Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON – More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a skeleton unearthed in northern England last summer as that of Richard III, the medieval king portrayed by Shakespeare as a homicidal tyrant who killed his two young nephews in order to ascend the throne.

DNA from the bones, found beneath the ruins of an old church, match that of a living descendant of the monarch’s sister, researchers said.

"Rarely have the conclusions of academic research been so eagerly awaited," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the excavation, told a phalanx of reporters Monday morning. "Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed…is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England."

The dramatic announcement capped a brief hunt for Richard's remains whose progress has been closely charted by international media and whose success has been barely short of miraculous.

Working from old maps of Leicester, about 100 miles northwest of London, archaeologists from the local university had less than a month to dig in a small municipal parking lot -- one of the few spaces not built over in the crowded city center. The team stumbled upon the ruins of the medieval priory where records say Richard was buried, then found the bones a few days later last September.

"It was an extraordinary discovery that stunned all of us," said Buckley.

The nearly-intact skeleton bore obvious traces of trauma to the skull and of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that matched contemporary descriptions of Richard’s appearance. The feet were missing, almost certainly the result of later disturbance, and the hands were crossed at the wrist, which suggests that they may have been tied.

Scientists at the University of Leicester, which pioneered the practice of DNA fingerprinting, were able to extract samples from the bones and compare them to a man descended from Richard III's sister Anne. The match through the maternal line was virtually perfect.

"The DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III," said Turi King, the project’s geneticist.

Richard reigned from 1483 to 1485, and occupies a unique place in England's long line of colorful rulers. He was the last king to be killed in combat, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by his successor, Henry VII. His death ended the Plantagenet dynasty and ushered in the long era of the Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Jo Appleby, an osteologist at the university, said the skeleton belonged to an adult male in his late 20s to late 30s; Richard III was 32 when he died. The man would have stood 5-foot-8 at full height, but the curved spine would have made him appear shorter.

The skull was riddled with wounds strongly indicative of death in battle, including two blows from bladed weapons, either of which would have been fatal, Appleby said.

Richard III is one of England's most controversial monarchs, reviled by some as a bloodthirsty despot who stopped at nothing to gain power but revered by others who insist that he has been unfairly maligned. His supporters note that the repugnant portrait of Richard in today's popular imagination is based almost entirely on accounts from the time of the usurping Tudors, especially Shakespeare's indelible characterization of him as a "deform'd, unfinish'd" man without scruples.

Fans say Richard III was an enlightened, capable ruler whose important social reforms included the presumption of innocence for defendants and the granting of bail, which remain pillars of the legal system in both Britain and the U.S.

What happened to Richard's two nephews, however, who were his rivals for the throne and who were shut up in the Tower of London as young boys, never to be seen again, remains a mystery.

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Amputee Soccer Players Face Their Prosthetists — On the Field

LONDON — The beautiful game was exactly that as amputee footballers took to a pitch in the heart of the city to challenge the men who made their prosthetics.

Players on both sides of the field share a deep passion for the game Americans call soccer, and a deep respect for what their opponents have done. Three of the men on the field lost limbs to the game they love, and feel a debt of gratitude to the prosthetists who helped them keep playing. James Catchpole, who organizes an amputee team based in north London and in this game played for the amputees’ “all-star” team the LA Spurs, sees the game against the Roehampton Prosthetists as a win-win.

“In a way, it reflects badly on them if we lose,” he said. “It will mean they haven’t supplied us with good enough legs.”

Amputee football is growing in the United Kingdom, with teams popping up from East Anglia to Sheffield to Cardiff. Dean Heffer, sports officer for the Limbless Association, wants to get the British game in line with the internationally recognized version of amputee football, then establish a British team. The goal is to see amputee football recognized as a Paralympic sport.

The mutual respect these men have for each other comes through in the pre-match banter as Heffer teased Andrew Rees, a prosthetist at Queen Mary Hospital in London.

“Make sure you put the foot on the right way,” Heffer joked as Rees helps him into his gear.

“No promises,” Rees replied with a grin.

Teasing aside, the skill shown in a game featured in the documentary series Ford’s Fantastic World of Football is impressive indeed. Some of the players wear their prosthetics and others move about on crutches, but all show remarkable grace and fluidity of movement. These guys want people to know that amputee athletes are extraordinarily skilled, and no less driven than their able-bodied compatriots.

“What we’re doing is quite abnormal, which is showing people that you can play football with one leg and actually be as good if not better than able-bodied opposition,” Catchpole said.

