In honor of Friday, I offer you a links edition.
You’re coming to the MinnRoast tonight, right? No? Well why not? Everyone else is, and the show promises to be killer.
OK, OK, I realize a few of you aren’t. In which case I think you ought to consider attending tonight’s 7:00 screening of “Off Label” at the Minneapolis St. Paul Film Festival. It’s a darkly comic documentary about eight lives affected by the commercialization of medicine and Big Pharma.
The film was inspired in great measure by the writings of University of Minnesota bioethics professor Carl Elliott, author of “Better than Well” and “White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine.” Elliott is expected to attend tonight’s screening and another to be held tomorrow, Saturday, April 27, at 3 p.m.
One of the film’s eight subjects also will be in attendance. Mary Weiss is the mother of the late Dan Markingson, a severely mentally ill man who committed suicide in 2004 during a University of Minnesota clinical trial of the drug Seroquel. She contends that Markingson never should have been enrolled.
Elliott wrote about the Markingson case two and a half years ago for the magazine Mother Jones, and has kept the heat on the U of M ever since. His efforts have drawn plenty of attention around the country and abroad, but little here.
As of yesterday, 2,333 people had signed a change.org petition calling on Gov. Mark Dayton to order an investigation. Only two of them are from the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics: Elliott and his U of M colleague Leigh Turner. (Turner is technically, officially a Canadian. But we’re tolerant hereabouts, eh?)
On the fence? Check out the trailer. If you like it, reserve yourself a seat at the St. Anthony Main theater.
Edison teacher update
The other day I got an e-mail from one Jessica Pennington, informing me that Edison High School teacher Chris Pennington did not win the $10,000 award for classroom innovation I wrote about recently. I’m going to speculate — which they teach us not to do in journalism school, but what the hey — that Jessica is Chris’ wife.
Chris Pennington’s story is a charming one. The gist: He helps his vocational ed students start businesses. They write business plans, issue stock and market their wares — front-yard libraries, bat houses and restored bikes, to name a few. Their profits should be enough one of these days to fund the entire program.
In the meantime, Pennington’s been digging into his own piggy bank to the tune of about $400 a month. When he and I talked he told me his wife loves him, but she also loves a balanced checkbook and had suggested he consider alternate sources of funding.
Jessica Pennington’s e-mail noted that while he didn’t win GOOD’s contest, Chris Pennington is undaunted and is attempting to crowdsource the seed money for his students’ three businesses. As of yesterday, the effort had attracted 32 funders who ponied up a little more than a fourth of the $10,000 goal.
Anyone interested in getting on board has just three days to surf on over, and check out Pennington’s absolutely hilarious, compelling video pitch — the iPad is indeed a revolutionary, democratizing tool.
Another principal removal
Lastly, I commend you to the friendly competition, which has done an excellent job tracking some increasingly heated school-level tensions in Minneapolis Public Schools. Obviously I’m speaking of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, whose crack education team has kept abreast of a series of controversies over race and equity.
It’s no good even trying to play catch-up on the transfer of the principal of Richard R. Green Central Park School — the second principal removal in a few short weeks — so I suggest you go directly to their reporting on the dust-up.