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Accountability for the 400,000 Deaths: The RICO Act’s Application in the Legal Opioid Industry
By Holden LeBlanc, VI Form
Accountability for the 400,000 Deaths: The RICO Act’s Application in the Legal Opioid Industry
Carolyn Markland, a grandmother from Jacksonville, Florida, was a lover of animals and spent years fostering rescue pets after retiring as an environmental engineer. Markland, however, struggled with back pain due to a degenerative disc disease for years. After trying different medications with little relief, a doctor prescribed Markland the fentanyl-based drug Subsys to subdue her pain. Markland took a dose of Subsys before going to sleep on July 2, 2014. When Markland’s daughter went to check on her mother the next day, she discovered her dead in her bed with a Subsys canister lying at her side. Although Markland’s overdose was the first death connected to Subsys, many more were looming. Along with thousands of others, Markland died from overdosing on prescription opioids, but to understand how this happened, it is essential to recognize the changes in the United States’ policy towards opioids.
Opium, the active ingredient in opioids, is a substance that blocks pain by stimulating the release of the chemical dopamine in the body. Opium is a naturally occurring substance found in poppy plants, which humans have cultivated for centuries seeking their medicinal effect. For most of America’s history, up until the mid-twentieth century, doctors utilized opioids like morphine and later heroin as a crude form of anesthesia for surgery and for managing debilitating pain. After soldiers who received these powerful opioids became addicted in the early twentieth century, however, the United States government banned heroin and severely limited morphine use in 1924. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, opioid use in the U.S. remained relatively low, as much of the population viewed partaking in drug culture as morally wrong and deviant.
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The Causes of Silicon Valley’s Success
By Kartik Donepudi, VI Form
The Causes of Silicon Valley’s Success
There are 472 million entrepreneurs in the world. Each year, those entrepreneurs found a total of 305 million startups, and 1.35 million of those startups are tech related. However, entrepreneurship is a risky business; in 2019, approximately 90% of startups, defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees, failed. With such a high failure rate, it is imperative that tech startup founders do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of their companies. They must have funding, talent, space, and proximity to resources like academic research and laboratories. Accordingly, it is of great importance that tech startup founders find the right location to set up shop.
Imagine you are a tech startup founder with the next big idea in your back pocket. You know your startup’s product will be wildly successful. You simply need the funding to get started, talented employees to begin research and development, and a place to open company headquarters where you can find a wide customer base and easy access to resources. Where do you go? The answer is the home of today’s greatest startup ecosystem: Silicon Valley.
Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley has been a center of technological innovation since the late 1800s and produces many of the world’s largest tech firms. Modern giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook find their homes in the Valley alongside pioneer companies of previous eras in technology; older firms like Lockheed Martin, Intel, and HP have blossomed in the region since their foundings in the mid 1900s. An abundance of local talent stemming from schools like Stanford University has fueled the region’s startups for more than a century, and in the modern age, talent from the best colleges around the world flocks to Silicon Valley to make it big as the next tech leaders.
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Questioning the Criminalization of Gangsta Rap: How Explicit Lyrics Reflect Economic and Racial Inequality in the Wake of Deindustrialization and the War on Drugs
By Frances Hornbostel, VI Form
Questioning the Criminalization of Gangsta Rap: How Explicit Lyrics Reflect Economic and Racial Inequality in the Wake of Deindustrialization and the War on Drugs
In 1992, rapper Tupac Shakur carved the powerful mantra he had created across his torso: “Thug Life.” In bold, unfading, blue ink, the message would last forever on his body and resonate off of it. The message of “Thug Life,” however, did not convey one, coherent story. As with anything celebrities do, the media, political figures, and the general public began to weave another section of the messy web that is Tupac’s legacy. The word “thug” inspired images of criminals who are violent, malicious, and crude.2 Many snatched the opportunity of Tupac’s branding himself with the public’s negative usage of “thug” as confirmation that he was accepting the media’s labelling of him. Some took it as permission to call Shakur a criminal before he was ever accused of a crime.
