exhausted all other means of 
acquiring necessary goods and 
services.

“To reduce and understand 

corruption, we need to move 
away from this idea that state 
institutions and culture pro-
pel people — ordinary citizens 
— into corrupt exchanges, and 
instead consider their decision-
making processes and the alter-
natives that are available to 
them,” she said.

The central Asian republics 

of 
Kazakhstan, 
Kyrgyzstan 

and Uzbekistan served as ideal 
case studies to support her 
thesis, McMann said. She con-
ducted 266 interviews, numer-
ous surveys and lived with nine 
households between 1994 and 
2009 in the three republics. All 
three countries share a com-
mon history under Soviet rule, 
and engaged in varying levels 
of market reforms following the 
collapse of the Soviet Union. 
The collapse greatly reduced 
the role of the government in 

their respective economies and 
accordingly saw an explosion in 
corruption.

McMann said the increase 

in corruption was fueled by the 
drawdown of centrally allocated 
resources under the old socialist 
system did not smoothly allow 
for a healthy private sector to 
emerge and replace the state-
centralized economy in these 
countries. Thus, these hollowed-
out governments would remain 
the biggest potential parties 
for citizens to receive credit or 
other resources.

“When you have a situation 

of a legacy of significant state 
economic intervention, and you 
introduce market reform but 
don’t create effective market-
building institutions, you end 
up with a situation of resource-
poor non-state actors,” she said.

McMann also emphasized 

that even though this corruption 
is generally viewed as “business 
as usual” in these societies, it is 
still considered unethical and 
therefore typically engaged in as 
a last resort.

Based on her interviews and 

research, McMann described a 

typical Kyrgyz farmer looking to 
expand their subsistence farm 
through credit. According to 
McMann, the farmer wouldn’t 
have enough collateral to secure 
a loan from a private bank, 
would find that their local reli-
gious institutions and extended 
family don’t have the resources 
to extend them informal credit 
and discover the local govern-
ment credit program has a long 
waiting list. Only when there 
are no other options, McMann 
said, would that farmer then 
choose to bribe a local official to 
get ahead of the waiting list for a 
government-sponsored loan.

McMann argued that her 

findings have important impli-
cations 
for 
anti-corruption 

efforts around the world, saying, 
“What my findings suggest is 
that it’s not sufficient just to tin-
ker with state institutions; you 
can’t just increase government 
officials’ income, for example, 
or create more sanctions for 
bad behavior, you also need to 
ask whether there are alterna-
tives so that citizens don’t have 
to engage in corruption to deal 
with economic challenges.”

tinued misuse of a prescription 
medication throughout their 
college years.

Richard Miech, professor at 

the University’s Institute for 
Social Research and the study’s 
lead author, said some of the 
students participating in the 
study had a lot of experience 
with drugs, and reported they 
had used marijuana. Others 
reported by 12th grade, they 
had had no experience at all 
with drugs.

“The surprising finding to 

come out of the study, is this 
effect that I found overall was 
concentrated among the drug-
naïve adolescents, the ones that 
had very little experience with 
drugs,” he said.

However, drug-naïve stu-

dents are about three times 
more likely to misuse drugs 
than those who have experi-
ence with other drugs. Accord-
ing to Miech, there is no effect 
among adolescents who had 
already had experience with 
drugs by 12th grade.

“What we speculate, is that 

the 
drug-naïve 
adolescents, 

when they’re taking a prescrip-
tion opioid, it’s really something 
quite different than they’ve 
ever 
experienced 
before,” 

Miech said. “It’s a safe expe-
rience, because it’s under the 
doctor’s guidance … For those 
adolescents, the pain reliev-
ers are really quite powerful 
and pleasurable. Whereas the 
adolescents who get a doctor’s 
prescription for an opioid who 
already have other drug experi-
ence, the whole opioid experi-
ence, relatively speaking, will 
not produce a big thrill.”

Miech said when a celeb-

rity dies from prescription 
drug overdose, the media often 
claims those individuals turned 
to harder drugs after using pre-
scription 
drugs 
legitimately 

prescribed by a doctor.

“They make it sound like pre-

scription drugs are a gateway 
to harder drugs like heroin,” 
he said. “What my findings 
show is that there are people 
that use prescription drugs and 
then go on to use heroin, but I 
don’t think their introduction 
to heroin was through prescrip-
tion drugs. They were already 
using all kinds of other drugs … 
I don’t think that was the cause 
of harder drug use.”