Michael Ishiguzo proved the point. He was a professional footballer in Nigeria and lost his leg due to an improperly treated fracture suffered during a game. Yet he’s lost none of the passion, or skill, that made him a top-tier player in his homeland. He has no trouble confusing opponents with beautifully executed feints and defense-splitting passes.

“The quality of football in this team is top notch,” Ishiguzo said. “The speed, balance, passing and agility are phenomenal.”

The two teams played three half-hour games at a staggering pace, with the Spurs winning two of three matches.

“This is a much tougher game than last year,” Rees said. “They’ve improved ten-fold. They were pressing us hard up the pitch and just quicker to every second ball. I’m just glad we managed to win one.”

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Ex-Israeli security chiefs speak out in Oscar documentary nominee

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Oscar-nominated documentary “The Gatekeepers” focuses on Israel, but its director says that all countries can gain insight about the risks that arise if secretive security agencies operate without adequate restraints.

In “The Gatekeepers,” six former heads of Israeli internal security and intelligence agency Shin Bet reflect on their failures and successes in gathering information on state enemies, orchestrating secret operations and tracking militants. They also offer some unexpected perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I found myself more attracted to those who doubt, those who ask themselves questions,” director Dror Moreh told Reuters. “I am always afraid of people who don’t have questions, who don’t doubt.”

The English- and Hebrew-language film opened in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, and premieres in the UK in April, following a brief run at the end of 2012 that qualified it for its Oscar nomination for best documentary feature.

The film will compete at the February 24 Oscar ceremony with “5 Broken Cameras,” a view of the Middle East conflict seen through Palestinian eyes, AIDS documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” military rape film “The Invisible War,” and “Searching for Sugar Man” about a U.S. folk singer who becomes a South African pop icon.

Beginning with Avraham Shalom, who oversaw the Shin Bet from 1980 to 1986, “The Gatekeepers” covers the period through Yuval Diskin, whose tenure ended in 2011.

The former security chiefs discuss events such as the agency-ordered killing of two Palestinian bus hijackers, a plot by Jewish extremists to blow up the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the role the agency plays in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

DEFINING TORTURE

Always present is a struggle to balance security with ethics and politics, and several of the men discuss the scandals the agency faced over the use of what Shin Bet terms “exceptional practices” in interrogations.

Moreh draws parallels between Israel’s debates about ethical security practices and the United States’ struggle to define torture and regulate its own practices in its war on terrorism.

“I think at the end of the day any organization that has so much power like those clandestine organizations – Shin Bet, CIA, FBI, Mossad – has to have the law above it giving guidelines,” he said.

“When there was no oversight of the judicial system on those organizations, they acted as if there was no law, in terms of interrogating people, torturing, killing.”

He blames what he calls murky or non-existent regulations for practices that have sparked public anger worldwide, from the use of waterboarding to the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

“They were stupid Americans who the system gave absolute power over other human beings,” Moreh said. “They weren’t trained to deal with that, they weren’t trained in interrogating, and this is what led to what happened in Abu Ghraib.”

The former security chiefs’ reflections are a mixture of affirmation and regret, but all six agree that the only way for their country to achieve peace is to work with Palestinians instead of against them.

They criticize Israeli politicians for turning a blind eye to settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, and for sometimes dealing lightly with Jewish extremists.

Ami Ayalon, who headed Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, summed up their collective thoughts, saying, “We win every battle, but lose the war.”

Moreh believes that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important issue facing Israel and hopes U.S. President Barack Obama will take a more active role in diplomatic efforts in his second term.

“I think this is like two kindergarten children – the Palestinians and the Israelis – who need the kindergarten caretaker to help them,” he said. “They need a grown-up to tell them, ‘Enough! Israel, Palestine, this is what you need to do, do it.’”

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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Medicines Co. Licenses Rights to Cholesterol Drug

The drug, known as ALN-PCS, inhibits a protein in the body known as PCSK9. Such drugs might one day be used to treat millions of people who do not achieve sufficient cholesterol-lowering from commonly used statins, such as Lipitor.

The Medicines Company will pay $25 million initially and as much as $180 million later if certain development and sales goals are met, under the deal expected to be formally announced Monday. It will also pay Alnylam, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., double-digit royalties on global sales.

That is small payment for a drug with presumably a huge potential market, probably reflecting that Alnylam is still in the first of three phases of clinical trials, well behind some far bigger competitors.

