Six More British Journalists Are Arrested in Hacking Investigation

LONDON – Adding fresh momentum to police investigations that have already cost Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire in Britain hundreds of millions of dollars, Scotland Yard said on Wednesday that six more journalists who previously worked for The News of the World tabloid were arrested at dawn on suspicion of hacking into cellphone messages.

The latest police swoop followed others in the past year that have resulted in the arrests of more than 100 reporters, editors, investigators, executives and public officials by police units investigating suspected criminal activity at British newspapers. Most of those have involved The Sun, Mr. Murdoch’s daily tabloid, and The News of the World, the highly profitable Sunday tabloid he shut down as the scandal broke in July 2011.

In an especially troublesome development for News Corporation, the New York-based parent company of the Murdoch newspapers here, the Scotland Yard statement on the latest arrests said that they involved “a further suspected conspiracy to intercept telephone voice mail messages by a number of employees who worked for the now defunct News of the World newspaper” – in effect, a new break in the police inquiry, involving suspected wrongdoing beyond the wide pattern of phone hacking at the paper that has resulted in 26 previous arrests.

The police statement said that five of the arrests on Wednesday took place in London, and one in Cheshire, a county that lies to the south of the northern city of Manchester. It said those held for questioning included three men and three women, all in their 30s and 40s, none of whom were named. The Sun later confirmed that two of the six were currently working for the newspaper, having taken jobs there after The News of the World closed. The police said the homes of all those arrested were being searched.

Mike Darcey, chief executive of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that publishes The Sun, e-mailed staff at the paper after the arrests. “As always, I share your concerns about these arrests and recognize the huge burden it places on our journalists in the daily challenge of producing Britain’s most popular newspaper,” he said. “I am extremely grateful to all of you who succeed in that mission despite these very challenging circumstances.”

Scotland Yard gave no details of the alleged conspiracy behind Wednesday’s arrests, beyond saying that the “new lines of inquiry” it was pursuing involved suspected offenses committed in 2005 and 2006. That would place the alleged phone hacking in the same period as the only hacking case against the Murdoch papers that has resulted in convictions so far.

In 2007, The News of the World’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were convicted and jailed – Mr. Goodman for four months and Mr. Mulcaire for six months – after they pleaded guilty to hacking into voice mail messages of members of the royal family.

At the time of the Goodman-Mulcaire trial, and later, Murdoch executives in Britain described the hacking of the royal telephones as a “rogue” incident, and not part of a broader pattern of newsroom wrongdoing.

But a different picture emerged after the police reopened the inquiry in 2011. Subsequently, hundreds of individuals, including celebrities, politicians, sportsmen and crime victims, were informed that their phone messages had been intercepted and many of them sued the Murdoch papers for damages and demanded public apologies.

Once the phone hacking scandal broke, the police inquiry widened to include allegations of bribing public officials, computer hacking and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by concealing or destroying evidence.

Sixty arrests — by far the largest number — have involved alleged conspiracies to bribe police officers and public officials to obtain confidential information on which to build the newspapers’ scoops. Last week, a London court was told that 144 of 169 civil suits against The News of the World had been settled out of court and that substantial but undisclosed damages were paid to the litigants. Those named as having settled their claims included Hugh Grant, the actor; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; the magician Uri Geller; a priest, Richard Reardon, who has ministered to the singer Charlotte Church; and an array of minor television and film celebrities.

A lawyer for the hacking victims told the court that 26 damage suits remained active, and that up to 100 new cases were likely to reach the court before News International, the Murdoch newspaper subsidiary in Britain, closes a compensation offer in April. The highest known settlement paid by the company, amounting to the equivalent of about $1.2 million, was paid in 2008 to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of Britain’s soccer players’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association.

In an action separate from the arrests of the six journalists on Wednesday, Scotland Yard said that a 50-year-old police officer had been arrested at his home in south London by detectives investigating alleged bribes to public officials. The officer was the 60th person to be arrested under a police inquiry known as Operation Elveden, set up as part of the wider investigation of newsroom wrongdoing.

Several police officers are facing criminal corruption charges but the most serious case before the courts so far involves a Defense Ministry official, Bettina Jordan-Barber, 39, who has been charged, along with Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of The News of the World and The Sun, and John Kay, chief reporter for The Sun, with conspiracy to pay Ms. Jordan Barber the equivalent of $160,000 for confidential information.

