The University’s 2010 tax filings reveal that the top-paid University employee is Richard H. Gelberman, the Fred C. Reynolds professor and chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, and the rest of the top five is composed of medical school employees as well.

This surprised some students, who expected a well-known University figure, such as Chancellor Mark Wrighton, to receive the highest compensation.

The information was disclosed on Form 990, a document that publicly discloses an organization’s financial information, required annually from the University by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to the document, Gelberman received a total compensation* of $1,154,922, including a base pay of $1,103,386 and other reportable compensations that totaled $14,813.

Other top-paid University employees included K. Daniel Riew, professor of orthopedic surgery, Ralph G. Dacey, Jr., professor and chairman of neurological surgery, Timothy J. Eberlein, surgeon-in-chief of Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Rick W. Wright, associate professor of orthopedic surgery.

All four medical officials received total compensations of around $1 million, which includes base salary, bonuses and any other reportable compensation.

Each was listed as working around 40 hours per week.

The University’s compensations committee approves decisions on the amount of income of the University’s key employees, which are based on Form 990 of other schools and organizations, written employment contracts and regular compensations surveys.

Most students remarked that they had only a vague idea on the income distribution among University employees.

Nevertheless, some students responded that they had expected Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton to be the highest-paid employee on campus. His total compensation in 2010 was $861,979.

Many were surprised that they had not heard of the top-paid University employees. Yet, it did not come as a surprise for students to find that the University’s five highest-paid employees were in fact working physicians and professors at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“My guess would be that [the Medical School professorships] are positions where the University is trying to attract the best people in the field,” junior Robert Bradley said.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the group in charge of the test, announced the suggested changes last week. The organization hopes to expand the material on the test to include behavioral and social sciences, and to update the test to reflect current scientific knowledge.

Administrators doubt that these changes will affect Washington University students.

Most current students will take the MCAT before the suggested 2015 implementation date.

According to Carolyn Herman, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences, future students should not have much difficulty adapting to the changes because students at the University are already encouraged to pursue a broad liberal-arts style of education.

“I suspect that students may make minor adjustments to the courses they choose based on the specific kinds of behavioral and social science topics that seem to be most relevant to the exam, but I do not think there will be a major change in the coursework that students pursue,” Herman said.

Some students doubt that incorporating additional material into the exam will serve a substantive purpose.

“The MCAT doesn’t really correlate to anything except for Board scores. Making it longer won’t make it any better,” said Matthew Durst, a junior majoring in Chemistry.

While the changes propose the elimination of the Writing Sample section, the addition of behavioral and social sciences will make the test 90 minutes longer—making the test last a total of seven hours.

Herman does not think that students’ performance on the test will suffer due to the changes.

“I don’t think it will affect Washington University students. Broad arrays of research confirm that all standardized testing is highly correlated, and we have a lot of students who’ve already done very well on standardized tests here,” Herman said.

Because the suggestions are still tentative, Herman says that it will be a couple years before the pre-health office needs to consider changing its advising system.

“I don’t think we have enough information on what the test would actually look like to be able to make specific coursework recommendations,” said Herman. “We will certainly keep our eye on the national conversation [but] it’s kind of much ado about nothing at this point.”

In addition to the changes to the exam, the AAMC committee also proposed the creation of an “admissions toolbox” to allow medical schools to look at applicants’ personal characteristics. The toolbox may involve increased personal essays, recommendations, or methods yet to be developed.

The suggested changes come as results of a three-year study on how to balance the testing of reasoning and knowledge in the natural sciences.

The last comprehensive review of the MCAT was done in 1990.

A new nanoparticle invented by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine can find blood clots and make them visible on a new type of CT scanner.

The invention is an important step toward detecting blood clots faster and more accurately before they can contribute to heart attacks.

According to Assistant Professor of Medicine Dipanjan Pan, the nanoparticles latch onto a protein in blood clots called fibrin. This allows a spectral CT scan to quickly and accurately differentiate the clots from calcium deposits by color.

The technology cannot yet be used on humans, but early testing of these nanoparticles shows that it can distinguish blood clots from calcium in rabbits and other small animals.

