6 Dartmouth Professors Under Investigation: Connections

What is happening at Dartmouth College’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and why is the MSM silent? Three professors resigned after investigations into them over alleged sexual misconduct, two are currently under investigation by the college for reasons unknown, and one was fired for plagiarism. Dartmouth is an Ivy League school with over 40 departments and 930 faculty members, and three of the six were coincidentally from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences while the other three were from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. What are the odds? Despite this, the MSM remains silent and the only reports appear to be coming out of the local Valley View website and local papers.

One of these Professors, a 30-year veteran at Dartmouth, worked with Jim Yong Kim back in 2009 when Kim was President of Dartmouth, just three years prior to former President Barack Obama appointing him to President of The World Bank in 2012. This same professor was also instrumental in getting the Affordable Care Act passed for the Obama administration in 2009. Yet the media is silent?

The connections to Dartmouth only grow more interesting, and magically circle back to Barack Obama, the Clintons, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and several others. This is a web. What is going on at Dartmouth?

Dartmouth’s Three Professors from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Resigned and Under Investigation for Alleged Sexual Misconduct

On June 14, 2018, Todd Heatherton, a Professor in Dartmouth’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, retired after the dean of faculty of arts and sciences said that his tenure be revoked and that he be terminated immediately. He was also banned from entering campus property. According to Valley View, this was due to an investigation into claims that he had acted “unprofessionally in public” while intoxicated during academic conferences. Heatherton came to Dartmouth in 1994 after serving as an assistant professor of psychology and as a director of the undergraduate program of psychology at Harvard. He studied human impulse control at Dartmouth.

Heatherton, Kelley, and Whalen had been placed on leave in October of 2017 amid allegations of “serious misconduct”. The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office opened a criminal investigation because some of the allegations involved possible “sexual misconduct.” In November, 15 Dartmouth students anonymously alleged that the three professors had created a “hostile environment in which sexual harassment is normalized.”

On June 26, 2018, the second Dartmouth professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences resigned, effective immediately, for alleged sexual misconduct. Paul Whalen had worked at Dartmouth since 2005 and his areas of expertise included affective neuroscience, facial expressions, and the amygdala. Diane Lawrence college spokeswoman stated in an email, “to protect the privacy of all parties, we are not sharing the details of the investigations.”

July 17, 2018, just weeks after the prior two professors were fired, a third professor resigned “effective immediately”. As with the other two professors, Bill Kelley’s tenure was revoked and employment terminated due to sexual misconduct allegations. Kelley was also a professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences.

All three professors are prohibited from entering the campus property. The Deputy Attorney General Jane Young confirmed to the Valley View that the investigation is ongoing.

Dartmouth’s Two Professors Under Investigation for Unknown Reasons

Just two weeks later, on August 1^st another report came out by the Valley View stating that “Dartmouth College barred a nationally known health care policy researcher and another top official from its campus and office buildings pending an investigation into a complaint about conduct in the workplace.”

The investigation is being conducted by an external investigator on Elliott Fisher Director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and Adam Keller, the institute’s Chief of Strategy and Operations. Both had been put on administrative leave and are prohibited from entering Dartmouth property. According to Valley View, “they also are excluded from teaching, research, and service responsibilities.” Fisher, a 30-year veteran, and Keller a 20-year veteran of Dartmouth, are both graduates of Harvard.

This is an ongoing investigation that is unrelated to the other three professors. According to Valley View, “neither Hanover nor the Lebanon police departments had complaints, pending charges or ongoing investigations against either Fisher or Keller, and the college had not been in touch with any law enforcement agency regarding this workplace complaint.” This remains a mystery.

Dartmouth’s Health Policy Researcher Resigned for Alleged Plagiarism

On September 13, 2018, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a prominent Dartmouth health policy researcher resigned in protest after the college determined he had plagiarized the work of a colleague. A 28-year veteran of Dartmouth, he is known for his research on medical screenings and overdiagnoses. He submitted a full statement to Valley View stating that the writing was that of his and his co-authors and there was no plagiarism. He went on to state that The United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI) judged the matter as an authorship or credit dispute, not plagiarism, and the New England Journal of Medicine had the same findings. Therefore, it was an authorship dispute, not plagiarism.