Scotland Yard’s hacking investigation has resulted in 32 arrests, including the six on Wednesday. Twenty other people have been arrested and questioned in connection with computer hacking and other privacy breaches. Taken together, Scotland Yard has described the investigations, involving about 150 officers and support staff, as the most extensive criminal inquiry in its history.

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DealBook: Nexen Secures U.S. Approval of Its Sale to Cnooc

Nexen said on Tuesday that it had received the last regulatory approval needed for its $15 billion sale to a major Chinese oil company, after the Obama administration declared the deal free from national security concerns.

With all necessary regulatory approvals in place, Nexen is set to become the latest acquisition by the Chinese oil industry, as the country seeks more and more sources of oil and natural gas to fuel its economy.

The deal is expected to close around Feb. 25.

The buyer in this transaction, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, has been among the most acquisitive. It has announced six deals in the last two years, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. Nexen, based in Calgary, is the biggest proposed deal by Cnooc since its failed attempt to buy Unocal for $18.5 billion in 2005.

Though most of its holdings are abroad, Nexen has major operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius.

The approval by the Obama administration comes two months after the Canadian government approved the deal. That was regarded as perhaps the biggest hurdle, given spurts of nationalistic concern over foreign buyers claiming big tracts of natural resources in Canada.

A review by Cfius (pronounced SIF-ee-us) is still regarded as potentially tough, however. The organization, which is chaired by the Treasury secretary, makes its decisions behind closed doors, and buyers are not always told why a deal is rejected.

But Cfius has approved several potentially sensitive deals recently, including the sale of the bankrupt car battery maker A123 Systems to the Wanxiang Group.

Lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton wrote in a note to clients on Monday that the A123 approval “is evidence that even when politics, protectionism and xenophobia all appear to be significant obstacles, Cfius will not raise objections if it believes no security issues exist.”

“With proper planning and transparency,” Cleary Gottlieb added, “even politically controversial transactions can successfully negotiate the Cfius process.”

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Report Faults Priorities in Breast Cancer Research

Too little of the money the federal government spends on breast cancer research goes toward finding environmental causes of the disease and ways to prevent it, according to a new report from a group of scientists, government officials and patient advocates established by Congress to examine the research.

The report, “Breast Cancer and the Environment — Prioritizing Prevention,” published on Tuesday, focuses on environmental factors, which it defines broadly to include behaviors, like alcohol intake and exercise; exposures to chemicals like pesticides, industrial pollutants, consumer products and drugs; radiation; and social and socioeconomic factors.

The 270-page report notes that scientists have long known that genetic and environmental factors contribute individually and also interact with one another to affect breast cancer risk. Studies of women who have moved from Japan to the United States, for instance, show that their breast cancer risk increases to match that of American women. Their genetics have not changed, so something in the environment must be having an effect. But what? Not much is known about exactly what the environmental factors are or how they affect the breast.

“We know things like radiation might cause breast cancer, but we don’t know much that we can say specifically causes breast cancer in terms of chemicals,” said Michael Gould, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a co-chairman of the 23-member committee that prepared the report.

At the two federal agencies that spend the most on breast cancer, only about 10 percent of the research in recent years involved environment and prevention. From 2008 to 2010, the National Institutes of Health spent $357 million on environmental and prevention-related research in breast cancer, about 16 percent of all the financing for the disease. From 2006 to 2010, the Department of Defense spent $52.2 million on prevention-oriented research, about 8.6 percent of the money devoted to breast cancer. Those proportions were too low, the group said, though it declined to say what the level should be.

“We’re hedging on that on purpose,” Dr. Gould said. “It wasn’t the role of the committee to suggest how much.”

He added, “We’re saying: ‘We’re not getting the job done. We don’t have the money to get the job done.’ The government will have to figure out what we need.”

Jeanne Rizzo, another member of the committee and a member of the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, said there was an urgent need to study and regulate chemical exposures and inform the public about potential risks. “We’re extending life with breast cancer, making it a chronic disease, but we’re not preventing it,” she said.

“We have to look at early life exposures, in utero, childhood, puberty, pregnancy and lactation,” Ms. Rizzo said. “Those are the periods when you get set up for breast cancer. How does a pregnant woman protect her child? How do we create policy so that she doesn’t have to be a toxicologist when she goes shopping?”

Michele Forman, a co-chairwoman of the committee and an epidemiologist and professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas, Austin, said the group found that breast cancer research at various government agencies was not well coordinated and that it was difficult to determine whether there was duplication of efforts.

