Janet Keyzer, a former UC Davis research coordinator, believes she was fired after she reported violations in her research group’s practices. In response, she is suing the UC regents.

The lawsuit comes after a lengthy 18-month investigation conducted by the University, which concluded that both her and her husband’s 2007 terminations from their positions at UCD were unrelated to her reporting of research improprieties.

Keyzer conducted her research with the Community Oriented Pain-management Exchange (COPE). The organization was created to conduct pain treatment research in California prisons, and was a joint effort between UCD, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) and the Correctional Medicine Network at UCSF.

Keyzer, a registered nurse for over 30 years, had already been a Nurse Research Coordinator with UCD for over nine years when she started work with the COPE in April 2006.

During her time on the COPE project, Keyzer noticed improper use of confidential medical records and protected health information (PHI) of San Quentin patients, as well as interviews conducted without informed consent.

When Keyzer confronted her supervisor about these violations, she and her team were instructed by a supervisor to destroy the paperwork and disregard the improprieties.

Keyzer contacted UCD’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is responsible for regulating all research involving human subjects, and discovered that COPE did not have an IRB approval for research. She filed a complaint and was invited to testify for the proceeding IRB investigation.

At roughly the same time of the hearing, Keyzer’s husband was abruptly fired from his job at COPE as an IT specialist. Keyzer believes that her husband’s dismissal was a deliberate punishment for voicing her concern, and an attempt at intimidation to prevent her from speaking at the IRB hearing.

The IRB substantiated Keyzer’s allegations, prompting UCSF to withdraw support for COPE in August 2007. The $5 million dollar grant was subsequently returned to the government, and the research project itself was shut down.

“As an actively licensed registered nurse in California, I am obligated to come forward and do what is necessary to protect my patients,” Keyzer said.

Though other employees from the COPE project were given positions on other long term projects, Keyzer was given two temporary positions of either 12 months or 30 to 90 days. Keyzer declined both offers and was then notified of her termination from her job at UCD.

“The bottom line is that had Janet Keyzer not blown the whistle, she would still be employed there,” said Mary-Alice Coleman, Keyzer’s attorney. “They could have held her off, gave her some sort of recognition saying this is what people should do when you uncover something improper.“

UCD Associate Vice President of Communications Lynn Tiereney stated that UC is not allowed to comment on Keyzer’s personal matters, however she points out that the positions Keyzer was offered were indeed the only ones available at the time.

Keyzer subsequently filed a Whistleblower Retaliation Claim against UCD in January 2008 that led to the 18-month investigation, which found that Keyzer and her husband’s terminations were not related to her IRB testimony.

Keyzer’s experience with whistleblower retaliation at UCD has not gone unnoticed. Keyzer testified on May 5 of this year before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Senator Leland Yee’s SB 219, currently on the governor’s desk. The bill would force the UC Regents to be more accountable for whistleblower retaliation complaints.

“The current process at UC does not work,” Keyzer said during the hearing. “It creates a dysfunctional culture of cover-up and it encourages people not to come forward and not tell the truth for fear of retaliation.“

In response, Tiereney emphasized that the UC system never attempted to cover the case up.

“Overall, we encourage people to come forward with reports of wrong-doing in all cases,” Tiereny said. “Our posture is one that encourages students to come forward. We do not support retaliation. We support openness.“

ARNOLD LAU can be reached at campus@theaggie.org. 

With paper deadlines inching closer and midterms on the horizon, a perfectly healthy student making a trip to the health center might seem a bit pointless – but Student Health Services says it may be time to reconsider.

The Student Health Center will be administering flu vaccinations this week at the Memorial Union on Oct. 7, 8, and 9. The cost for vaccination is $20, regardless of SHIP enrollment.

The H1N1 vaccination will cost $10 regardless of SHIP enrollment, and either fee will be billed to the student’s account.

However, before the H1N1 vaccine is even available, Student Health Services is concerned with a potential lack of education or interest about the virus within the student population. A notable drop in attendance at seasonal flu vaccination clinics, paired with the fact that the availability of the vaccine to the UCD population is still weeks away has led some to fear that students will not take the threat seriously.

