ASTAR Scholar (PRC?) Arrested for Poisoning Her Classmates' Water Bottle in Stanford

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Today 8:10 PM Post: #1 TuscanSun
Elite Member

Posts: 6,143
Reputation: 13 A Stanford Medical School Student Was Arrested for Poisoning Her Classmates' Water Bottles
April 1, 2015
by Jennifer Schaffer

One day in October 2014, a graduate student researcher at Stanford University's Nusse Lab took a drink from her water bottle. According to testimony she later gave to police, the student "immediately experienced a burning sensation in her mouth and throat. Her eyes became irritated and watery. She began salivating uncontrollably. Her throat was burning so bad that she could not even swallow the water."

When she smelled her water bottle, it reeked of paraformaldehyde.

This wasn't the first time a member of the lab had accidentally ingested the toxic chemical. For weeks, researchers in the lab had been sniffing their water bottles before drinking, and multiple times each week, the bottles smelled strongly of paraformaldehyde. But none of the students suspected that they were being intentionally poisoned by the "awkward and quiet" second-year Stanford Medical School student in the lab, Zheng*, who is now being charged with four felony counts of poisoning. (The Fountain Hopper, an anonymous publication that made waves earlier this year by alerting students to their rights to request their admissions files under FERPA, discovered the case after receiving a tip from a member of the lab on March 19.)

In her account to police, Zheng described her actions as a cry for help: "I am truly sorry for what had happened, but I really didn't mean to harm people. And I... it was me crying out for help and I didn't know."

Zheng had seemed insecure and very stressed, but her behavior didn't come across as abnormal to her peers, just par for the course at one of the most competitive medical schools in the world. The 26-year-old scientist had come to Stanford's Cancer Biology program from the prestigious Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A-STAR) program in Singapore. As one of her colleagues would testify later, Zheng described Stanford as "a paradise."

It's not hard to see why. Stanford pays meticulous attention to appearances: The sides of campus streets are regularly scrubbed with soapy water, the grass stays absurdly green throughout drought season, and when students struggle, as Zheng apparently did, they tend to do so quietly. The term "Stanford Duck Syndrome" is widely used on campus to describe the way students appear happy and calm above water, while desperately kicking beneath the surface just to stay afloat. Conversations about young people's mental health have become more urgent on campuses across the country in recent years, Stanford's among them. In January, a Stanford senior committed suicide; another overdosed on graduation day last spring, immediately after the keynote speech by Bill and Melinda Gates.

continued...
http://www.vice.com/read/a-stanford-...er-bottles-331

Today 8:22 PM Post: #2 reiko
Guru Member

Posts: 20,325
Reputation: 49 Why cannot name the suspect?
So this "Zheng"- where is she from?
She went there under ASTAR program from Singapore, but where does she originate from?
I love twitter!

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