She said that it was essential to study how environmental exposures at different times of life affected breast-cancer risk, and that certain animals were good models for human breast cancer and should be used more.

The report is the result of the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, which was passed in 2008 and required the secretary of health and human services to create a committee to study breast cancer research. A third of the members were scientists, a third were from government and a third were from advocacy groups. The advocates, Dr. Forman said, brought a sense of urgency to the group

“People who are not survivors need to have that urgency there,” she said.

Pointing to the vaccine now being offered to girls to prevent cervical cancer, Dr. Forman said, “I look forward to the day when we have an early preventive strategy for breast cancer.”

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Report Faults Priorities in Breast Cancer Research

Too little of the money the federal government spends on breast cancer research goes toward finding environmental causes of the disease and ways to prevent it, according to a new report from a group of scientists, government officials and patient advocates established by Congress to examine the research.

The report, “Breast Cancer and the Environment — Prioritizing Prevention,” published on Tuesday, focuses on environmental factors, which it defines broadly to include behaviors, like alcohol intake and exercise; exposures to chemicals like pesticides, industrial pollutants, consumer products and drugs; radiation; and social and socioeconomic factors.

The 270-page report notes that scientists have long known that genetic and environmental factors contribute individually and also interact with one another to affect breast cancer risk. Studies of women who have moved from Japan to the United States, for instance, show that their breast cancer risk increases to match that of American women. Their genetics have not changed, so something in the environment must be having an effect. But what? Not much is known about exactly what the environmental factors are or how they affect the breast.

“We know things like radiation might cause breast cancer, but we don’t know much that we can say specifically causes breast cancer in terms of chemicals,” said Michael Gould, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a co-chairman of the 23-member committee that prepared the report.

At the two federal agencies that spend the most on breast cancer, only about 10 percent of the research in recent years involved environment and prevention. From 2008 to 2010, the National Institutes of Health spent $357 million on environmental and prevention-related research in breast cancer, about 16 percent of all the financing for the disease. From 2006 to 2010, the Department of Defense spent $52.2 million on prevention-oriented research, about 8.6 percent of the money devoted to breast cancer. Those proportions were too low, the group said, though it declined to say what the level should be.

“We’re hedging on that on purpose,” Dr. Gould said. “It wasn’t the role of the committee to suggest how much.”

He added, “We’re saying: ‘We’re not getting the job done. We don’t have the money to get the job done.’ The government will have to figure out what we need.”

Jeanne Rizzo, another member of the committee and a member of the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, said there was an urgent need to study and regulate chemical exposures and inform the public about potential risks. “We’re extending life with breast cancer, making it a chronic disease, but we’re not preventing it,” she said.

“We have to look at early life exposures, in utero, childhood, puberty, pregnancy and lactation,” Ms. Rizzo said. “Those are the periods when you get set up for breast cancer. How does a pregnant woman protect her child? How do we create policy so that she doesn’t have to be a toxicologist when she goes shopping?”

Michele Forman, a co-chairwoman of the committee and an epidemiologist and professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas, Austin, said the group found that breast cancer research at various government agencies was not well coordinated and that it was difficult to determine whether there was duplication of efforts.

She said that it was essential to study how environmental exposures at different times of life affected breast-cancer risk, and that certain animals were good models for human breast cancer and should be used more.

The report is the result of the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, which was passed in 2008 and required the secretary of health and human services to create a committee to study breast cancer research. A third of the members were scientists, a third were from government and a third were from advocacy groups. The advocates, Dr. Forman said, brought a sense of urgency to the group

“People who are not survivors need to have that urgency there,” she said.

Pointing to the vaccine now being offered to girls to prevent cervical cancer, Dr. Forman said, “I look forward to the day when we have an early preventive strategy for breast cancer.”

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DealBook Column: Relationship Science Plans Database of Names and Connections

It sounds like a Rolodex for the 1 percent: two million deal makers, power brokers and business executives — not only their names, but in many cases the names of their spouses and children and associates, their political donations, their charity work and more — all at a banker’s fingertips.

Such is the promise of a new company called Relationship Science.

Never heard of it? Until recently, neither had I. But a few months ago, whispers began that this young company was assembling a vast trove of information about big names in corporate America. What really piqued my interest was that bankrolling this start-up were some Wall Street heavyweights, including Henry R. Kravis, Ronald O. Perelman, Kenneth G. Langone, Joseph R. Perella, Stanley F. Druckenmiller and Andrew Tisch.