Though 
the study did not go 

into the developmental effects 
that accompany prescription 
pain medication abuse, Miech 
said at the ages of the students 
that were studied, the brain 
is still developing, making it 
more sensitive to these external 
drugs that enter the system.

Kennon Heard, professor of 

emergency medicine at the Uni-
versity of Colorado School of 
Medicine, also provided clini-
cal interpretation of the data for 
the study.

“We see many (Emergency 

Department) visits related to 
opioid abuse,” Heard wrote 
in an e-mail to The Michigan 
Daily. “The most common med-
ications are oxycodone, hydro-
codone and morphine. We also 

often see heroin use by patients 
who started abusing prescrip-
tion opioids and then moved to 
heroin because it is cheaper.”

Heard said the most common 

effects of opioid use are seda-
tion and respiratory depression.

“There is research suggest-

ing that early exposure to addic-
tive drugs increases the risk of 
abuse as an adult,” he added.

The research studied high 

school 
seniors 
until 
they 

reached age 23, which Heard 
said is an age where drug 
abuse tends to start. The rates 
of prescription drug abuse are 
higher in older adolescent age 
groups. However, he said the 
most extreme cases that result 
in needing medical attention in 
the emergency room are older 
than the age range considered 
in the study.

Though opioids are such a 

common concern because of 
abuse that can occur as a result, 
Heard said the medical field 
does not have alternatives to 
these medications.

“At this time opioids are the 

most effective pain medications 
we have,” Heard said. “Unfor-
tunately there are not great 
alternatives with less addic-
tive potential. Safe use requires 
thoughtful prescribing and con-
tinual reassessment for efficacy 
and safety.”

LSA junior Erin Dunne, 

co-director of the Student for 
Sensible Drug Policy organiza-
tion on campus, said the main 
goal of the organization is to 
promote harm reduction and 
inform the campus dialogue. 
She said members are ultimate-
ly interested in what is best for 
individuals, families and com-
munities.

Earlier this fall, SSPD hosted 

an event focused on opioids. 
The organization met with a 
Detroit emergency room phy-
sician who presented various 
concerns with opioid use in the 
United States. He also talked 
about methods to deal with 
opioid overdose, and ways peo-
ple can become hooked on the 
drugs.

Dunne pointed to a lack of 

specialized 
pain 
counseling 

in the United States, causing 
people to take painkillers when 
they do not necessarily need 
them and end up staying on 
them longer than they should.

Dunne mentioned a drug 

called Naloxone — commonly 
referred to as Narcan — which 
counteracts the effect of opioid 
overdose by blocking receptors 
in the body that opioids bind to 
and instigate an overdose.

The organization also sup-

ports proposals to extend medi-
cal amnesty policies to those 
suffering 
from 
prescription 

drug overdose.

“There’s still a lot of stigma 

on drug use and there is still 
a lot of fear around going to 
authorities and having to deal 
with someone who is suffering 
from overdose, especially if the 
other people around were using 
drugs themselves,” Dunne said. 
“We as an organization find 
this to be incredibly alarm-
ing. We want people to be able 
to seek the help they need for 
themselves and for their friends 
without these barriers.”

LSA junior Emily Liu, who 

worked on the project with 
Chiang, said a challenge of the 
research was targeting the can-
cerous signals of Notch without 
harming its other functions. She 
added that discovering the Zmiz1 
protein may be the key to ridding 
Notch of its cancer functions.

“My 
project 
focused 
on 

attempting to inhibit the coacti-
vator, Zmiz1, and to see the 
effects it has on physiology with 
mouse models,” she said. “We 
looked at the impact and toxic-
ity there. What we found was 
there was no significant effect 
on the intestinal toxicity when 
we inhibited the coactivator, 
suggesting that it is selective for 
the cancer signals of Notch.”

Chiang said making a drug 

applicable to humans is the most 
important next step. He plans to 
do so by creating a three-dimen-
sional image that will show how 
Zmiz1 sticks to Notch. This way, 
Chiang can discover how to sep-
arate the protein from the gene 
in humans. 

