DealBook: Confirmation Hearing for Mary Jo White Said to Be Scheduled for March

Mary Jo White appears poised to face a Senate confirmation hearing next month, a crucial step for the former federal prosecutor on her path to becoming the top Wall Street regulator.

Ms. White, whose nomination to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission has lingered for over a month, plans to testify in March before the Senate Banking Committee, three Congressional officials briefed on the matter said on Monday. The committee has not set a firm date for the confirmation hearing, the officials said, though lawmakers have tentatively scheduled her to appear the week of March 11.

At the hearing, one official said, Ms. White will most likely join Richard Cordray, who is in line to become director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In January, when the White House nominated Ms. White to the S.E.C. spot, it reappointed Mr. Cordray to a position he has held for the last year under a temporary recess appointment.

The Senate last year declined to confirm him in the face of Republican and Wall Street opposition to the newly created consumer bureau. Republicans are likely to voice similar skepticism at the hearing next month.

While some officials have quietly expressed concerns about Ms. White’s role as a Wall Street defense lawyer, her nomination is not expected to face major complications. An S.E.C. spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The timetable laid out on Monday offers Ms. White additional weeks to prepare. Over the last couple of weeks, she has received multiple briefings from agency staff members about new securities rules and the structure of the stock market, an official said. The briefings will in part prepare her for the confirmation hearing, which is expected to cover a broad scope of topics.

While Ms. White is a skilled litigator, she lacks experience in financial rule-writing and regulatory minutiae, a potential stumbling block for her nomination. Lawmakers also expect to raise questions about her movements through the revolving door that bridges government service and private practice. Some Democrats, a person briefed on the matter said, will question whether she is cozy with Wall Street.

In private practice, Ms. White defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley. Her husband, John W. White, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he represents many of the companies that the S.E.C. regulates.

(Ms. White has agreed to recuse herself from many matters that involve former clients, while her husband has agreed to convert his partnership at Cravath from equity to nonequity status.)

Despite some reservations, she is expected to receive broad support on Capitol Hill. When President Obama nominated her last month, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York was one of several Democrats to praise her prosecutorial prowess, calling her “tough as nails” during stints as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and as the first female United States attorney in Manhattan.

While she handled some white-collar and securities cases, her specialty was terrorism and organized crime. As a federal prosecutor in New York City for more than a decade, she helped oversee the prosecution of the crime figure John Gotti and directed the case against those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She also supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

Read More..

Horse Meat in European Beef Raises Questions on U.S. Exposure

The alarm in Europe over the discovery of horse meat in beef products escalated again Monday, when the Swedish furniture giant Ikea withdrew an estimated 1,670 pounds of meatballs from sale in 14 European countries.

Ikea acted after authorities in the Czech Republic detected horse meat in its meatballs. The company said it had made the decision even though its tests two weeks ago did not detect horse DNA.

Horse meat mixed with beef was first found last month in Ireland, then Britain, and has now expanded steadily across the Continent. The situation in Europe has created unease among American consumers over whether horse meat might also find its way into the food supply in the United States. Here are answers to commonly asked questions on the subject.

Has horse meat been found in any meatballs sold in Ikea stores in the United States?

Ikea says there is no horse meat in the meatballs it sells in the United States. The company issued a statement on Monday saying meatballs sold in its 38 stores in the United States were bought from an American supplier and contained beef and pork from animals raised in the United States and Canada.

“We do not tolerate any other ingredients than the ones stipulated in our recipes or specifications, secured through set standards, certifications and product analysis by accredited laboratories,” Ikea said in its statement.

Mona Liss, a spokeswoman for Ikea, said by e-mail that all of the businesses that supply meat to its meatball maker  issue letters guaranteeing that they will not misbrand or adulterate their products. “Additionally, as an abundance of caution, we are in the process of DNA-testing our meatballs,” Ms. Liss wrote. “Results should be concluded in 30 days.”

Does the United States import any beef from countries where horse meat has been found?

No. According to the Department of Agriculture, the United States imports no beef from any of the European countries involved in the scandal. Brian K. Mabry, a spokesman for the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said: “Following a decision by Congress in November 2011 to lift the ban on horse slaughter, two establishments, one located in New Mexico and one in Missouri, have applied for a grant of inspection exclusively for equine slaughter. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) is currently reviewing those applications.”

Has horse meat been found in ground meat products sold in the United States?

No. Meat products sold in the United States must pass Department of Agriculture inspections, whether produced domestically or imported. No government financing has been available for inspection of horse meat for human consumption in the United States since 2005, when the Humane Society of the United States got a rider forbidding financing for inspection of horse meat inserted in the annual appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department. Without inspection, such plants may not operate legally.