In June, Dartmouth’s Provost Office found Welch engaged in professional misconduct by failing to credit a colleague’s work in a paper titled “Breast-Cancer Tumor Size, Overdiagnosis, and Mammography Screening Effectiveness.” Welch submitted a letter to his colleagues stating, “I cannot in good conscience accept the demand that I make the complainant an author — much less the demand that I make him the first author. Doing so requires that I falsely attest that he meets the requirements of authorship: namely, that he materially participated in the work and is able to defend it. Much as I have enjoyed working at Dartmouth, I am not willing to falsely attest to anything simply to stay here.” Dartmouth told Welch he could continue his employment but would be barred from teaching. Welch did not accept those terms and resigned.

Elliott Fisher’s Connections with Jim Yong Kim and Barack Obama

Fisher, a 30-year veteran at Dartmouth, graduated Harvard College in 1974 and Harvard Medical School in 1981. He has a master’s of public health from the University of Washington in 1985. He worked as a staff physician at the White River Junction VA Medical Center from 1986 until 2004. He has published over 150 research articles and commentaries, and his research and opinions have appeared in The New York Times, 60 Minutes and multiple national media outlets. He has an extensive 19-page resume.

Fisher worked on a long-term study called the ‘Dartmouth Atlas Health Care’ which was influential in the debate of passing Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, while he served as the director of the centers for population health and healthy policy research at Dartmouth from 2007–2009. Current World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, also a Harvard Medical School graduate, was named the 17^th President of Dartmouth College in March, 2009.  The Affordable Care Act was introduced on October 29, 2009 and passed on November 7, 2009. As stated in his Dartmouth bio, “The landmark research was cited by Peter R. Orszag as President Barack Obama’s administration crafted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Fisher was one of the originators of the concept of “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) and worked with colleagues to carry out the research that led to their inclusion in the Affordable Care Act.”

Jim Yong Kim, along with Dr. Paul Farmer, Todd McCormack, Thomas J. White and Ophelia Dahl, co-founded Partners In Health in 1987. Most people are familiar with Bill Clinton’s buddy Dr. Paul Farmer, who has been operating out of Haiti for many years. In January, 2010, while President of Dartmouth, Kim worked with students and faculty, together with Partners In Health and other organizations, to form the “Dartmouth Haiti Response”, raising $1 million in donations. In May, 2010 Kim also managed to secure a $35 million anonymous grant to establish the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science for developing high-quality low-cost care.

Jim Yong Kim has quite an extensive background, but to put this particular story in perspective, in 2009 Elliott Fisher worked on the research that played an integral role in seeing that the Affordable Care Act was passed. As of August 1st, this renowned professor is under investigation for unknown reasons and has been put on leave by Dartmouth. Just prior to 2009, Thomas Frieden Health Commissioner of NYC played an integral role in Obama’s electronic health record (EHR), and was later appointed in 2009 by former President Barack Obama to serve as the new CDC Director. Frieden was arrested on August 24th for alleged sexual abuse. You can read the full story on Frieden here. In 2012 Obama appointed Jim Yong Kim to serve as The World Bank President. Meanwhile, since 2010, Kim’s partner Dr. Paul Farmer has worked hand-in-hand with the Clintons in Haiti. This is one small web that will be expanded upon in future articles.

Elliott Fisher & The Rippel Foundation Connections

Elliott Fisher has served on the Board of Trustees for the Rippel Foundation since 2011. The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation was established in 1953 after the death of Julius S. Rippel in memory of his wife. Julius Rippel was born in Newark, graduated in 1923 from Dartmouth College, and ran Rippel & Company, his very successful investment banking firm in New Jersey.

The Rippel Foundation’s focus is on the healthcare industry with a three-part strategy encompassing targeted research and development projects, partnering with others involved in exploration, experimentation, deep engagement and learning, and influence.

Prior to serving on the board of the foundation, Fisher was, and still is, a “Pioneer” with ReThink Health, a Rippel initiative founded in 2007, which seeks to understand what barriers stand in the way of creating an optimal health system. This consists of a team of 10 pioneers and over 30 team members with experience with over 30 communities across the country and a dozen leading academic institutions.

