A&M University fires band director after hazing incident

A&M University in Florida announced today that they will be firing band director Dr. Julian White after drum major Robert Champion died during a hazing incident on Saturday.

From 11alive.com:

Champion, 26, a graduate of Southwest DeKalb High School, died following the Florida Classic football game in Orlando last Saturday.

Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said he suspects hazing is involved in Champion's death. In Florida, hazing is a third degree felony. Sheriff Demings said charges could be forthcoming.

This is a very sad story all around, but we can't help but wonder: how does a 26 year old man die in a college hazing incident? I mean isn't he a little old to be one of the guys getting hazed? At the very least shouldn't he be one of the guys doing the hazing?

Buried Alive

Do you have a fear of being buried alive? For me it's probably more of a scary thought than something I truly worry about on a regular basis. But just imagine for a moment waking up and realizing you're in a box several feet underground. There's not much room for you to move around in or adjust your position, you're pretty much stuck there until you die. Any efforts on your part to try to save yourself are really just a waste of energy. And this would probably be the hardest part about it: your body will immediately go into panic mode and you'll start pushing as hard as you can with your hands and trying to kick with your feet. But being in such a tight enclosure and lying on your back, you really don't have enough leverage to really accomplish anything. So which is the best course of action, to keep kicking and pushing for hours until you die? Or to attempt to control your body, to tell yourself to relax, accept your fate, close your eyes and realize there's nothing you can do?

It seems to me that the best option is to try to calm yourself down and lay there peacefully, because the more you try to push yourself out of that position the more frustrated and panicked you're going to become. But it could be that it's simply impossible for most people to just lay there and take it calmly, perhaps our instincts would take over and not listen to our mind telling the body to relax. It would be a struggle not so much to escape, but a struggle to calm the mind and body.

It might seem silly today to think about the prospect of being buried alive but there was a time where it was a real possibility.

From Wikipedia:

Before the advent of modern medicine, the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer William Tebb collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed

It also mentions that people who could afford it arranged to be buried in a "safety" coffin, which had bells and other means to alert those on the outside they were still alive, along with pipes delivering oxygen. It's a good idea, however wouldn't it just be easier to wait a couple days before burying the body?

Snopes.com has some very sad stories involving premature burial, many of them during epidemics where people were dying left and right from various illnesses.

Some instances were especially heartbreaking. In the 1850s, a young girl visiting Edisto Island, South Carolina, died of diphtheria. She was quickly interred in a local family's mausoleum because it was feared the disease might otherwise spread. When one of the family's sons died in the Civil War, the tomb was opened to admit him. A tiny skeleton was found on the floor just behind the door.

There's an organization "Monochrom: Experience the Experience" which did a project on being buried alive, you could experience it yourself for 15 minutes! Sounds like a blast. More information and pictures here.

Meds IV: More Sites Being Scraped

As we try to look more into the people and the company behind the 9 deaths in Alabama, we're seeing an effort to erase important information on several websites. We saw this with Tim Rogers's LinkedIn profile, and now we're seeing it with Advanced Specialty Pharmacy (owned by Tim Rogers, William Rogers, and Edward Anthony Cingoranelli), where they've completely removed their Alabama location. Here's the before and after:

Before:


And After:

Who is Tim Rogers of Meds IV?

We're going to start looking further into Tim Rogers, the man behind Meds IV, the compounding pharmacy that produced the nutrition IVs that resulted in 9 deaths in Alabama. There isn't much to be found on Meds IV at this point. They were hardly referenced at all online before the incident, there was no address listed on the website (which has since been taken down), and a search for the phone number on their site turned up nothing. We're taking this to mean it's either a fairly new company or they purposefully stayed under the radar. Update: We now learn that Meds IV has only been operating for 1 year. So to look into this more we'll be looking into the President of Meds IV Tim Rogers. As we find out more, we will continue to update this page. If there's not much here at the moment it's because it's still a work in process, stay tuned.

Tim Rogers is listed on the Alabama Society of Health-System Pharmacists board of directors site as the immediate past president of the organization.

What I find it interesting that he's the only one listed on the entire page that isn't a pharmacist or doctor. Go down the line and you see Pharm.D and Ph.D. With Tim Rogers there is no such title and simply mentions "Advanced Specialty Pharmacy, Inc."

