Stand Down Time at UCI

When accidents occur with alarming frequency in the military, the services conduct a “stand down.” Routine exercises stop; procedures are reexamined. The objective is to identify and solve a problem. Oversight measures announced last week constitute an acknowledgment that it’s time for that at UC Irvine’s medical school.

The school is now experiencing its fourth scandal in four years. So far the latest one is not as significant as the other three. But it is serious, involving the possibility that the director of the medical school’s Willed Body Program may have sold the body parts of cadavers.

The employee, Christopher S. Brown, has denied doing anything wrong. But the university fired him and is looking into possible conflicts of interest.

One involves an anatomy class offered twice since last year in the basement laboratory of the Willed Body Program. Brown once had business ties to the man who offered the anatomy courses. University officials said they did not authorize the class, did not allow use of the donated cadaver for teaching, and can find no evidence the school was paid for the course.

That raises the question of supervision. How could an unauthorized class be conducted in the building without the school learning about it immediately? The university said it tightened its procedures after each of the previous scandals. That was a start, but what is required now is a full-scale audit of the school.

The school’s dean and the university’s chancellor have promised such an inspection, led by people from outside UCI who can provide a fresh look at operations. Staff should be encouraged to give their opinions frankly.

Rather than having a dean or other teachers double as administrators, it would be better to have an additional official to monitor operations and ensure compliance with regulations.

The first of the college of medicine’s problems became public four years ago when it was found that doctors at the acclaimed fertility clinic stole the eggs and embryos of scores of women and implanted them in other patients. The clinic was later shut down.

Two years ago cancer researchers were found to have improperly charged patients for experimental treatments. Last year the university said a professor used patients’ blood samples for research without seeking permission. All the incidents violated school or government regulations.

The Willed Body Program involves individuals or their relatives who donate corpses to the medical center.

The cadavers are an indispensable aid to students. But the donors’ survivors need to have confidence that the remains are treated with the proper respect and used to advance science, not sold for private gain.

An audit of several departments in the medical school and the hospital three years ago found that some departments appeared to have grown too quickly for sound management practices and internal procedures to keep up. Since the university established its medical school three decades ago, it has tried to attain top-rank status, recruiting researchers, professors and students from around the world to bring it renown.

That’s all to the good, but the university’s top officials must reaffirm that lapses in ethics or medical protocol will not be tolerated. Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone did that last week with a properly strong letter to all faculty and staff, reminding them of their responsibilities.

An audit by outside experts would benefit the school, examining if it’s just had a run of exceptionally bad luck or if there are systemic problems. The medical school has an overall good record of caring for patients at the hospital, attracting researchers who are first-rate and teaching medical students. Those roles are too important for the school to be lurching from crisis to crisis.