The team of Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is already entering the third and final stage of trials with their PCSK9 inhibitor, as is Amgen. Pfizer and Roche are in midstage trials.

ALN-PCS is different from the other drugs. It uses a gene-silencing mechanism called RNA interference, aimed at shutting off production of the PCSK9 protein. The other drugs are proteins called monoclonal antibodies that inhibit the action of PCSK9 after it has been formed.

Alnylam and the Medicines Company hope that turning off the faucet, as it were, will be more efficient than mopping the floor, allowing their drug to be given less frequently and in smaller amounts.

But that has yet to be proved. No drug using RNA interference has reached the market.

The Medicines Company, based in Parsippany, N.J., generates almost all of its revenue from one product — Angiomax, an anticlotting drug used when patients receive stents to open clogged arteries.

Dr. Clive A. Meanwell, chief executive of the company, said that PCSK9 inhibitors are likely to be used at first mainly by patients with severe lipid problems under the care of interventional cardiologists, the same doctors who use Angiomax. “It really is quite adjacent to what we do,” he said.

The Medicines Company licensed Angiomax from Biogen Idec, where the drug was invented and initially developed under a team led by Dr. John M. Maraganore, who is now the chief executive of Alnylam.

“It’s a bit like getting the band back together,” Dr. Maraganore said.

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DealBook: New Details Suggest a Defense in SAC Case

At the center of the government’s insider trading case against a former portfolio manager at the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors is a trade that directly involves Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire owner of the fund.

New details about the case have emerged that could cast doubt on the way that trade has been portrayed by the authorities, suggesting a possible line of defense for the portfolio manager and raising questions about whether the government will be able to build a case against Mr. Cohen, who has long been in the cross hairs of an investigation for insider trading on Wall Street.

Federal prosecutors have claimed that SAC dumped millions of shares of two pharmaceutical companies in 2008 after the former employee, Mathew Martoma, received secret information from a doctor about problems with a new Alzheimer’s drug.

In bringing its charges, the government said that SAC not only sold out of its position, but also bet against — or shorted — the drug companies’ stocks before the public announcement of the bad news. The SAC short position, according to prosecutors, allowed it to earn big profits after shares of the companies, Elan and Wyeth, plummeted.

“The fund didn’t merely avoid losses, it greedily schemed to profit further by shorting Elan and Wyeth stock,” said April Brooks, a senior F.B.I. official in New York, during a press conference on Nov. 20, the day Mr. Martoma was arrested.

Internal SAC trading records, according to people directly involved in the case, indicate that the hedge fund did not have a negative bet in place in advance of the announcement of the drug trial’s disappointing results. Instead, the records indicated that SAC, through a series of trades, including a complex transaction known as an equity swap, had virtually no exposure — neither long nor short — heading into the disclosure of the drug data.

A different narrative surrounding the firm’s trading could help Mr. Martoma, who has pleaded not guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy in what the government calls the most lucrative insider trading case ever charged.

The government, however, does have powerful evidence against Mr. Martoma. Prosecutors say the fund avoided losses by selling its roughly $700 million stake in Elan and Wyeth. If, as the government says, Mr. Martoma caused SAC to sell the shares — and then short them — while possessing important, nonpublic information, that would constitute an insider trading crime. And prosecutors have secured the testimony of the doctor who says he leaked the drug trial data to Mr. Martoma.

Still, perhaps more important, the trading records may complicate a government effort to pursue a case against Mr. Cohen. The SAC founder has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and has said he acted appropriately at all times.

In bringing charges against Mr. Martoma, prosecutors appeared to be circling nearer to Mr. Cohen. The criminal complaint against Mr. Martoma noted that Mr. Cohen had spent 20 minutes on the telephone with the portfolio manager the night before SAC began selling its shares. Prosecutors have not claimed that Mr. Cohen knew that Mr. Martoma had confidential information about the drug trials. (Mr. Martoma has refused so far to cooperate in helping the government build a case against his former boss.)

Yet if the 2008 trade is a possible avenue for the government, it is running out of time to bring a case against Mr. Cohen. Under the statute of limitations for insider trading crimes, the government would have to file a criminal case against him by mid-July. That deadline is the five-year anniversary of the trade in question, unless it could prove a conspiracy with Mr. Martoma that continued well past then.

