U. settles suit with fired radiation safety officer

Mark Selikson, Penn's former director of radiation safety who in 1997 accused the University of firing him because he was about to expose a Penn scientist's illegal radiation testing, settled his case on Thursday just three days after the trial began. Alan Berkowitz, the University's lawyer, said the settlement process had been ongoing since jury selection almost a week earlier and that the final decision to settle at about 11 a.m. on Thursday came as no surprise to either party. Selikson's attorney, Patricia Pierce, refused to comment on the settlement. Pierce had not yet finished questioning Selikson -- who was the first and only witness in the trial that was originally projected to last three weeks -- when the settlement was reached. Selikson, 49, claimed that the University fired him in February 1997 to prevent him from reporting illegal human testing by Radiopharmaceutical Science Professor Hank Kung to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had already been investigating Kung for several years. The settlement came just a day after news broke of the death of a man with a genetic disorder, days into an experimental gene therapy treatment at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The death made national headlines. -- Laura McClure