It turns out that over the last two years, with a staff of more than 800 people, mostly in India, Relationship Science has been quietly building what it hopes will be the ultimate business Who’s Who. If it succeeds, it could radically change the way Wall Street does business.

That’s a big if, of course. There are plenty of other databases out there. And there’s always Google. Normally I wouldn’t write about a technology company, but I kept hearing chatter about it from people on Wall Street.

Then I got a glimpse of this new system. Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon. This is six degrees of Henry Kravis.

Here’s how it works: Let’s say a banker wants to get in touch with Mr. Kravis, the private equity deal maker, but doesn’t know him personally. The banker can type Mr. Kravis’s name into a Relationship Science search bar, and the system will scan personal contacts for people the banker knows who also know Mr. Kravis, or perhaps secondary or tertiary connections.

The system shows how the searcher is connected — perhaps a friend, or a friend of a friend, is on a charitable board — and also grades the quality of those connections by identifying them as “strong,” “average” or “weak.” You will be surprised at the many ways the database finds connections.

The major innovation is that, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter if people have signed up for the service. Many business leaders aren’t on Facebook or LinkedIn, but Relationship Science doesn’t rely on user-generated content. It just scrapes the Web.

Relationship Science is the brainchild of Neal Goldman, a co-founder of CapitalIQ, a financial database service that is used by many Wall Street firms. Mr. Goldman sold CapitalIQ, which has 4,200 clients worldwide, to McGraw-Hill in 2004 for more than $200 million. That may explain why he was able to easily round up about $60 million in funds for Relationship Science from many boldface names in finance. He raised the first $6 million in three days.

“I knew there had to be a better way,” Mr. Goldman said about the way people search out others. Most people use Google to learn about people and ask friends and colleagues if they or someone they know can provide an introduction.

Relationship Science essentially does this automatically. It will even show you every connection you have to a specific company or organization.

“We live in a service economy,” Mr. Goldman said. “Building relationships is the most important part for selling and growing.”

Kenneth Langone, a financier and co-founder in Home Depot, said that when he saw a demonstration of the system he nearly fell off his chair. He used an unprintable four-letter word.

“My life is all about networking,” said Mr. Langone, who was so enthusiastic he became an investor and recently joined the board of Relationship Science. “How many times do I say, ‘How do I get to this guy?’ It is scary how much it helps.”

Mr. Goldman’s version of networking isn’t for everyone. His company charges $3,000 a year for a person to have access to the site. (That might sound expensive, but by Wall Street standards, it’s not.)

Price aside, the possibility that this system could lead to a deal or to a new wealth management client means it just might pay for itself.

“If you get one extra deal, the price is irrelevant,” Mr. Goldman said.

Apparently, his sales pitch is working. Already, some big financial firms have signed up for the service, which is still in a test phase. Investment bankers, wealth managers, private equity and venture capital investors have been trying to arrange meetings to see it, egged on, no doubt, by many of Mr. Goldman’s well-heeled investors. Even some development offices of charities have taken an interest.

The system I had a peek at was still a bit buggy. In some cases, it was missing information; in other cases the information was outdated. In still other instances, the program missed connections. For example, it didn’t seem to notice that Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, should obviously know a certain senior partner at Goldman.

But the promise is there, if the initial kinks are worked out. I discovered I had paths I never knew existed to certain people or companies. (Mr. Goldman should market his product to reporters, too.)

One of the most vexing and perhaps unusual choices Mr. Goldman seems to have made with Relationship Science is to omit what would be truly valuable information: phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Mr. Goldman explained the decision. “This isn’t about spamming people.” He said supplying phone numbers wouldn’t offer any value because people don’t like being cold-called, which he said was the antithesis of the purpose of his database.

Ultimately, he said, as valuable as the technology can be in discovering the path to a relationship, an artful introduction is what really counts.

“We bring the science,” he said. “You bring the art.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/12/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Database Of Names, And How They Connect.

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IHT Rendezvous: To Build Lasting Peace in Mali

LONDON — Clashes between Islamic fighters and French troops in the Malian city of Gao may suggest that, after a swift campaign to liberate the north, France could be in Mali for the long haul.

“From the moment France committed itself, it became responsible for what happens in that country,” Vincent Desportes, a retired French general and military theorist told the magazine L’Express. “If France leaves too soon and the situation deteriorates, Paris will get the blame.”

Confronted with the specter of “ mission creep,” François Hollande, the French president, said on Monday that French forces were moving from a phase of liberating Mali to one of securing it, to ensure that “no corner of Malian territory remains under the control of the terrorists.”