Prosecutors have not sought to reach a “tolling agreement” with Mr. Cohen, which would allow the government additional time to bring a case past the statute of limitations, according to people briefed on the matter. The S.E.C., meanwhile, is weighing whether to file a civil fraud lawsuit against the fund connected to the drug-stock trades.

All this comes as a Feb. 14 cutoff approaches for SAC clients to ask for their money back. The fund has told employees that it expects at least $1 billion in withdrawals from the $14 billion fund amid the intensifying investigation. SAC has a standard quarterly redemption deadline.

Several other factors could make it difficult for the government to implicate Mr. Cohen. SAC is well known for its aggressive, rapid-fire trading style, and several former employees say that there is nothing unusual about the fund’s exiting a large position over just a few days.

“It’s one thing to bring an insider trading charge against a market novice who pours his 401(k) into a stock after hanging up the phone with an insider,” said Morris J. Fodeman, a former prosecutor and now a white-collar criminal defense lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. “But it’s far more difficult to make a case against a sophisticated hedge fund that routinely takes large positions and employs complex trading strategies.”

Moreover, both inside and outside SAC, there had been much controversy and debate surrounding the effectiveness of the Alzheimer’s drug, called bapineuzumab, leading up to the July 2008 release of the companies’ clinical results. Mr. Martoma’s colleagues in SAC’s health care group raised specific concerns with Mr. Cohen about the wisdom of holding such a large position in the two companies. And while preliminary data announced by Elan and Wyeth in June offered encouraging news, they also suggested potential problems.

“We believe potentially confounding factors will continue to fuel controversy over bapineuzumab,” wrote Caroline Y. Stewart, a drug stock analyst with Piper Jaffray, reacting to the preliminary results.

On July 11, another Wall Street analyst, Jonathan Aschoff at Brean Murray Carret & Company, raised red flags about a sharp run-up in the price of Elan’s shares heading into the presentation of the data.

“We have numerous concerns with the clinical development of bapineuzumab, and what we viewed to be underwhelming top-line Phase 2 results make us highly doubtful of success,” Mr. Aschoff wrote. “In our opinion, this strategy only serves to increase clinical risk and stoke our pessimism.”

The uncertainty relating to the Alzheimer drug’s clinical results could help explain what led Mr. Cohen to hedge SAC’s position so that it had “neutral exposure,” in Wall Street parlance, heading into disclosure of the trial results.

The short positions that SAC established in Elan and Wyeth were matched almost perfectly to offset an equity swap that effectively provided the fund with exposure to 12 million Wyeth shares, according to the SAC documents. An equity swap mimics ordinary shares and gives investors like hedge funds the benefits of stock ownership without actually owning the shares. Funds often use these complex derivatives to accumulate a large position but not tip off the market.

When government officials announced the case against Mr. Martoma, they made no mention of the swap. Instead, they emphasized how SAC had jettisoned its Elan and Wyeth shares and then brazenly accumulated short positions in both companies.

“The charges unsealed today describe cheating — coming and going,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in opening remarks during the press conference. “Specifically, insider trading first on the long side, and then on the short side.”

The government noted the swap position in its court papers, but did not factor it into SAC’s overall gains and losses in Elan and Wyeth. Because SAC did not trade the Wyeth swap, instead leaving the position in place, it could not be part of any insider trading charge.

Representatives for the United States attorney’s office and the S.E.C. declined to comment. An SAC spokesman declined to comment, as did Charles A. Stillman, the lawyer for Mr. Martoma.

Prosecutors have built their case against Mr. Martoma by securing the cooperation of Dr. Sidney Gilman, a neurology professor who ostensibly leaked to him the confidential data about the drug being jointly developed by Elan and Wyeth. The companies hired Dr. Gilman to oversee the clinical trials. SAC paid Dr. Gilman about $108,000 as a consultant.

The government said that Mr. Cohen’s fund accumulated a roughly $700 million combined stake in Elan and Wyeth based on Mr. Martoma’s recommendation. SAC’s equity swap with respect to Wyeth, however, added $566 million in exposure.

On Thursday, July 17, 2008, as the drug trials neared completion, Dr. Gilman told Mr. Martoma that patients were experiencing serious side effects, the government said. Three days later, on a Sunday, with the markets closed, Mr. Martoma had the 20-minute conversation with Mr. Cohen, according to telephone records cited in the criminal complaint. Prosecutors said that Mr. Martoma told his boss that he was no longer “comfortable” with the investments.