The President & CEO Laura Landy has been a Rippel board trustee since 1998, and serves as a trustee of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System. Their senior communications consultant Lauren Tobias spent nearly 20 years in media and non-profit communications with most of her work focused on health, which consisted of working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, the United Nations Foundation, and others. Tobias began her career working as a researcher at CNN and for an NBC foreign correspondent. Jane Erickson is one of their project coordinators. Erickson oversees the strategy and implementation for ReThink Health Ventures. Prior to joining the ReThink team, she ran the grants department for Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI).

Coincidentally, one of the ten pioneers working alongside Elliott Fisher, is Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. In December 2014, the Rocky Mountain Institute merged with Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room to work on ‘The Ten Island Challenge’ with the Clinton Climate Initiative which was founded in 2006 under the Clinton Foundation. This is an ongoing project whereby they are raising funds from the UN, GEF (arm of the World Bank), government of Norway, and others to construct solar farms and wind farms on ten islands in the Caribbean along the drug and child trafficking transits. They are currently working with over 20 islands at this point.

Who is Mala Gaonkar?

Stay on this twisty path and follow along, as the connections are staggering. Stephen Mandel, owner of Lone Pine Capital hedge fund and Lone Pine Foundation is a former board chair of Dartmouth College. He is a graduate from both Harvard Business School and Dartmouth College, is board chair of Teach for America, and a former trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and The Children’s School in Stamford, CT. In the mid 80s he was a mass-market retailing analyst at Goldman Sachs and consultant at Mars. Lone Pine Foundation is a private foundation that supports organizations located in CT, NY, CA, and London, UK, with a mission to fight poverty through education by awarding grants to education programs serving low-income children and families.

On September 20, 2018 Mandel announced that he will be stepping down from day-to-day operations at Lone Pine Capital in January, 2019. Meet Mala Gaonkar, a co-portfolio manager at Lone Pine Capital, who will be managing the portfolio and daily operations, along with David Craver and Kelly Granat, after Mandel steps down in January. This trio is already well established at Lone Pine, and Goankar has been with them since 1998.

Mala Gaonkar, another graduate of Harvard, was born in the U.S. but grew up in Bangalore, and has connections with Dartmouth as well. In fact, as recent as 2016, Gaonkar and David Byrne of the Talking Heads collaborated on a neurosociety project using audiences minds as the canvas for experiments relating to perception. The development involved 35 neuroscientists over the course of 2 years, representing 15 labs throughout the world, including those at New York University, Princeton University, and Dartmouth College. It kind of puts a whole new perspective on the Talking Heads music videos.

As busy as Gaonkar appears to be, she is also a trustee of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Rand, Tate Foundation, and founding trustee of Ariadne Labs and The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Technology. She is on the advisory board of The Economist. Not only is Gaonkar a trustee for CHAI, she is listed on the Clintons CHAI donor list as being a donor in the $1-5 million category alongside the World Bank, Rockefellers, and about 25 others between 2010-2017.

In CHAI’s 2013 annual report, they have Mala Gaonkar listed under the Board of Directors as a Board Member, along with good friend Dr. Paul Farmer. Under the acknowledgements to donors, they add Gaonkar to the list, as well numerous other organizations, foundations and governments.

In addition to the Clintons, Gaonkar supported Partners in Health with “In-Kind Gifts”, as reflected in their 2012 annual report. Now remember, Partners in Health was founded by Clinton buddy Dr. Paul Farmer, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and three others, and has been operating out of Haiti as well as other locations for years now. This annual report consists of 20 pages of donors with over 150 donors per page with contributors from people and organizations such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Goldman Sachs & Co, The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, GE, The United Nations Foundation, The World Bank, Digicel Foundation, and on and on it goes. One may look at such a list, with well over 3,000 contributors both financially and in-kind donations, and wonder if this could perhaps be a large scale slush fund? It’s a realistic question. Partners in Health began their work in Haiti and have since expanded out to 10 countries. They have partnerships with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pfizer, Ronald McDonald House Charities, and several others.

Gaonkar is a very ambitious lady. In addition to all of the above, in 2015 she co-founded the Surgo Foundation with her friend Sema Sgaier, that focuses on health systems and services across several countries. Prior to Sema’s role as executive director of Surgo, she held several roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, such as leading the scale-up of the HIV prevention program in India and across eastern and southern Africa. She is well versed in working with governments and was a neuroscience and genomics scholar at Harvard Medical School, and has a PhD in cellular and molecular biology. She also serves on the board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Alumni Network.