“College students think they’re invincible to getting ill…[but] they are at such risk with their close-quarters lifestyle,” said Maureen Greenhaggen, registered nurse and Patient Care Services Manager at the Student Health Center.

Although Davis will see the first of the vaccine midway through this month, the priority recipients will be infants and young children, by federal mandate. As soon as the vaccine becomes available to the larger population, Student Health Services plans to send out a mass e-mail notification, announce its availability on the campus website and post ads in The Aggie and around campus, according to Greenhaggen.

But when the H1N1 vaccine does arrive, some still might not be convinced enough to get it.

“[The] vaccination seems unnecessary…media-hype [has] blown it out of proportion,” asserts Leslie Liao, a sophomore managerial economics major.

Having contracted the virus while home abroad in Taipei, Taiwan, Liao experienced an atypically mild case of the virus, only suffering from a mild sore throat and sinus congestion.

“I didn’t think much of it…it was just like any other cold,” he said. “[It] wasn’t nearly as bad as people say it is.“

However, sophomore political science major Chantal Boctor disagrees.

In Las Vegas for a weekend in early August, Boctor woke up one morning with a sore throat. By the third day, she felt weak and it had become hard to move. Two days later, she was completely bed-ridden. And by the end of her two-week ordeal, Boctor had lost nearly 10 pounds off of her usual 112-pound frame.

Doctors had initially misdiagnosed her illness and prescribed amoxicillin, a drug similar to penicillin. Her father, a doctor in Egypt, insisted she get tested for H1N1. After receiving a positive test result, Boctor took daily doses of Tamiflu for less than a week and was soon back to normal.

“[Swine flu is] a bitch,” she said, urging students to “Get the vaccination if you can.“

As students wait for the H1N1 vaccine to become available, Greenhaggen suggests that they get their seasonal flu vaccination first.

“This is the quarter system…[if] you’re down for five to seven days…it’s hard to catch up,” Greenhaggen said.

KYLE SPORLEDER can be reached at campus@theaggie.org. 

The thump from the techno-rock competed against the clamor from the distinctive party chit-chat; cheap plastic ping-pong balls were protected like a costly commodity; used red cups inexplicably vanished; close quarters quickly created close friends; spilled beer layered the floor, leaving a sticky tack indicative of only a long evening’s work.

This was just another typical Friday night party in Davis.

Entertaining as they are, party environments present an inherent risk – the kind of risk against which public health officials have adamantly advised caution, and the kind of environment they say provides a breeding ground for the H1N1 swine flu.

But students don’t seem to care. According to a recent study conducted in part by Simmons College Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community, other college students from around the country are also not following recommendations from the Center for Disease Control to help protect themselves from H1N1 and other threatening germs.

Danielle Splawski, a senior neurobiology, physiology and behavior major, co-host of a party last week, finds even the publicity to be comical.

“I was actually thinking about wearing a mask so no one would sit by me,” she said. “I’m pretty claustrophobic, and I figured people will think I have something, and leave me alone.“

Francisco Cordero, a senior biochemistry major and also a co-host of the party, was similarly unconcerned, despite his complaints that he, himself, felt ill with flu symptoms.

“It’s not anything to worry about unless you’re 99 or two years old,” he said.

Despite coverage in the media and many universities‘ efforts to encourage prevention – UC Davis, in particular, has provided e-mails, sent letters to parents and created an extensive website that details the prevalence of H1N1 – many students, it seems, according to both the study and anecdotal evidence, are not following the recommendations.

“My experience is that [college-aged people] feels pretty invincible and don’t always follow safety recommendations like bike helmets, condoms, etc.,” wrote Thomas Ferguson, M.D., Ph.D., and Medical Director of the Student Health Center, in an e-mail. “I strongly encourage all of the guidelines regarding prevention. Sharing drinking glasses and beer bongs is going to be a good way to spread viruses.“

According to the release, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that universities and parents should encourage students to follow these healthy hygiene routines:

Practice good hand hygiene. People should wash their hands often with soap and water, especially after coughing or sneezing. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.Practice respiratory etiquette. The main way flu spreads is from person to person in droplets produced by coughs and sneezes, so it’s important that people cover their mouth and nose with a tissue when they cough or sneeze. If they don’t have a tissue, they should cough or sneeze into their elbow or shoulder, not their hands.Stay home if they are sick. Stay home or in their place of residence for at least 24 hours after they no longer have a fever.Talk to their health care providers about whether they should be vaccinated. More information about priority groups for vaccination is available at www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/acip.htm.