On Monday morning, July 21, at Mr. Cohen’s direction, SAC’s head trader began selling the fund’s 10.5 million shares of Elan and 7.1 million shares of Wyeth. By July 29 — the day that the companies announced the trial results — SAC had not only sold out of its Elan and Wyeth holdings but also established short positions in the stocks. SAC was short about 4.5 million shares of Elan and 3.3 million shares of Wyeth. The fund also purchased a small number of Elan put options, a bet that the company’s shares would decline.

The 12 million-share equity swap position in Wyeth, however, counterbalanced the short exposure. SAC was short 4.5 million shares of Elan but, taking the swap into account, effectively long about 8.7 million shares of Wyeth. On July 30, the first trading day after the companies disclosed the negative trial results, Elan’s stock fell about 42 percent and Wyeth’s stock dropped about 12 percent.

Federal prosecutors said that SAC’s trading ahead of the announcement allowed the fund to avoid $194 million in losses by exiting the Elan and Wyeth positions, and then also earn about $83 million on the short trades. But SAC also had paper losses of about $70 million on its Wyeth swap, almost entirely negating any gains from the short sales.

While such details would seem to contradict how authorities have described the trading, prosecutors could argue that SAC had little choice but to leave the swaps in place, and that was part of the strategy to trade on inside information. That is because selling a swap would be difficult to do without attracting attention in the marketplace. If SAC had sold its swaps, it would have had to notify the Wall Street bank that it entered into the swap transaction with and, in turn, the bank’s trader would have most likely sold the shares on the open market.

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Noted sniper shot dead at Texas gun range

GLEN ROSE, Texas—

Former Navy SEAL and “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle was fatally shot along with another man Saturday on a Texas gun range, a sheriff told local newspapers.

Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant said Kyle, 38, and a second man were found dead at Rough Creek Lodge's shooting range west of Glen Rose, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Stephenville Empire-Tribune. Glen Rose is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Bryant did not immediately return phone calls to The Associated Press seeking comment late Saturday and early Sunday. A woman who answered the phone at the lodge where the shooting occurred declined comment and referred calls to the sheriff's office.

Investigators did not immediately release the name of the second victim, according to the newspapers.

Witnesses told sheriff's investigators that a gunman opened fire on the men around 3:30 p.m. Saturday, then fled in a pickup truck belonging to one of the victims, according to the Star-Telegram. The newspapers said a 25-year-old man was later taken into custody in Lancaster, southeast of Dallas, and that charges were expected.

Lancaster police did not immediately return calls for comment.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

Kyle wrote the best-selling book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” detailing his 150-plus kills of insurgents from 1999 to 2009.

Kyle was sued by former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura over a portion of the book that claims Kyle punched Ventura in a 2006 bar fight over unpatriotic remarks. Ventura says the punch never happened and that the claim by Kyle defamed him.

Kyle had asked that Ventura's claims of invasion of privacy and “unjust enrichment” be dismissed, saying there was no legal basis for them. But a federal judge said the lawsuit should proceed. Both sides were told to be ready for trial by Aug. 1.

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Wheatley Crater on Venus

Magellan radar image of Wheatley crater on Venus. This 72 km diameter crater shows a radar bright ejecta pattern and a generally flat floor with some rough raised areas and faulting. The crater is located in Asteria Regio at 16.6N,267E.

Image: NASA/GSFC [high-resolution]

Caption: NASA

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Affleck wins directors award as ‘Argo’ hurtles to Oscars

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor-turned-filmmaker Ben Affleck won the top honor from his peers at the Directors Guild of America on Saturday for the movie “Argo“, cementing the Iran hostage drama’s frontrunner status for the Oscars.

The Hollywood directors‘ recognition for Affleck, however, is an awkward result for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which failed to nominate him for Best Director in what is considered one of the biggest snubs of this year’s Oscars.

Since 1948, there have been only six occasions when the Directors Guild of America (DGA) winner has not gone on to win the Oscar for Best Director.

“I have nothing but respect for the Academy,” Affleck said after collecting his first DGA award. The Hollywood star, a producer of “Argo”, said he was thrilled the film was nominated for the Oscars’ Best Picture award.

“You are not entitled to win anything,” he said.

“Argo” has picked up the three top awards from the industry’s guilds, whose members are also often members of the Academy.

Last weekend, the film was the victor at both the Producers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild awards, leaving Steven Spielberg‘s Civil War-era epic “Lincoln” in its wake.

