From the San Diego Union-Tribune, ABC News, Reuters:

Sequenom, a diagnostics testing and genetic analysis company, has announced it will pay $14 million and an undisclosed amount in stock to settle an investor class-action lawsuit over mishandling of data in the development of a potentially lucrative prenatal test for Down syndrome. The company did not admit wrongdoing.

The lawsuit came after the company’s stock lost more than three-quarters of its value last April. The company said then that its projections of the reliability of its prenatal test were not reliable, and said unnamed employees had not handled test data properly. Five top officers were fired and another resigned.

Investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI, and federal prosecutors are still pending.

BNET columnist Jim Edwards said changes in corporate governance announced as part of the settlement suggest that lawsuits against the company “seem to have introduced adult supervision at a company in dire need of it.”

Sequenom officials had estimated that the worldwide market for a prenatal test for Down syndrome is worth between $3 billion and $5 billion.

Earlier posts here.

Stew Friedman, writing in the Harvard Business Review, says mental illness is often not taken seriously or treated as a legitimate disease by businesses, the health care system, or by society. As a consequence, he says, the business sector faces significant cost in lost productivity because employees feel they must carry this heavy weight of responsibility and worry by themselves.

It’s estimated that more than 26 percent of American adults have a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year, says Friedman. He urges companies to improve attitudes and language, and to change the corporate culture to be more supportive of people with mental illness.

From Bloomberg News, Dow Jones Newswires/Wall Street Journal, San Diego Business Journal, Market Watch:

San Diego-based Sequenom Inc. today announced the firings of two top executives following a five-month-long independent investigation of alleged mishandling of research data on a first-trimester blood test for Down syndrome. Company executives had touted its SEQureDx test as 100 percent accurate.

Terminated were CEO Harry Stylli and senior vice president for research Elizabeth Dragon, as well as three unnamed researchers. The company’s chief financial officer, Paul Hawran, and Steven Owings, who oversaw commercial development in prenatal diagnostics, also resigned.

The company said in a statement that it had “failed to put in place adequate protocols and controls for the conduct of studies” of its prenatal test for Down syndrome. “Certain employees also failed to provide adequate supervision.”

Test data “included inadequately substantiated claims, inconsistencies, and errors,” Sequenom said today. “Due to the deficiencies in our disclosure controls and procedures, in a number of instances such test data and results were reported to the public in our press releases and other public statement.”

… “We are no longer relying on, and the public should no longer rely on, any of our previously announced test data and results for our noninvasive prenatal test for [Down's Syndrome],

… Shares of Sequenom were halted prior to the news late Monday after closing at $5.69, down 71% for the year. In after-hours trading, the stock fell 44% to $3.18, close to the low of $2.86 hit in the wake of the initial disclosure of the issues in April.

Earlier posts here.

She says store made her feel like a ‘misfit’

From Minnesota Public Radio, [Minneapolis-St. Paul] Star Tribune:

Minnesota has fined retailer Abercrombie & Fitch $115,264 for discriminating against a person with a disability after store representatives refused to allow a family member to help a girl with autism in a dressing room.

The state’s Department of Human Rights imposed the fine after the company repeatedly refused to respond to the girl’s mother’s request for an apology and denied engaging in discriminatory practices. An administrative law judge found that the girl had suffered mental anguish as a result of the incident, which was witnessed by a long line of customers. “I am a misfit at Abercrombie,” she testified.

Just last month, a British tribunal fined Abercrombie & Fitch for unlawful harassment of a clerk for reasons related to her disability. Riam Dean had alleged that the company banished her to its stockroom after concluding that her prosthetic arm did not comply with its “look policy.”

The company paid $40 million to settle yet another discrimination lawsuit in 2004, admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to new policies aimed at promoting diversity.

From the [UK] Times, BBC News, Associated Press, and AFP;

Riam Dean, 22, was awarded £9,000 by an employment tribunal after alleging that she was harassed and dismissed by the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing chain for reasons related to her disability.

Dean sued the clothing giant for discrimination, saying the firm’s London store banished her to the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn’t meet the company’s “look policy,” then dismissed her over the disagreement. Dean, a law student, was born without a left forearm.

The Central London Employment Tribunal ruled that Dean was “unlawfully harassed for a reason that related to her disability” under the Disability Discrimination Act. The tribunal also found that the firm “failed to comply with its duty to make reasonable adjustments” for her disability.

Earlier post here.

(AP photo)

From the San Jose Mercury News:

The owner of a controversial California doughnut shop, “Psycho Donuts,” will square off against the head of a leading state mental health organization in a half hour televised debate to be aired on KTVU -TV later this month.

The shop in Campbell, CA, features doughnuts dubbed “Bipolar” and “Massive Head Trauma,” and offers a straitjacket and padded cell for camera-wielding customers. Oscar Wright, CEO of United Advocates for Children and Families, says the shop’s theme stigmatizes families of people with mental disorders, but shop owner Kipp Berdiansky says it’s all in fun.

Earlier post here.

From the StoryCorps oral history project on National Public Radio:

Ricky Boone, a magician and owner of a magic shop in Asheville, NC, tells his friend Patty Barber about the teacher who transformed his life.

Boone was born with a rare bone disorder that stunted his growth and limited his mobility. He says he spent his childhood in a rural area where “people were ashamed that the next door neighbor was a disabled child.” Then one day, everything changed: a new teacher showed up at school on a Harley motorcycle. He was wearing a black leather jacket.

That teacher, Grovner Wood, became the principal and embarked upon teaching Boone magic tricks, frequently paging him over the loudspeaker to come down to the principal’s office.

Today, Boone says he owes everything to his former principal. He’s been a professional magician for 36 years and owns his own magic shop, Magic Central.

He says that people “see me as someone to pity. It takes a lot to get past that initial shock. But if I can make that person laugh their butt off, then they have no time to feel sorry for me, and they forget that I’m in a chair.”