Spectral CT, as its name suggests, is a new type of X-ray technology that shows multicolor images and discriminates between tissues injected with different metals, or contrast agents.

Traditionally, doctors use several tests to confirm whether a patient suffers from coronary artery disease. According to Pan, tests such as the cardiac stress test can put dangerous strain on patients.

Other tests include a black-and-white CT scan, but these images cannot differentiate between calcium deposits and a fatal blood clot, making it difficult for doctors to accurately diagnose patients.

Washington University currently has one of two spectral CT scanners in the world. The other scanner is at Philips Research in Hamburg, Germany.

The nanoparticle, co-invented by Pan and Professor of Medicine Gregory Lanza, contains millions of heavy metal bismuth atoms so that the particle can be visible to the scanner.

“But bismuth is toxic and that is a challenge that we had,” Pan said. “We had to come up with some way to encapsulate bismuth.”

The nanoparticles containing bismuth are coated with lipids so that they do not feel foreign to the body. Mixed with other compounds that create what Pan calls a “salad dressing” textured fluid, these nanoparticles seek out and attach themselves to fibrin when injected into the bloodstream.

The bismuth nanoparticles dissolve and break down after binding to clots.

According to Associate Professor of Medicine Shelton Caruthers, spectral CT is still a new technology that has been developing in concert with these nanoparticle contrast agents. Therefore, it will still be some years before this technique can be used in clinics around the world.

In the meantime, researchers at the University will continue to work for earlier detection of heart attacks.

Students are excited about the new development.

“I think it’s a great breakthrough. We’ll be able to recognize these dangers in a very noninvasive way before it actually becomes a problem,” said senior Keita Uchida, a pre-medical student interested in cardiology research. “Having this kind of technology nearby and having access to the medical school here will help students get that kind of exposure if they [want] to.”

Diabetes milletus affects an estimated 25.8 million children and adults in the United States, accounting for 8.3% of the population, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Many people afflicted with diabetes must contend with the long-term side effects of the disease, including loss of vision, nerve damage, kidney failure, amputation and increased risk of stroke or heart attack.

These complications are caused by damage to the walls of blood vessels in diabetics. According to University researchers, the depletion of two enzymes, fatty acid synthase (FAS) and nitric oxide synthase (NOS), may be responsible for blood vessel damage in diabetic people.

The depletion of FAS in diabetics is the result of both insulin resistance, found in Type 2 diabetes, and deficiency, characteristic of Type 1 diabetes.

“Regardless of the reason why you get diabetes, it is extremely bad for your blood vessels,” said Clay F. Semenkovich, a professor of internal medicine at the medical school.

In Semenkovich’s lab, researchers studied “FASTie” mice, a strain of genetically engineered mice that could not make FAS in the cells lining blood vessels, or endothelial cells, and compared them with both diabetic and healthy mice.

Both the FASTie mice and the diabetic mice were incapable of producing the necessary lipid, called palmitoylation, which adheres NOS to endothelial cells in the vessel walls. Without this substance, NOS cannot attach to endothelial cell membranes, as in healthy blood cells, which can lead to vascular damage.

The lack of FAS and subsequent loss of palmitylation in the genetically engineered mice also appeared to impede vascular repair, often leading to leaking and infection. These problems, Semenkovich said, are also common in diabetic humans.

“We actually took blood vessel cells and demonstrated that the same processes were taking place using human blood vessel cells, which was pretty exciting,” Semenkovich said.

The researchers hope these discoveries will aid diabetes researchers in finding more effective methods to treat complications caused by blood vessel damage.

Semenkovich added, “We’re trying to develop novels ways to replace this abnormal function by figuring out how to trick the cells into making the right amount of lipid.”

A CQ Press report from Nov. 22 named the city America’s most dangerous for the second time in five years.

The report offers the latest grim assessment of safety in the areas around the University. It comes months after The Daily Beast ranked the University as the nation’s 13th most dangerous campus. And St. Louis was ranked America’s most dangerous city in 2006 by Morgan-Quitno, which was acquired by CQ Press in 2007. Both rankings have come under fire, with some critics saying their methodologies are biased.

