Corporations

In 1997, the wife of Phillip Bonaffini died from an infection she contracted during cardiac surgery at Bridgeport Hospital. Another patient, Eunice Babcock, was left wheelchair-bound due to a staphylococcus infection that she contracted during surgery at the same hospital. The hospital settled the cases out of court by paying Bonaffini and Babcock an undisclosed sum in exchange for signed confidentiality agreements.

The APCO PR firm, which is currently representing WorldCom in its ongoing bankruptcy scandal, has hired Tim Croasdaile as a senior vice president. Croasdaile formerly chaired the National Investor Relations Institute's ethics committee.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is calling for bioethics institutions and journals to disclose their financial relationships with the biotech industry. So far, the request has mostly fallen on deaf ears. "The industry's increasing recruitment of bioethicists has been widely debated, as has the scope of the contributions," notes Hal Cohen. "Most bioethics institutions don't publish such statistics, leaving the public to draw its own conclusions about conflicts of interest.

"Investors who have watched their nest eggs melt away would be shocked to know that former executives of companies involved in some of the USA's largest cases of corporate malfeasance -- Xerox, Waste Management and Sunbeam -- still serve as senior executives and directors at public companies," writes Matt Krantz. "Some even sit on audit committees, acting as watchdogs against accounting deceit. In one case, an ex-president's involvement with alleged fraud isn't even disclosed in his current employer's regulatory filings."