The rider was attached to every subsequent agriculture appropriations bill until 2011, when it was left out of an omnibus spending bill signed by President Obama on Nov. 18. The U.S.D.A.  has not committed any money for the inspection of horse meat.

“We’re real close to getting some processing plants up and running, but there are no inspectors because the U.S.D.A. is working on protocols,” said Dave Duquette, a horse trader in Oregon and president of United Horsemen, a small group that works to retrain and rehabilitate unwanted horses and advocates the slaughter of horses for meat. “We believe very strongly that the U.S.D.A. is going to bring inspectors online directly.”

Are horses slaughtered for meat for human consumption in the United States?

Not currently, although live horses from the United States are exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. The lack of inspection effectively ended the slaughter of horse meat for human consumption in the United States; 2007 was the last year horses were slaughtered in the United States. At the time financing of inspections was banned, a Belgian company operated three horse meat processing plants — in Fort Worth and Kaufman, Tex., and DeKalb, Ill. — but exported the meat it produced in them.

Since 2011, efforts have been made to re-establish the processing of horse meat for human consumption in the United States. A small plant in Roswell, N.M., which used to process beef cattle into meat has been retooled to slaughter 20 to 25 horses a day. But legal challenges have prevented it from opening, Mr. Duquette said. Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico opposes opening the plant and has asked the U.S.D.A. to block it.

Last month, the two houses of the Oklahoma Legislature passed separate bills to override a law against the slaughter of horses for meat but kept the law’s ban on consumption of such meat by state residents. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas prohibit horse slaughter for human consumption.

Is there a market for horse meat in the United States?

Mr. Duquette said horse meat was popular among several growing demographic groups in the United States, including Tongans, Mongolians and various Hispanic populations. He said he knew of at least 10 restaurants that wanted to buy horse meat. “People are very polarized on this issue,” he said. Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, disagreed, saying demand in the United States was limited. Italy is the largest consumer of horse meat, he said, followed by France and Belgium.

Is horse meat safe to eat?

That is a matter of much debate between proponents and opponents of horse meat consumption. Mr. Duquette said that horse meat, some derived from American animals processed abroad, was eaten widely around the world without health problems. “It’s high in protein, low in fat and has a whole lot of omega 3s,” he said.

The Humane Society says that because horse meat is not consumed in the United States, the animals’ flesh is likely to contain residues of many drugs that are unsafe for humans to eat. The organization’s list of drugs given to horses runs to 29 pages.

“We’ve been warning the Europeans about this for years,” Mr. Pacelle said. “You have all these food safety standards in Europe — they do not import chicken carcasses from the U.S. because they are bathed in chlorine, and won’t take pork because of the use of ractopamine in our industry — but you’ve thrown out the book when it comes to importing horse meat from North America.”

The society has filed petitions with the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, arguing that they should test horse meat before allowing it to be marketed in the United States for humans to eat.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how many pounds of meatballs Ikea was withdrawing from sale in 14 European countries. It is 1,670 pounds, not 1.67 billion pounds.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last year that horses were slaughtered in the United States. It is 2007, not 2006.

Read More..

Horse Meat in European Beef Raises Questions on U.S. Exposure

The alarm in Europe over the discovery of horse meat in beef products escalated again Monday, when the Swedish furniture giant Ikea withdrew an estimated 1,670 pounds of meatballs from sale in 14 European countries.

Ikea acted after authorities in the Czech Republic detected horse meat in its meatballs. The company said it had made the decision even though its tests two weeks ago did not detect horse DNA.

Horse meat mixed with beef was first found last month in Ireland, then Britain, and has now expanded steadily across the Continent. The situation in Europe has created unease among American consumers over whether horse meat might also find its way into the food supply in the United States. Here are answers to commonly asked questions on the subject.

Has horse meat been found in any meatballs sold in Ikea stores in the United States?

Ikea says there is no horse meat in the meatballs it sells in the United States. The company issued a statement on Monday saying meatballs sold in its 38 stores in the United States were bought from an American supplier and contained beef and pork from animals raised in the United States and Canada.

“We do not tolerate any other ingredients than the ones stipulated in our recipes or specifications, secured through set standards, certifications and product analysis by accredited laboratories,” Ikea said in its statement.

Mona Liss, a spokeswoman for Ikea, said by e-mail that all of the businesses that supply meat to its meatball maker  issue letters guaranteeing that they will not misbrand or adulterate their products. “Additionally, as an abundance of caution, we are in the process of DNA-testing our meatballs,” Ms. Liss wrote. “Results should be concluded in 30 days.”

Does the United States import any beef from countries where horse meat has been found?

No. According to the Department of Agriculture, the United States imports no beef from any of the European countries involved in the scandal. Brian K. Mabry, a spokesman for the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said: “Following a decision by Congress in November 2011 to lift the ban on horse slaughter, two establishments, one located in New Mexico and one in Missouri, have applied for a grant of inspection exclusively for equine slaughter. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) is currently reviewing those applications.”

Has horse meat been found in ground meat products sold in the United States?

No. Meat products sold in the United States must pass Department of Agriculture inspections, whether produced domestically or imported. No government financing has been available for inspection of horse meat for human consumption in the United States since 2005, when the Humane Society of the United States got a rider forbidding financing for inspection of horse meat inserted in the annual appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department. Without inspection, such plants may not operate legally.

The rider was attached to every subsequent agriculture appropriations bill until 2011, when it was left out of an omnibus spending bill signed by President Obama on Nov. 18. The U.S.D.A.  has not committed any money for the inspection of horse meat.

“We’re real close to getting some processing plants up and running, but there are no inspectors because the U.S.D.A. is working on protocols,” said Dave Duquette, a horse trader in Oregon and president of United Horsemen, a small group that works to retrain and rehabilitate unwanted horses and advocates the slaughter of horses for meat. “We believe very strongly that the U.S.D.A. is going to bring inspectors online directly.”

Are horses slaughtered for meat for human consumption in the United States?

Not currently, although live horses from the United States are exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. The lack of inspection effectively ended the slaughter of horse meat for human consumption in the United States; 2007 was the last year horses were slaughtered in the United States. At the time financing of inspections was banned, a Belgian company operated three horse meat processing plants — in Fort Worth and Kaufman, Tex., and DeKalb, Ill. — but exported the meat it produced in them.

Since 2011, efforts have been made to re-establish the processing of horse meat for human consumption in the United States. A small plant in Roswell, N.M., which used to process beef cattle into meat has been retooled to slaughter 20 to 25 horses a day. But legal challenges have prevented it from opening, Mr. Duquette said. Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico opposes opening the plant and has asked the U.S.D.A. to block it.

Last month, the two houses of the Oklahoma Legislature passed separate bills to override a law against the slaughter of horses for meat but kept the law’s ban on consumption of such meat by state residents. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas prohibit horse slaughter for human consumption.

Is there a market for horse meat in the United States?

Mr. Duquette said horse meat was popular among several growing demographic groups in the United States, including Tongans, Mongolians and various Hispanic populations. He said he knew of at least 10 restaurants that wanted to buy horse meat. “People are very polarized on this issue,” he said. Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, disagreed, saying demand in the United States was limited. Italy is the largest consumer of horse meat, he said, followed by France and Belgium.

Is horse meat safe to eat?

That is a matter of much debate between proponents and opponents of horse meat consumption. Mr. Duquette said that horse meat, some derived from American animals processed abroad, was eaten widely around the world without health problems. “It’s high in protein, low in fat and has a whole lot of omega 3s,” he said.

The Humane Society says that because horse meat is not consumed in the United States, the animals’ flesh is likely to contain residues of many drugs that are unsafe for humans to eat. The organization’s list of drugs given to horses runs to 29 pages.

“We’ve been warning the Europeans about this for years,” Mr. Pacelle said. “You have all these food safety standards in Europe — they do not import chicken carcasses from the U.S. because they are bathed in chlorine, and won’t take pork because of the use of ractopamine in our industry — but you’ve thrown out the book when it comes to importing horse meat from North America.”

The society has filed petitions with the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, arguing that they should test horse meat before allowing it to be marketed in the United States for humans to eat.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how many pounds of meatballs Ikea was withdrawing from sale in 14 European countries. It is 1,670 pounds, not 1.67 billion pounds.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last year that horses were slaughtered in the United States. It is 2007, not 2006.

Read More..

Yahoo Orders Home Workers Back to the Office

Since Marissa Mayer became chief executive of Yahoo, she has been working hard to get the Internet pioneer off its deathbed and make it an innovator once again.

She started with free food and new smartphones for every employee, borrowing from the playbook of Google, her employer until last year. Now, though, Yahoo has made a surprise move: abolishing its work-at-home policy and ordering everyone to work in the office.

A memo explaining the policy change, from the company’s human resources department, says face-to-face interaction among employees fosters a more collaborative culture — a hallmark of Google’s approach to its business.

In trying to get back on track, Yahoo is taking on one of the country’s biggest workplace issues: whether the ability to work from home, and other flexible arrangements, leads to greater productivity or inhibits innovation and collaboration. Across the country, companies like Aetna, Booz Allen Hamilton and Zappos.com are confronting these trade-offs as they compete to attract and retain the best employees.

Bank of America, for example, which had a popular program for working remotely, decided late last year to require employees in certain roles to come back to the office.

Employees, especially younger ones, expect to be able to work remotely, analysts say. And over all the trend is toward greater workplace flexibility.

Still, said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger Gray & Christmas, an outplacement and executive coaching firm, “A lot of companies are afraid to let their workers work from home some of the time or all of the time because they’re afraid they’ll lose control.”

Studies show that people who work at home are significantly more productive but less innovative, said John Sullivan, a professor of management at San Francisco State University who runs a human resource advisory firm.

“If you want innovation, then you need interaction,” he said. “If you want productivity, then you want people working from home.”

Reflecting these tensions, Yahoo’s policy change has unleashed a storm of criticism from advocates for workplace flexibility who say it is a retrograde approach, particularly for those who care for young children or aging parents outside of work. Their dismay is heightened by the fact that they hoped Ms. Mayer, who became chief executive at 37 while pregnant with her first child, would make the business world more hospitable for working parents.

“The irony is that she has broken the glass ceiling, but seems unwilling for other women to lead a balanced life in which they care for their families and still concentrate on developing their skills and career,” said Ruth Rosen, a professor emerita of women’s history at the University of California.

But not only women take advantage of workplace flexibility policies. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly as many men telecommute.

The bureau says 24 percent of employed Americans report working from home at least some hours each week. And 63 percent of employers said last year that they allowed employees to work remotely, up from 34 percent in 2005, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit group studying the changing work force.

During the recession, the institute expected employers to demand more face time, but instead found that 12 percent increased workplace flexibility, said Ellen Galinsky, its president and co-founder. She attributed this to companies’ desire to reduce real estate costs, carbon footprints and commuting times.

Technologies developed in Silicon Valley, from video chat to instant messaging, have made it possible for employees across America to work remotely. Yet like Yahoo, many tech companies believe that working in the same physical space drives innovation.

A Yahoo spokeswoman, Sara Gorman, declined to comment, saying only that the company did not publicly discuss internal matters.

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Video Shows French Family’s Kidnappers Are Nigerian Extremists

LAGOS, Nigeria — A French family kidnapped last week on the Cameroon-Nigeria border appeared on a video posted Monday on YouTube, with one of the hostages and a gunman saying that the family is being held by the Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.

The family members — three adults and four children — are shown sitting on the ground inside a sort of tent made from prayer mats, in front of a black Qaeda-style banner, grim-faced but apparently in good health. The children, boys ages 5 to 12, fidget and glance at the camera. The family is flanked by two masked, fatigues-wearing men holding rifles, and in front of them s another masked hostage taker, who reads out a statement in Arabic demanding the release of “brothers” and “sisters” and threatening twice to “slaughter those we took” unless the group’s demands are met.

The French military campaign against Islamist militants in Mali is obliquely referred to by the masked gunman, who says “the president of France” has “waged war against Islam.”

Before that, a man identified by the French media as Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, the children’s father, reads a statement in French saying the family was “arrested” by Boko Haram. He uses the group’s Arabic name — it means “those engaged in the propagation and teaching of the prophet and of jihad” — which is responsible for hundreds of killings in a three-year insurgency in Nigeria’s north.

Next to him are a woman, apparently his wife, and a man, his brother; his wife is wearing a black head covering.

On Monday evening, French officials, including Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, identified the kidnappers as members of Boko Haram, with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius calling the video “terribly shocking.”

But the link to Boko Haram remained unproven Monday night. The video differs from others released by the group in that Hausa, the language of Nigeria’s north, is not spoken on it, and Boko Haram had not previously been associated with kidnapping Westerners or showing them on videos. In addition, purported members of Boko Haram denied, in a statement to Nigerian journalists over the weekend, involvement in the kidnapping.

Mr. Moulin-Fournier, an expatriate employee of the French gas group GDF Suez, was vacationing with his family at a national park in northern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria when they were seized early last Tuesday by motorcycle-riding gunmen. Cameroon officials said the hostages were then taken across the border to Nigeria to the area that gave birth to Boko Haram nearly four years ago and where it is strongest, Borno State.

The group has waged a relentless guerrilla campaign of bombings and ambushes there and across northern Nigeria, which killed some 800 people last year alone. Its goals, beyond spreading mayhem and undermining the Nigerian state, remain vague, though it has demanded the establishment of Shariah law in Nigeria.

While Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the deadly 2011 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, the group has focused mostly on Nigerian targets, which would make the kidnapping of the French family something of a departure. In the video, apart from the admonishment to “the president of France,” the masked gunman warns President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria that “we will establish the Islamic state of Nigeria.”

The gunman tells Mr. Jonathan in Arabic, according to the SITE Monitoring Service: “We say to you: If you want us to leave those French people, leave all of our women whom you imprisoned by your hands quickly, because we know that all ways of disbelief are the same, and all of you are equally in war with us.”

The gunman also warns the president of Cameroon to release Boko Haram members — the gunman uses that informal name for the group — though none is known to be held by that country.

Though kidnapping has not so far been part of Boko Haram’s campaign, it has figured in that of a splinter group, Ansaru, known to be holding a number of Western hostages.

Nigerian officials declined to comment on the video Monday night and have said almost nothing about the kidnapping. The French, however, reiterated their belief that the family is being held in Nigeria, not Cameroon.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

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Paul McIlhenny, Head of a Tabasco Empire, Dies at 68

Paul C. P. McIlhenny took joy in escorting visitors to his company’s warehouse, where wooden whiskey barrels filled with the aging pepper mash that is the main ingredient in Tabasco sauce were stacked six-high to the ceiling.

William Widmer for The New York Times

Paul McIlhenny, at company headquarters in Avery Island, La.

Lars Klove for The New York Times

The McIlhenny company has been making Tabasco pepper sauce since 1868.

With a flourish, he would ask an employee to crack open a couple of barrels. After the stinging smell of the peppers was noted, he asked guests to dab the mash with a finger and gingerly lick it.

Tears flowed, air was gasped for and, at the host’s invitation, spit flew to clear tongues.

Mr. McIlhenny had no doubt played the culinary instigator countless times in his 45 years at the McIlhenny Company, the makers of Tabasco pepper sauce, perhaps Louisiana’s best known product. But he still chuckled as he gave his guests small spoons that earned them entry into the Not So Ancient Order of the Not So Silver Spoon.

Mr. McIlhenny, the chairman and chief executive of the family-owned McIlhenny Company, died on Saturday in New Orleans. He was 68. The cause was apparently a heart attack.

His death was announced by the McIlhenny Company.

Mr. McIlhenny became chief executive in 2000. During his tenure, the company enjoyed record growth, thanks in part to the introduction of new products, like chipotle, sweet and spicy and Buffalo-style hot sauces and the expansion of a catalog business that sells Tabasco neckties and teddy bears. Mr. McIlhenny also formed licensing deals with the makers of A1 steak sauce, Spam, Cheez-Its and other supermarket staples.

The great-grandson of Edmund McIlhenny, who invented Tabasco sauce after the Civil War, Paul Carr Polk McIlhenny was born in Houston on March 19, 1944, with his twin sister, Sara. He attended the Woodberry Forest School in Virginia and the University of the South in Tennessee, and served stateside in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Mr. McIlhenny joined the family business in 1967 and was groomed by his cousin Walter S. McIlhenny, then president of the company. His first jobs included loading peppers in the field, processing the pepper mash and loading cases of sauce onto rail cars. He lived on the West Coast to learn the company’s retail sales and food broker operations.

Back at the company headquarters on Avery Island, La., he worked in the marketing, advertising, purchasing and food service departments, among others.

Mr. McIlhenny split his time between New Orleans and Avery Island, which sits on a large salt dome in bayou country. There, peppers are grown for their seeds, which are shipped to growers overseas. The mash that returns is aged for three years before being mixed with vinegar and stirred for one month. After the skins and seeds of the peppers are removed, the sauce is sent to the bottling plant. About 750,000 bottles modeled after the cologne-style bottles used for the first batch of the sauce made in 1868 roll off the lines daily.

Like many in his family, Mr. McIlhenny was active in environmental preservation efforts. He was on the board of the America’s Wetland Foundation.In 2010, he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. During Mardi Gras in 2006, with New Orleans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, Mr. McIlhenny reigned as Rex, the King of Carnival. Survivors include his wife, Judith Goodwin McIlhenny; two daughters, Barbara McIlhenny Fitz-Hugh and Rosemary McIlhenny Dinkins; a brother, Gustaf; a sister, Sara McIlhenny Ringle; and four grandchildren.

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‘Bloodless’ Lung Transplants for Jehovah’s Witnesses

Eric Kayne for The New York Times

SHARING HOME AND FAITH A Houston couple hosted Gene and Rebecca Tomczak, center, in October so she could get care nearby.

HOUSTON — Last April, after being told that only a transplant could save her from a fatal lung condition, Rebecca S. Tomczak began calling some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country.

She started with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, just hours from her home near Augusta, Ga. Then she tried Duke and the University of Arkansas and Johns Hopkins. Each advised Ms. Tomczak, then 69, to look somewhere else.

The reason: Ms. Tomczak, who was baptized at age 12 as a Jehovah’s Witness, insisted for religious reasons that her transplant be performed without a blood transfusion. The Witnesses believe that Scripture prohibits the transfusion of blood, even one’s own, at the risk of forfeiting eternal life.

Given the complexities of lung transplantation, in which transfusions are routine, some doctors felt the procedure posed unacceptable dangers. Others could not get past the ethics of it all. With more than 1,600 desperately ill people waiting for a donated lung, was it appropriate to give one to a woman who might needlessly sacrifice her life and the organ along with it?

By the time Ms. Tomczak found Dr. Scott A. Scheinin at The Methodist Hospital in Houston last spring, he had long since made peace with such quandaries. Like a number of physicians, he had become persuaded by a growing body of research that transfusions often pose unnecessary risks and should be avoided when possible, even in complicated cases.

By cherry-picking patients with low odds of complications, Dr. Scheinin felt he could operate almost as safely without blood as with it. The way he saw it, patients declined lifesaving therapies all the time, for all manner of reasons, and it was not his place to deny care just because those reasons were sometimes religious or unconventional.

“At the end of the day,” he had resolved, “if you agree to take care of these patients, you agree to do it on their terms.”

Ms. Tomczak’s case — the 11th so-called bloodless lung transplant attempted at Methodist over three years — would become the latest test of an innovative approach that was developed to accommodate the unique beliefs of the world’s eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses but may soon become standard practice for all surgical patients.

Unlike other patients, Ms. Tomczak would have no backstop. Explicit in her understanding with Dr. Scheinin was that if something went terribly wrong, he would allow her to bleed to death. He had watched Witness patients die before, with a lifesaving elixir at hand.

Ms. Tomczak had dismissed the prospect of a transplant for most of the two years she had struggled with sarcoidosis, a progressive condition of unknown cause that leads to scarring in the lungs. The illness forced her to quit a part-time job with Nielsen, the market research firm.

Then in April, on a trip to the South Carolina coast, she found that she was too breathless to join her frolicking grandchildren on the beach. Tethered to an oxygen tank, she watched from the boardwalk, growing sad and angry and then determined to reclaim her health.

“I wanted to be around and be a part of their lives,” Ms. Tomczak recalled, dabbing at tears.

She knew there was danger in refusing to take blood. But she thought the greater peril would come from offending God.

“I know,” she said, “that if I did anything that violates Jehovah’s law, I would not make it into the new system, where he’s going to make earth into a paradise. I know there are risks. But I think I am covered.”

Cutting Risks, and Costs

The approach Dr. Scheinin would use — originally called “bloodless medicine” but later re-branded as “patient blood management” — has been around for decades. His mentor at Methodist, Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned cardiac pioneer, performed heart surgery on hundreds of Witnesses starting in the late 1950s. The first bloodless lung transplant, at Johns Hopkins, was in 1996.

But nearly 17 years later, the degree of difficulty for such procedures remains so high that Dr. Scheinin and his team are among the very few willing to attempt them.

In 2009, after analyzing Methodist’s own data, Dr. Scheinin became convinced that if he selected patients carefully, he could perform lung transplants without transfusions. Hospital administrators resisted at first, knowing that even small numbers of deaths could bring scrutiny from federal regulators.

“My job is to push risk away,” said Dr. A. Osama Gaber, the hospital’s director of transplantation, “so I wasn’t really excited about it. But the numbers were very convincing.”

Read More..

‘Bloodless’ Lung Transplants for Jehovah’s Witnesses

Eric Kayne for The New York Times

SHARING HOME AND FAITH A Houston couple hosted Gene and Rebecca Tomczak, center, in October so she could get care nearby.

HOUSTON — Last April, after being told that only a transplant could save her from a fatal lung condition, Rebecca S. Tomczak began calling some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country.

She started with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, just hours from her home near Augusta, Ga. Then she tried Duke and the University of Arkansas and Johns Hopkins. Each advised Ms. Tomczak, then 69, to look somewhere else.

The reason: Ms. Tomczak, who was baptized at age 12 as a Jehovah’s Witness, insisted for religious reasons that her transplant be performed without a blood transfusion. The Witnesses believe that Scripture prohibits the transfusion of blood, even one’s own, at the risk of forfeiting eternal life.

Given the complexities of lung transplantation, in which transfusions are routine, some doctors felt the procedure posed unacceptable dangers. Others could not get past the ethics of it all. With more than 1,600 desperately ill people waiting for a donated lung, was it appropriate to give one to a woman who might needlessly sacrifice her life and the organ along with it?

By the time Ms. Tomczak found Dr. Scott A. Scheinin at The Methodist Hospital in Houston last spring, he had long since made peace with such quandaries. Like a number of physicians, he had become persuaded by a growing body of research that transfusions often pose unnecessary risks and should be avoided when possible, even in complicated cases.

By cherry-picking patients with low odds of complications, Dr. Scheinin felt he could operate almost as safely without blood as with it. The way he saw it, patients declined lifesaving therapies all the time, for all manner of reasons, and it was not his place to deny care just because those reasons were sometimes religious or unconventional.

“At the end of the day,” he had resolved, “if you agree to take care of these patients, you agree to do it on their terms.”

Ms. Tomczak’s case — the 11th so-called bloodless lung transplant attempted at Methodist over three years — would become the latest test of an innovative approach that was developed to accommodate the unique beliefs of the world’s eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses but may soon become standard practice for all surgical patients.

Unlike other patients, Ms. Tomczak would have no backstop. Explicit in her understanding with Dr. Scheinin was that if something went terribly wrong, he would allow her to bleed to death. He had watched Witness patients die before, with a lifesaving elixir at hand.

Ms. Tomczak had dismissed the prospect of a transplant for most of the two years she had struggled with sarcoidosis, a progressive condition of unknown cause that leads to scarring in the lungs. The illness forced her to quit a part-time job with Nielsen, the market research firm.

Then in April, on a trip to the South Carolina coast, she found that she was too breathless to join her frolicking grandchildren on the beach. Tethered to an oxygen tank, she watched from the boardwalk, growing sad and angry and then determined to reclaim her health.

“I wanted to be around and be a part of their lives,” Ms. Tomczak recalled, dabbing at tears.

She knew there was danger in refusing to take blood. But she thought the greater peril would come from offending God.

“I know,” she said, “that if I did anything that violates Jehovah’s law, I would not make it into the new system, where he’s going to make earth into a paradise. I know there are risks. But I think I am covered.”

Cutting Risks, and Costs

The approach Dr. Scheinin would use — originally called “bloodless medicine” but later re-branded as “patient blood management” — has been around for decades. His mentor at Methodist, Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned cardiac pioneer, performed heart surgery on hundreds of Witnesses starting in the late 1950s. The first bloodless lung transplant, at Johns Hopkins, was in 1996.

But nearly 17 years later, the degree of difficulty for such procedures remains so high that Dr. Scheinin and his team are among the very few willing to attempt them.

In 2009, after analyzing Methodist’s own data, Dr. Scheinin became convinced that if he selected patients carefully, he could perform lung transplants without transfusions. Hospital administrators resisted at first, knowing that even small numbers of deaths could bring scrutiny from federal regulators.

“My job is to push risk away,” said Dr. A. Osama Gaber, the hospital’s director of transplantation, “so I wasn’t really excited about it. But the numbers were very convincing.”

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H.P. Offers a New Consumer Tablet

Hewlett-Packard has introduced the Slate 7, a $169 tablet powered by the Android operating system, a centerpiece of the company’s effort to expand in mobile devices and reduce its dependence on the shrinking personal computer market.

The Slate 7 is H.P.’s latest foray into the consumer tablet market. It follows the failure in 2011 of its WebOS-based TouchPad, which the company stopped selling after just seven weeks, citing poor demand.

Powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the Slate 7 offers Google services including search functions, YouTube and Gmail, as well as Beats Audio for improved sound, H.P. said.

The 13-ounce device also includes access to apps and digital content through Google Play, and cameras on both sides of the seven-inch screen.

H.P. said it expected American sales of the Slate 7 to begin in April, and said the product offers a “compelling entry point” for people looking to buy tablets.

Google’s Nexus 7 tablet costs $199, as does Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire HD.

H.P. also makes a business tablet, the ElitePad, which is powered by Microsoft’s Windows 8. WebOS had been developed by Palm, which H.P. bought in 2010.

The Slate 7 is part of a multiyear plan by Meg Whitman, the H.P. chief executive, to turn around the Silicon Valley company.

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IHT Rendezvous: Opera for an Era When Money Is Tight

VIENNA—Not long ago it looked as if cuts in arts funding would sound the death knell of the Vienna Chamber Opera, known in German as the Kammeroper, an ensemble esteemed for its chamber-scale productions in an intimate, inviting setting. The Austrian federal government’s decision to eliminate entirely its support, which constituted half of the company’s governmental subsidies (the other half coming from the city) effectively put the Kammeroper out of business.