These guidelines for prevention have been available for some time, however. Getting students to follow them is the difficult part, said Valerie Lucus, CEM, CBCP, UC Davis Emergency & Business Continuity Manager, in an e-mail.

“Students don’t want to miss class, they don’t want to wear surgical masks, they don’t want to clean their rooms,” she said. “How are we going to convince them this is serious and important?”

Splawski and her peers, it seems, don’t believe the virus is either serious or important though.

“It’s just the flu,” she said. “Everyone is making it seem like it’s the Black Plague.“

DAVID LAVINE can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

California’s troubles are never far from the news today, and the consequences of these issues have begun to affect classrooms at the highest levels of public education.

UC Davis students and professors participated in a walkout on the first day of class to protest the state’s budget decisions; however, some believe that the problems stretch much farther than cuts to education.

Course leaders Jon Li and Glen Clark are hoping to engage these students on a variety of topics that seek to identify solutions to some of California’s greatest challenges.

“We need to go through institutional transformation,” Li said. “What we have now does not work, and elected officials are in no position to improve matters.“

Li has worked on commissions in Davis for years, ranging from Business and Economic Development to the Bicycle Advisory Commission, which he started. Li wants the course to inspire both discussion and individual action.

“Some people in the class will be like auditors, some like tourists, but I am of an activist nature myself,” Li said. “If you look at the website californiaconstitution.wikispot.org, you can see that we are actually setting up a wiki-grassroots state constitution that I do expect to evolve and play a role in real state politics, not just in the ivory tower.“

The six-week Experimental College (EC) course entitled “California’s Future” is divided into two sections.

In the first three classes, Woodland history teacher Glen Clark will examine the challenges California has faced over the course of the past three centuries and how its citizens and government faced these issues.

The historical perspective will provide a context for the more current discussions led by Jon Li, which cover topics such as cultural, institutional, environmental, economic and social problems. The course will also cover discussions on alternative ideas like the Viable Systems Model developed by British theorist Stafford Beer in the 1970s.

The Viable Systems Model portion of the course will be taught by junior biological sciences major Darach Miller, who decided to help promote the course and assist Li and Clark after meeting Li at the Davis Bike Collective.

“We want to compliment [students‘] existing knowledge, and empower them with these fresh perspectives to come up with alternative solutions to some of the problems we have to deal with,” Miller said. “The whole idea is that we have this new medium in the internet that’s not like TV or radio because it’s interactive. We want to expand on the empowering aspects of that kind of media because it really has a lot of potential.“

Despite a rather gloomy outlook on the current and near-future status of California, instructors hope that students in the class will use it as an opportunity to reexamine aspects of the state that don’t seem to be working.

Sophomore Adam Godfrey is planning on taking the class.

“I’ve never taken anything in the experimental college before, but it seems like a cool idea that a lot of people don’t take advantage of,” Godfrey said. “I think we’re all invested in what this class is about.“

The concepts of the class are designed to stimulate conversation among participants both in and out of the classroom. There will be a side project for people who want to learn how to get more involved.

“There are a lot of avenues for individual involvement,” Li said. “We have no choice but to design a system that encourages personal and group action, responsibility and accountability.“

Junior high and high school students, adults and senior citizens are all encouraged to attend the class, which is open to non-UCD students for $25. UC students pay $20.

“I encourage anyone who might be interested, regardless of your current level of knowledge, to check out the class,” Miller said. “See what you might be getting into because this is some different stuff.“

The class meets Mondays from 7 to 9:30 p.m. beginning Oct. 12. For registration information call the Experimental College at 752-2568. This week the EC will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and next week the office returns to normal closing at 2 p.m.. While there is no official deadline to register, students are encouraged to do so before the first meeting.

BRIAN GERSON can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.