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China's struggle against corruption reached new levels on September 14 when Cheng Kejie, former vice chairman of the National People's Congress, was executed. He was accused of illegally amassing more than $5 million. Merle Goldman, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of Chinese history, doubts that the harsh penalty will deter future impropriety. "No matter how high-profile the case, no matter how serious the punishment, they won't be able to do anything about corruption until they begin to introduce institutional reforms," she says in a September 18 story in the Christian Science Monitor. Goldman asserts that China must establish "some kind of electoral accountability, freedom of the press, and an opposition party -- reforms that would ensure a system of checks and balances . . . the kind of reforms that we associate with democracy."

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In a biography of Robert Kennedy, Evan Thomas, Newsweek's assistant managing editor, addresses "not only the well-known good Bobby and bad Bobby -- the saint and the bully -- but all the Bobbys, like cats in the bag," according to COM Journalism Professor and University Professors Fellow Lance Morrow in a book review in Time magazine's September 18 issue. Morrow, a former Time editor, writes that the book is "clear-eyed, richly detailed, and riveting." Kennedy "could bark like a nasty terrier," he continues. "Sometimes he bit as well; he went after his enemies like a dog after the mailman. If he came to know some of the secrets of the deep, he learned them the hard way. Certainly at the end, he knew about the ironies of glamour and fame and money, and of sudden, violent loss."

The high costs of medicines can be cut without jeopardizing the research of pharmaceutical companies, say SPH Professor Alan Sager and Research Analyst Deborah Socolar in a September 20 Boston Globe story. With vast numbers of Americans lacking insurance for prescription drugs, drug companies could make about the same profits if prices were cut to make drugs affordable to more people. "The drug makers claim that any step by government to interfere with either their prices or their profits will cause destruction and devastation," they wrote in a report they gave in September to the Northeast Legislative Association on Prescription Drug Pricing. "They are wrong. The sky will not fall." They estimate that lower drug prices would trigger an increase in sales among people who currently can't afford drugs.

3 October 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations