Daily Rounds: Psychiatrists Punished; Girl Scout Activists; Mentally Ill And Armed

Harvard Punishes 3 Psychiatrists Over Undisclosed Industry Pay | WBUR & NPR "Drs. Joseph Biederman, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens stood accused of accepting more than $4.2 million from drug companies for psychiatric research and other activities between 2000-2007 without reporting the income to Harvard, MGH or the federal government." (WBUR | 90.9 FM)

Two Girl Scouts Want Palm Oil Out Of Famous Cookies : NPR "Four years ago, Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva started studying orangutans for a Girl Scouts project. What they learned inspired them to start a campaign to raise awareness of the damage that palm plantations are causing the great apes. "I liked them at first because they are such a cute animal," says Rhiannon, 15. "But they are also helpless. Their rain forest, their home, is being cleared for these palm oil plantations and they have no say in it."
In two decades, companies have cut down millions of acres of rain forest to plant palm trees and meet the skyrocketing demand for oil and biofuel. This releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases and shrinks habitat for rare animals like tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses and orangutans. The girls decided to stop eating food with palm oil in it. That's when they started looking at ingredient lists and learned that Girl Scout cookies are part of the problem." (npr.org)

Some With Histories of Mental Illness Petition to Get Their Gun Rights Back - NYTimes.com "After a brief hearing, in which Mr. French’s lengthy history of relapses never came up, he walked out with an order reinstating his right to possess firearms.
The next day, Mr. French retrieved his guns. “The judge didn’t ask me a whole lot,” said Mr. French, now 62. “He just said: ‘How was I doing? Was I taking my medicine like I was supposed to?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”
Across the country, states are increasingly allowing people like Mr. French, who lost their firearm rights because of mental illness, to petition to have them restored." (nytimes.com)