Affleck also won Best Director at the Golden Globes while “Argo” won Best Drama. The Oscars will be held on February 24.

On Saturday, Affleck bested four directors who had all previously won the top DGA honor and gone on to win the Best Director Oscar.

It has been a particularly tough awards season for Spielberg, nominated by the DGA for the 11th time with “Lincoln” and a two-time winner for “Schindler’s List” in 1994 and “Saving Private Ryan” in 1999.

“What an incredible year for movies,” said Spielberg. “Maybe I’ve had moments when I wished it wasn’t such an incredible year.”

Affleck also beat out Kathryn Bigelow, nominated for Osama bin Laden-manhunt thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” Ang Lee for his 3D adaptation of the bestselling novel “Life of Pi”, and Tom Hooper, for his screen adaptation of the hit musical “Les Miserables”.

In “Argo”, which is based on a real account, Affleck also plays the lead role of a CIA agent entrusted with extracting six Americans from revolutionary Iran after the U.S. embassy is stormed. The agent, with help from Hollywood, creates a fake film and makes the Americans part of the crew.

“There was a point in my life where I was really down and really confused … didn’t know what was going to happen and I thought ‘I could be a director’,” Affleck told the high-powered Hollywood crowd on Saturday.

“I don’t believe this makes me a real director, but I think I am on my way,” he said.

Another young director also collected a top award on Saturday – Lena Dunham for Best Comedy Series for “Girls”, the HBO show about four girls in Brooklyn and their travails over sex, work and making it in the big city.

“This is surreal, which I know is an over-used Los Angeles word,” said Dunham, who often appears in the show she created wearing little or no clothes.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

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Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.

Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”

Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.

“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”

“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”

Dr. Waldo M. Ellison

Richard Fee initial evaluation

Feb. 5, 2010

Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.

Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.

“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”

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Doctor who admitted dealing drugs to get his license back

A West Hollywood psychiatrist who pleaded guilty to felony drug dealing after pills he prescribed turned up for sale on Craigslist will be able to get his medical license back in a year under an agreement announced Friday by the Medical Board of California.

The sanction, though harsh by board standards, allows Nathan Kuemmerle, 40, a former methamphetamine user, to treat patients again as soon as next February.

As a result of the criminal charges, Kuemmerle had lost his privilege to prescribe controlled substances and must apply to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration if he wants it restored. Kuemmerle agreed to undergo random drug testing, enroll in a physician ethics class and seek psychological counseling, among other conditions.

Kuemmerle was featured in a Dec. 30 Times report on the state's failure to use its vast prescription drug database to identify reckless prescribing by physicians.

In 2009, Kuemmerle was the state's most prolific prescriber of Adderall, a widely abused stimulant, records show. His prescribing drew scrutiny only after Redondo Beach narcotics detectives arrested a suspected drug dealer peddling Adderall pills on Craigslist. The suspect identified Kuemmerle as the source of the prescriptions.

Two months later, a second suspected drug dealer arrested in Arizona also pointed authorities to Kuemmerle. When drug agents checked the state's prescription drug database, known as CURES, they discovered that in 2009 Kuemmerle prescribed nearly four times as many of the highest-dose Adderall pills as the No. 2 doctor on the list, records show. Additionally, records show, he was the state's No. 2 prescriber of the most highly controlled narcotic painkillers.

Kuemmerle was arrested and pleaded guilty in 2011 to drug dealing and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Federal agents had alleged that Kuemmerle was selling prescriptions to people he had never seen, much less examined, records show. Kuemmerle wrote an average of 15 prescriptions per day for controlled substances over a four-year period, a figure a medical expert described as "remarkably high," records show.

Narcotics detectives said they were amazed that Kuemmerle was able to prescribe so many drugs undetected for so long, even though state authorities had access to a database that collected a record every time a pharmacy dispensed one.

Kuemmerle could not be reached for comment.

The types of drugs Kuemmerle prescribed are fueling an epidemic of overdose deaths that has drawn the attention of drug enforcement agencies, lawmakers and medical authorities. The response has largely focused on illicit sources of prescription drugs, such as pharmacy robberies and teens stealing from home medicine cabinets.

But a Times investigation of more than 3,700 prescription drug deaths in Southern California found that nearly half of the decedents had a doctor's prescription for one or more of the medications that caused or contributed to their deaths.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged states to mine prescription drug monitoring databases to identify and stop reckless prescribers. At least six states do so. California does not.

lisa.girion@latimes.com

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