Many students say that they feel safe around the Danforth Campus, which is located partially in the city but mostly in neighboring St. Louis County. But some said the CQ report may discourage prospective students from applying to a university in a city they perceive as dangerous.

“I feel like parents are going to be more concerned than students are,” freshman Brendan Daly said. “I know a prospective student whose parents are discouraging her from applying because of the recent ranking of St. Louis.”

The report is based on statistics on murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft reported to the FBI for all U.S. cities with more than 75,000 residents. St. Louis was ranked second most dangerous in 2009 and 2007 and fourth most dangerous in 2008.

University spokesman Steve Givens called the rankings flawed, saying in a statement Tuesday that the administration puts no stock in them.

“As our students know, the University has worked very hard over the past several years to make our campus and the neighborhoods surrounding it as safe as possible,” Givens added. “We will continue those efforts with the utmost diligence.”

The Daily Beast took heat for its campus safety rankings. In September, the University called the rankings misleading because they included crimes around the Medical Campus. The Daily Beast has defended its report, saying that its methodology was consistent across schools.

Kara Bowlin, a spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, responded to the CQ report by telling CBS News that city crime has fallen each year since 2007 and by 7 percent so far in 2010.

The city criticized past years’ rankings for drawing on crime figures only in the city instead of in the whole region. Morgan-Quitno and CQ have defended its rankings throughout the years.

Some students said that they see St. Louis as dangerous but feel safe on campus and that the new rankings don’t make them worry more. Some became more cautious near campus after a spate of muggings this fall, however.

“Although St. Louis itself may be dangerous, I do not feel particularly unsafe on campus and in the surrounding area,” junior Corey Donahue said. “As long as I am careful of when and where I’m walking, I don’t feel in danger.”

Freshman Megan Conn said that any city comes with the risk of crime. She added that the campus is in a safer part of the area. “I don’t think students at Wash. U. are in significantly more danger than those at similar universities in Chicago, New York or Boston.”

With additional reporting by Puneet Kollipara.

Washington University is no outlier in this trend. Though biomedical engineering (BME) was introduced at the University just 14 years ago, it is now the largest undergraduate department in the engineering school.

BME is the application of engineering principles and techniques to the medical field. It combines the design and problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences to improve health care diagnosis and treatment.

“It is very challenging to understand what engineers do,” said Dennis Barbour, assistant professor of BME. “They solve society’s big problems, but [their contributions] are often hidden and easy to take for granted. BME is drawing people in probably because they can see the application of BME a lot easier. BME is hitting closer to home and relating to a closer arena of medicine and biology of the human body.”

The growth in BME as a field has exceeded all expectations. In addition to more than double the number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in the field over the past decade, similar growths were recorded at the master’s and doctoral levels, with growth at 193 percent and 256 percent respectively.

“BME is a small and rapidly growing field,” Barbour said. “There are more opportunities to major in it as there are more than 70 departments in BME [in the U.S.]. The BME undergraduate degree requires students to master both the physical and the biological sciences, which make it quite a versatile degree.”

There were 1,156 BME bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2000. By 2009, that number jumped to 3,644. The increase was equally astonishing for master’s and doctoral degrees awarded. In 2000, 476 and 203 master’s degrees and doctoral degrees were awarded in BME respectively. Nine years later, the number of master’s degrees awarded surged to 1,396 and likewise, and the number of doctoral degrees spiked to 722 nationwide.

Washington University is ranked 11th in the number of BME degrees awarded in 2009 with 72. Duke University, topped the list with 141. University of California San Diego and Georgia Institute of Technology were a close second and third with 136 and 134 respectively.

“I became interested in BME because I took some BME-like classes in high school,” junior William Stock said. “Classes here are very interesting and very difficult. The subject matter is extremely interesting, and that’s where the entire medical field is going toward. BME will have the most demand job-wise, and in the next decade, it is for sure going to grow, and there will be huge demand for it.”

Indeed, preparation for a job is one of the main draws of the BME major.

“A large fraction of BME students go on to medical school,” Barbour said. “Engineering school has roughly the same percentage of students going to medical school as the school of ArtSci. Other students go on to additional professional training such as graduate schools or even law school. Some choose to go into immediate practice such as working at biomedical device manufacturers or big pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson.”