“Once we have this three-

dimensional image we can fig-
ure out ways to design a drug 

that could slip in between the 
two proteins and break the bind-
ing apart,” Chiang said. “That’s 
one of the major things we’re 
trying to figure out — how to get 
a three-dimensional image to 
help us make drugs to actually 
break this interaction.”

Though 
this 
research 
is 

primarily focused on Notch-
involved cancers, Chiang said 
it could have implications for 
treating other cancers as well 
and said he hopes to investi-
gate whether or not Zmiz1 plays 
a role in cancers that aren’t 
impacted by the Notch gene.

“We’ve been really focused 

on Notch-dependent tumors, 
but you also have a lot of Notch-
independent cancers,” Chiang 
said. “We’re actually looking 
into that — to see whether or not 
our protein may be important 
for other non-Notch functions. 
That’s a good area of investiga-
tion right now.”

Liu said she believes the 

research will have a significant 
impact on cancer treatment in 
the future.

“There’s a lot of implications 

for therapy and using our pro-
tein or other proteins in that 
pathway as targets for drugs,” 
she said.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, October 29, 2015 — 3A

U-M economics 
professor awarded 
$2.1M grant for 
data project

Martha J. Bailey, an associate 

professor of economics, received 
a $2.1 million grant from the 
National 
Science 
Foundation 

to go toward the creation of the 
Longitudinal 
Intergenerational 

Family Electronic Micro-Database. 

The project, referred to as 

LIFE-M, will compile millions 
of records from U.S. citizens 
to show how individuals and 
families have changed since the 
beginning of the 20th century. 
The database will include health, 
family, demographic and economic 
information from an individual’s 
entire life, and will span across at 
least four generations. 

The sample size of Bailey’s 

database will be unprecedented, 
as will her study of minorities, 
including immigrants and women. 

The project will receive funding 

from the NSF until August 2019. 

Uber delivering 
kittens for 
Thursday event

According to the Detroit Free 

Press, Uber will deliver kittens in 
more than 50 cities across North 
America, including Detroit, this 
Thursday.

To participate in the event, 

customers just need to log in 
to their Uber app between the 
hours of 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. 
and 
choose 
the 
“KITTENS” 

option. Once the delivery arrives, 
customers can play with the cats 
for a maximum of 15 minutes. The 
service costs $30. 

Local 
animal 
shelters 
are 

partnering with Uber, giving them 
access to the kittens for a portion 
of the company’s profitwwws in 
return. As a result of previous 
Uber Kittens events, the ride-
share 
company 
helped 
find 

permanent homes for more than 
30 kittens. 

College applications 
in UK to remove 
applicant’s name

U.K. Prime Minister David 

Cameron announced that names 
will be removed from all 2017 
applications submitted through 
the Universities and Colleges 
Admissions Service, a charity that 
facilitates the application process 
for nearly all British universities.

According to The Conversation, 

Cameron said the country’s main 
goal is to combat ethnic inequali-
ties. His made the announcement 
after a report was published that 
showed British ethinc minorities 
are less likely to be accepted to 
selective universities than white 
applicants.

While he said the reason behind 

this disparity is “complex,” Cam-
eron noted that unconscious bias 
may play a role in lower minority 
acceptence rates. 

To determine if “name-blind” 

applications 
actually 
decrease 

ethnic inequalities, UCAS has 
agreed to share application data 
with applicant permission. 

Nanotechnology 
could create new 
heart treatment

University researchers devel-

oped a new nanoparticle that 
could be the key to a new therapy 
for people suffering from cardiac 
arrhythmia. 

The 
treatment 
uses 
nano-

technology to target and destroy 
cells within the heart that cause 
cardiac arrhythmia. In stud-
ies they conducted on sheep and 
rodents, the researchers found 
that the technology kills the car-
diac 
arrhythmia-causing 
cells, 

but leaves the surrounding, non-
harmful cells untouched. 

Today in the United States, car-

diac arrhythmia affects 4 million 
Americans, killing 130,000 and 
hospitalizing more than 750,000 
people every year.

–LEA GIOTTO

PAINKILLERS
From Page 1A

NEWS BRIEFS

CANCER
From Page 1A

MARINA ROSS/Daily

Kelly McMann, a University alum and political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, speaks about 
corruption in the Central Asian market in the School of Social Work Building on Wednesday.

CORRUPTION
From Page 1A

2-News