Tim Rogers has just taken his LinkedIn profile down. We viewed it earlier today but when we try to go back now it says "We’re sorry, but the profile you requested does not exist." Fortunately we were able to save a copy.



A copy of his profile is below. I want to point out that while this may look like a big resume and list of accomplishments, many are very recent and look like projects he had been trying to start as opposed to established companies. And he's listed companies he is partnered with, not necessarily ones he owns or works for. Meds IV has only been operating for 1 year, MedworksRx (owned by Anthony Cingoranelli, dispensing at Drs. offices) he's been a partner with only 1 year, and PalliRx (a repackager, owned by Micah J Russell) a partner only 2 years. These 3 companies may have been leveraged to work together, for example PalliRx could become a distribution channel for Meds IV. The bulk of his work history is Advanced Specialty Pharmacy where he is an officer (owned by William Rogers), and Cardinal Health, one of the big 3 medical wholesalers.

Tim Rogers's Summary

Starting and operating nuclear pharmacies.
Starting and managing specialty IV compounding pharmacies.
Cardioplegia solutions.
TPN Solutions
Intrathecal Pumps Medications
Pharmaceutical Repackaging

Tim Rogers's Experience

President

Meds IV, Inc

Pharmaceuticals industry

2010 – Present (1 year)

Meds IV, Inc is a pharmaceutical company focused in delivering complex compounded sterile products to hospitals and physician offices including intrathecal pump medication refills and schedule II epidural and PCA products.
TPN/Cardiopelgia/Anesthesia Syringes/Oxytocin

Partner

MedWorksRx

Pharmaceuticals industry

2010 – Present (1 year)

MedWorksRx develops and manages retail pharmacy operations.

Partner

PalliRx, Inc

Privately Held; Pharmaceuticals industry

January 2009 – Present (2 years 3 months)

Pharmaeutical Repackager

Officer

Advanced Specialty Pharmacy

Pharmaceuticals industry

2005 – Present (6 years)

Nuclear Pharmacy Services

Immed-Past-President

Alabama Society of Health Systems Pharmacists

Pharmaceuticals industry

October 2009 – October 2010 (1 year 1 month)

President of the Alabama affiliate of ASHP

RVP

Cardinal Health

Pharmaceuticals industry

1999 – 2004 (5 years)

Lead the South East Region of Nuclear Pharmacy Services division of Cardinal Health.

Tim Rogers's Education

Samford University

BS Pharmacy, Pharmacy

1987 – 1990

Tim Rogers's Additional Information

Groups and Associations:

ASHP, AlSHP, Birmingham Emmaus Community

Honors and Awards:

2007 Birmingham Top 40 under 40

Update 1: We've found a lawsuit back in 2006 that was eventually dismissed. Cardinal Health had been suing Advanced Specialty Pharmacy.

From ereleases.com:

Advanced Specialty Pharmacy, LLC (ASP) today announced that litigation initiated by Cardinal Health 414, Inc. ("Cardinal") against ASP and related parties has been amicably resolved.

The original lawsuit (Case No. 2006-CV-2305) was filed on April 28, 2006, in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana.

Advanced Specialty’s counter-claim filed in this litigation against Cardinal that asserted violations of various federal and state antitrust laws will also be dismissed as part of the settlement.

Although the terms of settlement are to remain confidential between the parties, Advanced Specialty Pharmacy will continue to serve its nuclear pharmacy customers in all of its existing markets. "ASP envisions rapid future growth in these markets based on our business model of very competitive pricing and a responsiveness to customer needs that large national companies cannot match," stated Tim Rogers, a co-founder of ASP.

We will be looking into the initial claim by Cardinal against Advanced Specialty Pharmacy but take a look at the timing of it: This dismissal is from October 2006, the initial claim probably some time in 2005. Tim Rogers worked at Cardinal until 2004 and co-founded Advanced Specialty Pharmacy in 2005. We're thinking the litigation may have been regarding Tim Rogers violating a non-compete clause he had with Cardinal, especially since his counter suit asserted that Cardinal violated antitrust laws.