Investigation of research misconduct 4 months late

A University investigation into a professor's conduct in an incident in which 30 Veterinary School students and staff members may have been exposed to a fatal virus is four months overdue, according to University research policies. University administrators said this week that the probe into the professor's actions is continuing, but University research policies call for investigations of alleged research misconduct to take no longer than 90 days. Officials began their review of the incident over seven months ago. A spokesperson for Vet School Dean Edwin Andrews said no information can be released about the investigation. Andrews could not be reached for comment on the reasons for the delay or on the stage of the investigation. Microbiology Professor Jorge Ferrer's research has been suspended since the middle of June, when University officials discovered that Vet School students and staff came into contact with 14 lambs that Ferrer had inoculated with a virus which can cause leukemia. Ferrer failed to separate the lambs, which were part of his research experiment, from the rest of the flock at the University's New Bolton Center in Chester County. University and federal regulations stipulate that animals inoculated during research be separated from the rest of the flock. Although under investigation for seven months, Ferrer declined to comment, saying a University confidentiality rule prevents him from discussing the incident before a report is released. Vice Provost for Research Barry Cooperman also declined to release any information about the report, but said the school is continuing to test those exposed to the virus. The virus can be latent for up to 30 years. He added that investigations of this type tend to take a long time. The Vet School students and staff came into contact with the lambs during routine operations, including tail bobbing and castration that were to be performed on healthy animals. But Cooperman said that the risk to the students and staff is "extremely minimal." Exposure to the virus occurs only through blood-to-blood transmission, sexual intercourse or breast-feeding from an infected mother to the child. The procedures conducted on the sheep involved very little blood and national experts said this summer that the risk of exposure is very low. All 30 students and staff tested negative for the virus in August. In addition, about 100 pre-school children and their chaperones visited the flock last spring. However, because their contact with the sheep was restricted to petting, experts said the risk to the children was virtually non-existent. The results of a test for one pre-schooler in August were negative. Only one in every 600 people infected with the virus actually develops the deadly leukemia.

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