Good morning,
The forecast calls for Whitewater calls for a chance of drizzle with showers tonight, and a high temperature of forty-nine degrees.
At the high school tonight, there will be a spring concert at 7:30 p.m.
There’s a story from yesterday’s Wisconsin State Journal about a tenured professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s veterinary school, who lost his laboratory privileges. Here’s why:
A UW-Madison professor who studies an infectious disease lost his laboratory privileges for five years after conducting unauthorized experiments with a potentially dangerous drug-resistant germ.
One person who worked in professor Gary Splitter’s lab got brucellosis but university officials don’t know if that individual, who has since recovered, caught the strain used in the unauthorized experiments. Brucellosis is a disease that is usually found in farm animals but can spread to humans and cause flu-like symptoms or worse.
“These are extremely dangerous compounds,” UW-Madison Provost Paul DeLuca said. “They are very highly regulated and we want to be in full compliance with federal laws.”
The 2007 experiments, which the National Institutes of Health calls a “major action violation,” in part prompted the university to beef up its biological safety oversight. The university was also fined $40,000.
Here’s Splitter’s flimsy excuse explanation:
Splitter said he was not aware of the unauthorized experiments, which he said were conducted by graduate students in his lab, and that the university did not properly educate researchers about guidelines for working with antibiotic-resistant strains.
“The University of Wisconsin failed to provide the right education,” Splitter said. “The bottom line is that this wasn’t just an investigation of one individual. It was a major meltdown by the university.”
No, Splitter was responsible for the work in his laboratory, and for students under his charge. It’s not the whole school, the City of Madison, Dane County, the State of Wisconsin, or United States that bear responsibility.
It’s Splitter.
Splitter might consider using his free time during the five-year laboratory ban to consider a career as a municipal bureaucrat. If he’s interested in a position, I can think of just the place:
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