Yet the 2012-13 season has seen the Kammeroper come roaring back with five new productions—including a “Bohème” finishing up performances this weekend— put on by a resident company with an established orchestra in the pit.

How to explain this turnaround? In fact, the old company, which was founded over 50 years ago by Hans Gabor and was subsequently run by Isabella, his widow, is history. The new Kammeroper, formally known as Theater an der Wien in der Kammeroper, is a case of one opera company rushing to fill the void left by the collapse of another.

Few opera companies today are in a financial position to go into expansionary mode. But, with the city willing to continue its support, the Theater an der Wien saw an opportunity, as its director of artistic administration, Sebastian Schwarz, who oversees the Kammeroper, explained by phone. Surprisingly, as he pointed out, the Vienna Staatsoper lacks a young artists program, so the new venture helps meet a need in the city. It also adds a degree of continuity to the Theater an der Wien’s own operations, which include world-class productions of interesting repertory that are assembled individually, with visiting performers and orchestras.

What has happened at the Kammeroper would be akin the Metropolitan Opera taking over the name and venue of a smaller New York company in financial trouble, giving the city the “Mini-Met” audiences have fancied for decades. The Kammeroper’s venue is especially choice: the gilded former ballroom, dating from the turn of the last century, of the venerable Hotel Post in the old Fleischmarkt district of the city. Outfitted with an orchestra pit, it comfortably seats 300. The performance I attended was packed, and with ticket prices ranging from 16 to 48 euros ($21-64), it is a bargain.

At the core of the new Kammeroper is an ensemble of seven young singers, which Mr. Schwarz described as constituting a “cast for ‘Così Fan Tutte’ ”—two sopranos, a mezzo soprano, a tenor, a baritone and a bass, plus a counter-tenor. In addition to their Kammeroper duties, the singers take smaller roles at the Theater an der Wien.

“La Bohème” can make a special impact when cast with young singers, and so it does here, as performed in Jonathan Dove’s 1986 chamber version with newly composed modernistic music at the start and between acts by Sinem Altan. Basically, the opera is performed straight, but with choral and other big moments from Acts 2 and 3 excised. The interludes, which included prerecorded music, are atmospheric and intermittently engaging, but essentially peripheral. For one not knowing what to expect, it was a relief when—with Rodolfo and Marcello already onstage—the familiar music of Act 1 began to unfold and continued on uninterrupted.

The lively, updated staging is by Lotte de Beer, the young director of Robin de Raaff’s recent “Waiting for Ms. Monroe” at the Netherlands Opera. The set by Clement & Sanôu, who also did the lighting, focuses on the modern kitchen of the bohemians’ apartment, which also, somewhat confusingly seems to be part high-end boutique (at least until the merchandise is removed after Act 2). In any case, it is handsome and full of stylish details. The playwright Rodolfo writes at a laptop and throws pages of his opus into the oven for warmth.

There is an inevitable loss of grandeur in Act 2, but Ms. de Beer nicely handles Rodolfo and Mimi’s growing attraction to each other and the conflicts of Act 3. The setting of Mimi’s hospital room for Act 4 is rather contrived, however, especially since the others, not at first being allowed in, communicate with her from pay phones in the lobby, which detracts from the emotional impact. Mimi has lost her hair, presumably as a result of treating a fatal illness different from that specified by Puccini. Still, this is an engaging show

The vocal ensemble, which is capably augmented by two guests, Oleg Loza as Schaunard and Martin Thoma as Benoit and Alcindoro, is uniformly strong. From the opera’s opening line by Marcello, one admired Ben Connor’s rich, fluent baritone, and it didn’t take long for the tenor Andrew Owens to catch his stride as Rodolfo and spin his own handsomely lyrical phrases and a fine high C.

All the singers displayed ample voices that could be overpowering in a hall this size, but they didn’t allow that to happen. Cigdem Soyarslan’s Mimi was a little uneven at first, but one came to appreciate her warm spinto sound, especially in her Act 3 aria, and Anna Maris Sarra sings Musetta with a glinting soprano that is heard to fine effect in her animated account of the waltz aria.

Igor Bakan brings a full, resonant bass voice and a strong emotional charge to Colline’s farewell to his overcoat. The fine Vienna Chamber Orchestra is in the pit, led with assurance by Claire Levacher.

The newly constituted Kammeroper has thus emerged as a bright spot on the Viennese opera scene.

Two more productions remain this season, a double bill of Britten’s “Curlew River” and “Prodigal Son” and Handel’s “Orlando.”

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