One of Surgo Foundation’s six partners is the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) which was set up to be a long-term strategic partnership. In 2017 they launched their first projected in Chennai, India to eliminate TB. According to their site, they state, “In Chennai, there are approximately 23,000 TB cases that develop annually, of which less than 10,000 are reported to the local government. Unreported cases are either patients receiving care in the private sector, where TB care is unregulated and the quality varies, or are patients who have yet to seek care or were not properly diagnosed.” They go on to say that this is just the first of many programs they hope to work on together.

Gaonkar also serves as a trustee to Ariadne Labs, is on the Advisory Board, and was one of the founding donors. Ariadne Labs is a joint center for health systems innovation of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Ariadne Labs, based out of Boston, MA, was founded in 2012 by Atul Gawande and a team of leaders to find solution for complex problems in health care. Gawande built this center from a start-up research center with 100 employees and more than 100 affiliate and associate faculty members across the Harvard system. Ariadne Labs has numerous “supporters”, a few of which include Mala Goankar and husband Oliver Haarmann, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Lone Pine Capital.

They have worked on many initiatives, including the “Primary Health Care Performance Initiative” they launched at the United National General Assembly in 2015, developed with the World Bank, WHO, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In July, 2018 Gawande became the CEO of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase health care organization, which is also based in Boston.

To recap, Mala Gaonkar from Lone Pine Capital is the trustee of Ariadne Labs, is on the advisory board and was a founding donor, Bill & Melinda Gates work on initiatives with Ariadne Labs, and Sema Sgaier co-founder of Surgo Foundation used to work with Bill & Melinda Gates. Gaonkar is a supporter of Partners in Health, and a trustee to CHAI, donor to CHAI, on the board of CHAI and working on an initiative in India with CHAI through her Surgo Foundation. She has collaborated on work involving Dartmouth and her boss was a graduate and former board member of Dartmouth. Interesting connections.

Gaonkar is also a trustee of the Paris Review, a past consultant of The World Bank, a Founder’s Council Member at Harvard University South Asia Initiative, and has made contributions to multiple campaigns for Hillary Clinton. According to her own words pertaining to donors in a Wikileaks email dated April 21, 2015, she had previously been on the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) board as well.

Dartmouth Connections to Bill & Melinda Gates

Aside from Bill & Melinda Gates having involvement in CHAI, Partners in Health, and Ariadne Labs, they also have an extensive history with Dartmouth.

This is a mere sampling of grants awarded to Dartmouth researchers: In 2005, two grants were awarded to the tune of $4 million pertaining to mucosal immunization against Tuberculosis. In 2008, eight grants were awarded at $100,000 each for research varying from building better vaccines to expansile nanoparticles for delivery of antibiotics, and several other projects. In 2009, the Gates Foundation sponsored a project for a $30 million grant program to develop point-of-care diagnostics for the developing world. In 2017 the Gates Foundation awarded a grant for mucosal immunity in Polio in the amount of $673,882.

In 2010, Dartmouth Professor Douglas Staiger worked with the Gates Foundation on an “Measures of Effective Teaching” project, which was a national effort fully funded by the Gates Foundation. They were working with researchers, collecting and analyzing data that “may unlock the secret to what makes an effective teacher.” RAND Corporation was working on the statistical analysis.

In 2011, Ragon, Dartmouth, MIT, and Harvard collaborated to tailor a new vaccine approach against HIV with an $8 million award from Partners Healthcare through a grant from the Gates Foundation. Partners Healthcare was founded in 1994 and is a non-profit Boston-based hospital and physicians network that includes Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. In April, 2017 the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts announced that Partners Healthcare and Brigham and Women’s Hospital was fined $10 million over allegations that a stem cell research lab fraudulently obtained federal grant funding. The government stated that the lab run by Dr. Piero Anversa included false scientific information in applications to the National Institutes of Health. Apparently the lab “raised the possibility” that a human heart could repair itself, but other scientists haven’t been able to replicate that research. In 2015, the Brigham lab closed and the three researchers no longer work at the hospital.