Many thought the way of life he depicted in his lyrics incited violence, holding him responsible for some real, criminal acts of violence that followed the release of his music. Linda Davidson, the wife of Officer Bill Davidson, would sue Time Warner, Interscope Records, and Tupac Shakur, blaming them for the fatal shooting of her husband. In April 1992, Officer Davidson pulled over Ronald Howard, a teenager from Houston, for a broken headlight. As the officer walked up to Howard’s window, the teen shot Davidson, who would die three days later. How could Tupac be responsible if it was Ronald Howard who was convicted of the crime? At the time of the shooting, the music of Tupac Shakur’s album, 2Pacalypse Now, blasted through an audio cassette in Howard’s car. Linda Davidson claimed the music’s obscenity and violent imagery directly encouraged illegal behavior, like the shooting that led to her husband’s death.3 Although the Judge eventually dismissed the lawsuit against Time Warner, Interscope Records, and Tupac, criticism of the rapper and the genre of gangsta rap was still very much alive.
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Ancient Greek and Roman Medicine’s Influence on Modern Medicine
By Cara Mulcahey, VI Form
Ancient Greek and Roman Medicine’s Influence on Modern Medicine
An elderly woman stumbles into a hospital’s waiting room. She is short of breath, feverish, and coughing uncontrollably. The hospital admits this woman, and a physician sees her. The physician may run a physical exam to check her oxygen saturation and breath sounds. This exam would also check her differential blood count, immunoglobulin levels, and sputum cultures. The physician may also ask for a chest CT to assess lung damage. These tests would indicate to the physician that this woman suffers from bronchiectasis. Bronchiectasis occurs when the bronchial tubes in the lungs are permanently damaged, widened, or thickened, enabling mucus and bacteria to accumulate in the lungs. This accounts for this woman’s difficulty breathing, as the mucus and bacteria were blocking her airways. With this diagnosis, the physician could treat the woman with chest physiotherapy to clear the mucus from the lungs, antibiotics, bronchodilators, medications, and oxygen therapy. She would leave with some relief and be able to live her life relatively normally.
But, what if this occurred over 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece? Ancient Greek physicians did not have access to fancy labs or equipment, such as CT machines, so could this woman receive treatment? The answer is yes. Although Greek physicians did not have the technology and knowledge modern physicians do, they were capable of diagnosing and treating patients. In this case, similar to a modern physician, the iatros (the Greek word for physician) would press his ear to the elderly woman’s back and listen to the sound of her breath. The iatros would hear “boiling inside [her chest] like vinegar,” which would lead him to diagnose correctly that the woman had fluid inside her lungs. Additionally, the iatros would notice the woman’s swollen fingers, which is a sign of lung disease. From this diagnosis, the iatros would prescribe the woman some medications to take and keep a close eye on her. Should her condition worsen, the iatros would drill a hole in her chest to drain some of the fluid. This procedure had numerous known risks, such as infection, which is why the iatros would try less-invasive treatments first. Overall, the woman would benefit from seeing the iatros, displaying that even though the iatros did not have access to modern technologies, he would be able to relieve some of her symptoms.
The earliest records of medicine come from Babylonia, Egypt, India, and China. Historians are able to study medicine from these ancient civilizations by examining drawings, bones, and surgical instruments. Initially, folk medicine was prominent. Folk medicine consisted of treating diseases with herbs and plants. Historians believe that ancient physicians used trial and error methods to deduce which plants and herbs had healing properties. Physicians utilized folk medicine and herbal remedies to treat common and mild illnesses, such as colds. However, these ancient civilizations linked more serious illnesses to supernatural origins, which physicians treated with incantations, potions, or spells. Therefore, the first physicians were primarily witches or sorcerers.
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20th Century Psychiatric Hospitals and the Lasting Impacts of Deinstitutionalization
By Skylar Davis, VI Form
20th Century Psychiatric Hospitals and the Lasting Impacts of Deinstitutionalization
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
I. Introduction
Few institutions evoke greater horror than the “insane asylums” of the 19th and 20th centuries. Given the stigmatizing media portrayals of such hospitals, most people believe that they had uniformly poor living conditions, practiced barbaric treatments, and employed abusive staff. As a consequence, society now views historic asylums as torturous and inhumane places. This image, however, hides a more complex truth about the value of state mental hospitals.