In the best-case scenario, the Islamist militants would be ousted from Mali, a trained African force would move in to support the Malian army, and France would withdraw to celebrate a job well done.

There are concerns, however, that without political change in the fragile Saharan state, the military option might not be enough to prevent a resurgence of the Islamist threat.

According to Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Program, which has been operating in Mali for more than three decades, the country needs a very clear time table for national dialogue, constitutional reform and improved governance.

“You have to do this first, otherwise Mali will fall over again,” Ms. Clark told Rendezvous in an interview.

The former New Zealand prime minister was in Britain to give a lecture to conflict experts at Oxford University, where she warned that Mali’s road back from a combination of violent conflict and constitutional crisis was not an easy one.

“It will require international support for some time, including for resuming development progress,” she said. “Long-term stability for Mali requires dedication to inclusive governance and to inclusive and equitable development across the country.”

The U.N. agency would support the election process and prepare a development program for the north of the country.

“In the North, state authority and services must be re-established, infrastructure rehabilitated, and livelihoods restored,” she told the Oxford audience. “Reestablishment of the rule of law will also be vital to putting the country back on track.”

Ms. Clark said two decades spent building democracy and pursuing development in Mali had been derailed by a combination of factors that included an existing conflict in the north of the country, a military coup, and the spillover of the upheaval in neighboring Libya.

The situation was compounded by a severe drought that threatened 3.5 million Malians with food shortages in 2012.

Mali was the regional country most vulnerable to the Islamist incursion because of continuing north-south tensions that were being resolved elsewhere in the Sahel, she told Rendezvous.

The U.N. development chief is not alone in believing that the outside world should look for more than a military solution in Mali.

As my colleagueEric Schmitt writes from the neighboring state of Niger, the Pentagon’s Africa Command is in the region to play a “soft power” role in strengthening social, political and economic programs as well as training regional armed forces.

At an international conference on assisting Mali in Brussels last week, Joe Costello, the Irish trade minister, said good progress had been made in stabilizing the security situation, “but now it is vitally important that the provision of humanitarian aid and the political process keep pace.”

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DealBook: British Regulators to Investigate Accounting at Autonomy

LONDON – British accounting regulators said on Monday that they would investigate the financial reporting at the British software maker Autonomy before its $11.1 billion acquisition by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

The announcement comes after accusations from H.P. that Autonomy inflated its sales and carried out improper accounting practices that misled the American technology giant ahead of the multibillion-dollar takeover.

In November, H.P. took a charge of $8.8 billion after it wrote down the acquisition of Autonomy. The figure included around $5 billion related to what H.P. called accounting and disclosure abuses at Autonomy.

Investigations by American authorities, including the Justice Department, are under way. The Financial Reporting Council, the British accounting watchdog, said on Wednesday that it would also examine Autonomy’s financial accounts from the beginning of 2009 to the middle of 2011.

The investigation may take around a year to reach disciplinary proceedings if wrongdoing is discovered, according to a spokeswoman for the council.

Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy who has denied the charges of accounting misconduct leveled by H.P., said he welcomed the investigation by British regulators.

“We are fully confident in the financial reporting of the company and look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate this to the F.R.C.,” he said in a statement on behalf of the former management team of Autonomy.

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Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.

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This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

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Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.

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This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

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DealBook: British Regulators to Investigate Accounting at Autonomy

LONDON – British accounting regulators said on Monday that they would investigate the financial reporting at the British software maker Autonomy before its $11.1 billion acquisition by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

The announcement comes after accusations from H.P. that Autonomy inflated its sales and carried out improper accounting practices that misled the American technology giant ahead of the multibillion-dollar takeover.

In November, H.P. took a charge of $8.8 billion after it wrote down the acquisition of Autonomy. The figure included around $5 billion related to what H.P. called accounting and disclosure abuses at Autonomy.

Investigations by American authorities, including the Justice Department, are under way. The Financial Reporting Council, the British accounting watchdog, said on Wednesday that it would also examine Autonomy’s financial accounts from the beginning of 2009 to the middle of 2011.

The investigation may take around a year to reach disciplinary proceedings if wrongdoing is discovered, according to a spokeswoman for the council.

Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy who has denied the charges of accounting misconduct leveled by H.P., said he welcomed the investigation by British regulators.

“We are fully confident in the financial reporting of the company and look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate this to the F.R.C.,” he said in a statement on behalf of the former management team of Autonomy.

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