Students appreciate the options that the BME degree offers.

“I would like to work in the field for a couple of years and go to graduate school or medical school,” Stock said. “I am thinking about industry job such as drug research or something in biomolecular. I feel more prepared for medical school [as a BME major]. [As long as one can] power through four years and maybe through grad school, it will be very rewarding.”

Biomedical engineering is among the newest fields in engineering. Prominent biomedical engineering applications include the development of biocompatible prostheses, various diagnostic and therapeutic medical devices, ranging from clinical equipment to micro-implants, and common diagnostic tools such as MRI and EEG machines.

According to Paschall, a national request for a child abuse subspecialty was presented to the American Board of Pediatrics four to five years ago but was turned down. The request was resubmitted in 2007 and approved.

Jamie Spurrier, a current chief resident at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, will be the first and only fellow beginning the three-year program next July.

Spurrier successfully requested the fellowship upon hearing that the American Academy of Pediatrics had decided there was enough interest in the problem of child abuse and that Dr. Paschall was part of a group that was advocating for the subspecialty’s initiation.

“We’ve had unofficial training programs [for child abuse], [but] there hasn’t been an official fellowship,” Spurrier said.

Spurrier said she did a rotation as an intern under Paschall and realized then that she was interested in researching child abuse.

The subspecialty program will award fellows a certificate of special qualification in child abuse and requires fellows to have completed medical school and three years of general pediatrics residency.

The program will include classes in biostatistics, epidemiology and biomechanics. Fellows will also design a research project and learn about how to interview children. Subspecialties will also be included on a rotating basis and include pediatric radiology and pediatric and adolescent gynecology.

Additionally, fellows will learn from physiologists and psychologists who specialize in helping victims of sexual and physical abuse, and psychologists who perform perpetrator therapy. They will also acquire clinical experience through interacting with children who have been burned, performing consultation at a special abuse management clinic and conducting sexual abuse evaluations in the emergency room.

Although professors have not yet been selected, Paschall said classes will be drawn from the medical school as well as the law school, and will be open to other undergraduate students at the University.

The certificate and the costs of the fellowship, including a stipend, will come from the School of Medicine.

“This year [we] will have one [fellow] for three years. Ultimately, when the fellowship develops, there will be a new fellow each year,” Paschall said. “The major advantage is that the fellows begin to teach each other.”

Other children’s hospitals that will join with universities to include a child abuse subspecialty program include Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Denver and Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Kuklo was under federal investigation after members of the U.S. Army accused him of fabricating data for a bone-growth drug study, which he performed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Now, a University committee says the claim that Kuklo made up data cannot be supported, though this does not mean he has been found innocent.

“This is akin to a finding of insufficient evidence, and should not be characterized as a complete exoneration,” the University said in a statement released Thursday.

The University committee found that Kuklo violated school research integrity policies and guidelines for human subject research in other ways.

History: Kuklo, Infuse and the University’s investigation

The committee’s findings come after seven months of investigation into Kuklo’s case.

Last spring, The New York Times printed allegations from several U.S. Army officials who claimed that Kuklo altered research data on Infuse, a bone-growth hormone used to treat wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.

The Army members alleged that Kuklo had inflated the number of soldiers with leg injuries who were able to be treated effectively with Infuse. Kuklo was also accused of forging the signatures of four Army doctors when submitting the results of his study for publication.

Controversy heightened around the case when it was revealed that Kuklo had been paid $800,000 by Medtronic, the company that makes Infuse. The University said later that Kuklo had not disclosed to the school his financial ties to Medtronic.

After the allegations surfaced, Kuklo took leave from the University in May. An article on his study was retracted from the medical journal that printed it. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, began a federal inquiry into Kuklo’s case. Kuklo later resigned from the University.

A University committee was then formed to investigate the allegations brought against Kuklo.

The committee’s findings

Although the University’s full findings have not been made public, The New York Times reported Friday that the committee found it possible that Kuklo had not misrepresented the number of leg injuries that had been successfully treated with Infuse.