Prior to the asylum era, the only hospitals in America were general hospitals. During the early 18th century, most individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses lived at home under their families’ care. At the time, communities were reasonably tolerant of individuals who exhibited mild symptoms of mental illness. Those deemed violent and disorderly were sent to either public almshouses or private hospitals, depending on their family’s finances, for professional medical care. This was the beginning of institutionalized mental health care.
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The Portrayal of Russian Military Intervention in Ukraine (2014-current) in Russian Media Outlets
By Yevheniia Dubrova, VI Form
The Portrayal of Russian Military Intervention in Ukraine (2014-current) in Russian Media Outlets
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
- Introduction
On April 13, 2014, following the Russian occupation of Crimea, pro-Russian activists seized the City Council building in Makiivka, located in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine. They proclaimed the area part of a newly formed proto-state, the Donetsk People’s Republic. Almost immediately, the Republic’s government restricted public access to all Ukrainian and international TV channels and print media. As Dmytro Tkachenko, an adviser at Ukraine’s Ministry of Information Policy, noted, “Russia [was] doing everything it [could] to cut those people off.” Controlling TV towers in the two regions allowed the separatists to broadcast their propaganda, exaggerating Ukraine’s failures and glorifying their self-declared government. From that day forward, the population of occupied Donbas, including Makiivka, received all of their news solely from local Republican or state-owned Russian media outlets.
I remember that day clearly because it marked the beginning of the aggressive attitudes of pro-Russian supporters, who constituted the vast majority of people in my hometown of Makiivka, towards those supporting Ukraine and its reunification with the region. Never before had I witnessed the propaganda machine working so effectively and disinformation campaigns executed so brilliantly. Russia’s state-controlled media outlets unanimously denied the presence of Russian troops in the region and stated that it was ultra-nationalist Ukrainian government financed by Western politicians who started the war in Donbas for its own benefit. Branding the Ukrainian government a “fascist junta,” the Kremlin portrayed it and the Ukrainian state as “purveyors of fascism, xenophobia,” and violent racism. The horrifying tales of the violence of Ukrainian soldiers that appeared in the news, such as the infamous story about the public crucifixion of a three-year-old boy in Slovyansk, removed any traces of sympathy from the local population towards Ukraine, its government, and its army.
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Decades of Deceit: Bernie Madoff’s Effect on SEC Regulation
By Blake Gattuso, VI Form
Decades of Deceit: Bernie Madoff’s Effect on SEC Regulation
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
Seventeen billion dollars lost. Decades of deceit. Bernie Madoff’s fraud forever changed the lives of thousands and impacted the lives of millions.
“It’s a proprietary strategy, I can’t go into great detail,” said Bernie Madoff when he was asked to explain how he made such strong and consistent returns for his investors. This quote from his 2001 interview with Barron’s Magazine held true. Madoff would never go into “great detail” on this topic with anyone. Madoff did not tell investors about the strategy. Not even the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) examiners would get “great detail” about Madoff’s multibillion-dollar hedge fund. For more than thirty years, Madoff ran this scheme. And for more than thirty years, Madoff never went into “great detail” with anyone because his hedge fund was a sixty-five billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, not the top-performing hedge fund which it claimed to be.
Trusted capital markets are fundamental to the functioning of the American economy. Stock markets are places where companies raise capital from investors who buy corporate shares. Without these markets, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the American economy to efficiently allocate capital to productive uses represented in many American, world-leading companies, such as Apple, Google, General Motors, and Boeing. If investors lose faith in these markets and see them as fraudulent, the American economy will suffer.
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Campaign Finance Deregulation and the Rise of the NRA as a Political Power
By Louis Lyons, VI Form
Campaign Finance Deregulation and the Rise of the NRA as a Political Power
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
Gavin Aronsen, Asawin Suebsaeng, and Deanna Pan, “What Happened in the Newtown School Shooting,” Mother Jones, December 14, 2012, accessed January 6, 2020
Twenty young children and six adults lay dead in a Connecticut schoolhouse. The culprit: a 20-year-old, heavily armed man wielding an AR-15, two semi automatic pistols, and a shotgun.
Eight years ago on December 14, Adam Lanza perpetrated the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which was among the most deadly school massacres in American history. It shook the American public to its core, and many demanded action to curtail gun violence. American politicians, however, did little in response. Such is the power of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its ability to curtail the United States democratic process during the twenty first century.
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