars Technica ponders how Apple could build a tablet selling for $249 at the same time beating Google's Nexus 7 at its own game; CNET on the one year anniversary lost iPhone prototype; The Verge reports on the phone patent holder juror's saying that our patent system will only change in "court of popular opinion". FRIDAY BLOWOUT: Every NEW or RENEWING paid subscriber receives 2 YEARS FREE.... Today's MacUpdate Promo offers 82% off Strata Design 3D CX & Foto 3D. "Strata Foto 3D combined with Strata Design 3D CX 7 is the premier software suite to create jaw-dropping 3D content from photographs or rendered from the ground up." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There's a reason people don't put gobs of mustard on a hot dog. Mustard plants produce a spicy chemical intended to discourage insects from eating them lest they suffer a bad case of heartburn, and it has essentially the same effect on us.
Now, an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers based at Duke University has figured out why some of those wild mustard plants vary as much as they do in terms of that spice. The variation spells the difference between life and death for the plants in the mountainous Rockies where they live, a place where environmental conditions can change quite significantly over relatively short distances.
The study reported in the August 31 issue of the journal Science is one of very few to successfully follow the genes underlying variation of complex traits in a natural setting back to the evolutionary processes that influenced them.
"We were able to put this story together all the way from the plants in the dirt to the amino acids in the laboratory," said Tom Mitchell-Olds, a professor of biology and member of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. "That's where the challenge came in."
Mitchell-Olds' team studies the wild mustard Boechera stricta. Boechera is their organism of choice because its close relationship to the laboratory plant Arabidopsis offers them technical advantages and because the plants live in areas that have been untouched and unchanged for the last 3,000 years.
The researchers first identified a broad region in the plants' genome that was responsible for differences in their chemical defenses, vulnerability to insects and survival and reproduction in nature. "Technically, we had no idea what this would be," Mitchell-Olds said.
Ultimately, they traced those differences back to two amino acid changes in the enzyme controlling the plants' main spicy ingredient. With sophisticated biochemistry, the researchers discovered that this seemingly slight difference alters the spice-building pathway to produce a different defensive chemical -- different in a way that apparently matters quite a lot to insects. When plants carrying the version of that enzyme normally found in Colorado were planted in Montana, they struggled to survive as insects took their toll. When Montana plants were established in Colorado, they too got hammered by bugs.
While the findings may have some agricultural applications, Mitchell-Olds says he is more interested in understanding natural variation and the evolutionary forces that have shaped that variation over thousands of years.
"We've been able to go to places where the environment is intact, where these genotypes have been sitting around for 3,000 years in the place where they evolved in the first place, and do science," Mitchell-Olds said. "This variation we see reflects history. We finally have the tools to find the genes and to understand their influence on physiology and fitness, and that's pretty cool."
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Duke University: http://www.duke.edu
Thanks to Duke University for this article.
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By Tim Reid
Thu Aug 30, 2012 6:56pm EDT
(Reuters) ? A high-stakes showdown pitting California?s public employee pension fund against Wall Street bond firms in bankrupt San Bernardino, California, could be further complicated by wildly disparate estimates of how much the city owes for its retirees.
San Bernardino, a city of about 210,000 near Los Angeles that filed for bankruptcy on August 1, has listed the California Public Employees? Retirement System (Calpers) as its largest creditor, with unfunded pension obligations totaling $143.3 million. But Calpers, in response to an inquiry from Reuters, pegged the debt at $319.5 million.
Experts say the dramatically different calculations of San Bernardino?s debt to Calpers will likely lead to litigation between the two entities, unless the city quickly agrees to the retirement system?s figure.
Calpers is the largest pension system in the U.S. and serves many California cities and counties, including the city of Stockton, which is also in bankruptcy. It has long argued that pension contributions cannot be touched even in a bankruptcy.
But firms that insure municipal bonds have strenuously objected to the idea that pension payments should come ahead of bond payments. They have already gone to court on the issue in Stockton and are expected to do the same in San Bernardino.
The outcome of how Calpers and bondholders are treated as creditors in the two cities? bankruptcies ? and whether Calpers receives preferential treatment ? will have broad implications for local governments around the country that are struggling to balance their budgets amid soaring employee retirement costs.
The day after San Bernardino?s filing the city?s mayor, Patrick Morris, told Reuters the city was bankrupt because it was buried under pension debt.
San Bernardino?s unfunded obligation to Calpers is the amount the city would have to pay to the organization to cover all current and future pension obligations if the city had to settle those overnight.
At the request of Reuters, Calpers analyzed its database and said that San Bernardino?s unfunded obligations to the agency were more that double the city?s assessment ? $319.5 million.
Calpers?s figure was split between $187.1 million for the pension costs of San Bernardino?s safety workers ? essentially its police and firefighters ? and $132.4 million for the city?s non-safety workforce.
A Calpers official said it appears that San Bernardino had used an ?actuarial? value in determining its unfunded pension obligation, while the pension fund said it uses the current market value to make its calculation.
An actuarial value is a long-term, projected calculation that factors in predicted value of assets, potential future returns on investments and other economic data in determining what a city?s pension obligation will be.
Officials at Calpers insist that the correct method to use for the purposes of the bankruptcy filing is the much higher ?market value? calculation.
Karol Denniston, a San Francisco lawyer who helped draft California?s bankruptcy process law, said whatever method San Bernardino and Calpers used to calculate pension obligations, the fact they are so wildly different spelled trouble.
When it comes to negotiating pension costs during the bankruptcy, Denniston said, ?if Calpers views the number that differently, that is going to be an impediment to any sort of settlement. That claim amount will get litigated.?
Morris, San Bernardino?s mayor, agreed. ?There will be trouble if you can?t agree on the basic facts,? he said.
Morris referred Reuters to the city?s finance office for an explanation of how it reached its pension cost figure. Repeated calls there, and to the city manager?s office, were not returned. Calls to the bankruptcy attorney representing the city also went unanswered.
The two California bankruptcy cases are being closely watched by investors and markets. They will be major test cases of whether cities in financial trouble can be allowed to renege on their bond debt and pension obligations ? and in what order.
Richard Larkin, senior vice president and director of credit analysis at bond underwriting firm HJ Sims, said he expects bondholders to take on Calpers in the case of San Bernardino, which could lead to large scale litigation.
?As a bondholder, I?m going to want to keep other creditors? numbers as low as possible,? Larkin said. ?The other creditors are going to try and overturn Calpers?s claim. I would say Calpers?s calculations are wrong.?
Litigation between Calpers and San Bernardino?s other creditors, especially bondholders, was likely, Larkin said, because the case will have huge implications and set precedent for any future city bankruptcies.
Already in Stockton, two bond insurers are arguing that the city?s failure to ask for concessions from Calpers showed the city had not negotiated in good faith with other creditors and its bankruptcy request should not be granted because it does not touch pensions.
In a statement, Calpers argued that California law dictates that it be given ?priority? over bond creditors and that municipalities must meet their obligations to the pension system in full.
?Simply put, Calpers is an arm of the State of California and different laws apply to the relationship between Calpers and a municipality,? Calpers said.
?Although bondholders and bond insurers have argued that they are ?similarly situated? with Calpers and its members, this is not true.?
John Moorlach, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and one of the officials who oversaw that California county?s bankruptcy in 1994 ? at the time the largest U.S. county to go bankrupt ? said bondholders would be ?nuts? not to take on Calpers now.
?The bondholders have got to take on Calpers,? Moorlach said. ?If they don?t Calpers will just run them over.?
(Reporting By Tim Reid; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Phil Berlowitz)
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