The committee based this conclusion on the assumption that Kuklo could have defined the leg injuries he studied more broadly than other Army officials would have. The committee also suggested that some of the questionable data tied to Kuklo could have resulted from problems with recordkeeping at Walter Reed.

But the committee found no justification for Kuklo’s forging four doctors’ signatures. The New York Times reported that Kuklo asserted he had only included the doctors’ names as a courtesy, but the committee determined that his forgeries suggested an “intentional deception.”

The University stated that it is not reconsidering Kuklo’s resignation in light of the committee’s findings.

University sharpens focus on research integrity

News of Kuklo’s clearing came at the end of the University’s inaugural Academic Integrity Week.

The week’s events, which culminated this weekend with the Center for Academic Integrity International Conference on campus, included several panel discussions and speakers on research integrity.

Last Monday, for example, student group Controversy N’ Coffee hosted a forum on cheating called, “Could my Wash. U. Degree Lose its Credibility?”

Tuesday saw a panel discussion on intellectual property law, and another panel was held Wednesday on integrity in job and graduate school applications.

On Thursday, David Callahan, public-policy activist and author of “The Cheating Culture” and “The Moral Center,” delivered an Assembly Series lecture titled, “Creating a Culture of Integrity.”

Frequent Scrubs enthusiasts can relate to the show’s message of completely capitalized health care. It is indeed a terrible thing, for countless massive corporations like insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies consistently meddle in the medical field. After the World War II, small private and home-run medical services were slowly losing out to the massive hospitals where physicians were able to serve a larger clientele with ‘better’ equipment and supporting services. However, once the pharmaceutical companies realized that instead of bribing one doctor at a time to purchase their products, they could focus their funds to infiltrate an entire hospital. My experience in working in hospitals has not shown me otherwise. Physicians are given free trips to Las Vegas or Miami for “conferences” where the pharmaceuticals spend millions of dollars lavishly courting the physicians in order to gain customers. You might ask: What’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re committing any fraud or crimes—they’re just seeking new clientele through innovative methods to beat the competition. But therein lies the problem: Medicine has turned from a sacred and revered field to pure, heartless business. Pharmaceutical companies should use the millions of dollars they use for baiting physicians to prove to the doctors the quality of their product in a professional and scientific manner. In fact, millions of dollars that we pay for pharmaceutical products are used for courting physicians and hospitals, and if that practice was cut down, then the prices of drugs would go down.

Many of you may have heard the insane cost of malpractice insurance, but many do not know of the constant struggle between physicians and insurance companies. When running a private practice, many of the physicians relentlessly haggle with the insurance companies for proper payment. Much of the high-figure salaries look good only on paper, but most of it goes back into trying to run a practice or trying to get paid by the patient or insurance company. Today, there is a significant shortage of primary care physicians because many young doctors realize that in order to make decent money against rising malpractice fees, they must be a specialist. This vicious cycle only harms the patients and the physicians, and leaves the insurance companies with bags of money.

How can all of these problems be solved? How can we make it so that the people who need insurance get it and physicians can practice in which ever field they like instead of having to choose a higher-paying specialty to combat malpractice fees? The answer lies with taking the government out of the business of medicine and having them regulate the insurance industries. Hopefully, Obama will realize that the government should not have to monitor the medical industry, but instead should place regulations on massive pharmaceutical and insurance companies who have ‘respected’ politicians in their deep pockets. The idea of medicine developed thousands of years ago to cure the ailments of fellow human beings. That idea has been bastardized and must be rectified in order to create a healthy and harmonious society.

Kuklo, associate professor of orthopedic surgery, submitted a letter of resignation on July 30, effective Sept. 30, according a statement issued by the University.

“Dr. Kuklo has agreed to voluntarily resign from the University, effective September 30, 2009,” the statement said. “Dr. Kuklo will have no clinical, research, or educational duties for the University between now and that date.”

Kuklo has been the subject of several federal inquiries over a study he allegedly falsified while he worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He performed the study, which was about the benefits of a bone growth drug, before coming to the University.

Medical school spokesman Don Clayton declined to comment further because school officials are conducting an investigation.

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