In 2013, Gates brought on John Modlin as Deputy Director, Polio for the research portfolio of the Polio strategy. Modlin attended Duke University, carried out his residency at Boston Children’s Hospital, and served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and John Hopkins School of Medicine. He moved to Dartmouth in 1991. His research consists of perinatal viral infections, poliovirus immunization, and vaccine public policy, and his research at John Hopkins played a vital role in the decision to change polio vaccination policy in the U.S. in both 1997 and 2000. Modlin was also the chair of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization, and chair of the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. Just before moving over to the Gates foundation, he was the Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Senior Advising Dean at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

During Modlin’s time as  Chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunizations and Practices, in February 2000, they provided recommendations for “Use of Standing Orders Programs to Increase Adult Vaccination Rates”, which entailed:

“The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recognizes the need for evidence-based policy to improve the delivery and receipt of immunization services recommended for adults (i.e., persons aged >18 years). Two recent, systematic reviews of the health services research literature recommended standing orders programs as an effective organizational intervention to improve vaccination coverage rates among adults. This report briefly reviews the evidence on the effectiveness of standing orders programs, describes standards for program implementation, and recommends initiating these programs to improve immunization coverage in several traditional and nontraditional settings.”

It includes a fairly extensive background citing statistics, as well as implementation guidelines, and concludes with:

“ACIP recommends that standing orders programs be used in long-term-care facilities under the supervision of a medical director to ensure the administration of recommended vaccinations for adults. ACIP also encourages the introduction of standing orders programs for vaccination of adults in other settings (e.g., inpatient and outpatient facilities, managed-care organizations, assisted living facilities, correctional facilities, pharmacies, adult workplaces, and home health-care agencies). Implementation of standing orders programs alone or combined with other effective interventions can help improve vaccination coverage by institutional providers (3,4,31). Because of the societal burden of influenza and pneumococcal disease, implementation of standing orders programs to improve adult vaccination coverage for these diseases should be a national public health priority.”

What is Going on at Dartmouth & The Healthcare Industry?

Does it seem odd that three professors from the same department, out of 40 departments, were fired within a few weeks of one another, ALL for sexual misconduct that is still under investigation? Does it seem strange that a 28-year veteran research professor was pressured out of his job over not crediting someone’s work in his paper that he and is co-authors wrote? It’s plausible, but why now? Why at the same time as five other professors being shuffled out the door?

How about world renowned, 30-year veteran Elliot Fisher suddenly being under investigation, along with 20-year veteran Adam Keller, both for mysterious unknown reasons? Again, both happening at the same time frame as the others. What are the odds, out of 930 faculty members from 40 different departments, three are from a single department, and the other three are also from a single department?

Given some of the history and connections with Dartmouth, is it possible that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye? The mere fact that the MSM is silent on this, especially when one of the men is a documented researcher in former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a former co-worker of the President of The World Bank, one must ask these questions. Why the silence?

This circle of individuals literally consists of three professors of Dartmouth fired for alleged sexual misconduct, two professors released of duty and under investigation for unknown reasons, one professor pressured to resign over allegations of plagiarism. The connecting parties consist of one former CDC Director arrested for alleged sexual abuse along with a wealth of past potential scandals, the Clinton Foundation is currently under investigation, Bill and Melinda Gates have been under scrutiny for years over devastating outcomes and even death caused by their vaccines, and Dr. Paul Farmer’s Haiti agendas have been under scrutiny as well. Former President Barack Obama and his entire administration are under fire for multiple alleged incidents involving corruption. Yet, despite the fact that ALL of them are involved up to their necks in the healthcare industry, not one of them is being investigated for their work attributed to these areas?

This intricate web of individuals and their foundations have been intertwined for decades, carrying out experiments, medications, and covering the gamut in the healthcare industry while raking in billions of taxpayer dollars. There is no oversight whatsoever. If these are the people in control, isn’t it time the government take a close look at the funding that is being doled out to these foundations, and take a good hard look at ALL of the Ivy League colleges to get to the root of this problem? Isn’t it time that investigations are carried out pertaining to the health related operations and “initiatives” this crew runs? After all, the Clinton Foundation is currently under investigation for pay-to-play, one would think pay-to-play with people’s health would be a top priority to investigate? Bottom line – it’s time for legitimate investigations and transparency in reporting instead of cover stories.