April 12, 2016

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Regular season home finale

Steps toward HIV vaccine

Duke women’s tennis hosts N.C. State at 3 p.m. to kick off a busy week | Sports Page 6

Duke researchers discover antibody that could help combat the virus | Page 2

The Chronicle T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y

TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2016

WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH YEAR, ISSUE 103

‘They keep DSG in check’

DSG Judiciary works to settle student group disputes on campus Shayal Vashisth The Chronicle The Duke Student Government Judiciary is looking to play a bigger role in settling disputes on campus. Any organization or person affiliated with DSG, as well as groups registered through the Student Organization Funding Committee and the University Center for Activities and Events, are within the Judiciary’s jurisdiction. The Judiciary has only handled one case since 2014, but justices said they hope to see the Judiciary’s presence on campus increase so students can settle disputes within student organizations. “They keep DSG in check,” wrote DSG Attorney General Annie Adair, a junior, in an email. “Many rules in the bylaws have been changed because people sue DSG in court and parts of the bylaws were ruled unconstitutional. It’s comforting to know that there’s a final authority in order to ensure fairness and transparency throughout any and all processes.” As one of the three branches of DSG, the seven-member judiciary reviews decisions made by the Senate and other student organizations to make sure they comply with DSG’s bylaws, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Larger cases involving student conduct or academic dishonesty are handled by administrative bodies such as the Undergraduate Conduct Board and the University Judicial Board, instead of the Judiciary. “For students who have issues with the way DSG does something or the way a student organization does something, the Judiciary is a really valuable resource for them in terms of making sure that their rights aren’t being violated,” said Chief Justice Dana Raphael, a

Darbi Griffith | The Chronicle The DSG Judiciary consists of Chief Justice Dana Raphael and six other justices, who ensure that DSG’s decisions comply with its bylaws.

junior and columnist for The Chronicle. To make a claim to the Judiciary, students have to fill out an automated Google form. Raphael reviews the case with the other justices, and if the other justices unanimously agree, the Judiciary can issue a decision without hearing the case. However, this type of decision is rare, Raphael said. Case hearings are held in the DSG office and are open to the public. Usually, the Judiciary

delivers decisions on the same day, but some deliberations take longer for more complex cases, Raphael explained. Adair wrote that the Judiciary has the final word of authority, giving them the potential to impact students on campus. This year, the only case the Judiciary has tried, Geng v. Adair, involved SOFC chair candidate Gwen Geng’s use of the official SOFC email address to distribute campaign materials.

The Judiciary’s ruling upheld Adair’s decision to deduct 300 votes from Geng, which led to overturning the initial election result in favor of junior Alexa Soren. The Judiciary has been active in the past in interpreting election guidelines. The 2013 case Dinner and Wang v. Board of Elections was about the use of ePrint and other See DSG JUDICIARY on Page 4

Duke clinical trial under scrutiny in drug case Vir Patel The Chronicle

Special to the Chronicle Patients claim to have been hurt by a drug first tested at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

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Researchers at Duke have been accused of withholding clinical data used to evaluate the blood thinner drug Xarelto. The accusations are part of a lawsuit brought by patients who claim to have been hurt by the drug rivaroxaban—known by its brand name Xarelto, a blood thinner first tested at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in a 2011 clinical trial known as the ROCKET AF trial. Pharmaceutical companies Bayer and Johnson & Johnson supported the trials of Xarelto and are the defendants in the lawsuit. The original 2011 clinical trial—published in the New England Journal of Medicine and headed by Dr. Manesh Patel, member of the DCRI and associate professor of medicine,

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and Dr. Robert Califf, founding director of the DCRI and current commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration—found Xarelto to be more effective than the standard prescription of warfarin in reducing the likelihood of ischemic strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation, or abnormal heart rhythms. The validity of the study, however, was called into question in 2014 when pharmaceutical sponsors Bayer and Johnson & Johnson revealed that the INRatio blood monitoring devices used to evaluate the effectiveness of the drugs studied in the ROCKET AF trial were not functioning properly. Dr. Christopher Granger, a professor of medicine at the Duke University Medical Center and member of the DCRI, explained that the INRatio device may have underestimated warfarin’s efficacy and therefore might have caused warfarin to be given at a higher dose in certain populations. That may have led

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researchers to unknowingly conclude that Xarelto was the more effective blood-thinning agent in the trial. The prosecuting legal team behind the Xarelto lawsuit alleges that these inaccuracies could have compromised the findings of the study. In order to determine whether the faulty INRatio device truly did impact the results, Patel, Anne Hellkamp, a senior biostatistician at the DCRI, and Dr. Keith Fox, a professor of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, submitted a letter in February to the NEJM with a re-analysis of the ROCKET AF trial data, concluding that the incorrect blood monitoring data did not impact the study’s conclusions. According to a report in The New York Times, however, some in the medical community have questioned the techniques See CLINICAL TRIAL on Page 4

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