Mahony stripped of public church duties

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez  on Thursday announced dramatic actions in response to the priest abuse scandal, saying that Cardinal Roger Mahony would be stripped of public duties in the church and that Santa Barbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry has stepped down.

Gomez said in a statement that Mahony -- who led the L.A. archdiocese from 1985 to 2011 -- "will no longer have any administrative or public duties."

Gomez also announced the church has released a trove of confidential church files detailing how the Los Angeles archdiocese dealt with priests accused of molestation.

Gomez wrote in a letter to parishioners that the files would be disturbing to read.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed," he wrote. "We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today."

Gomez's statement came a week after the release of internal Catholic church records. The records showed 15 years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Mahony and Curry discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement. Those records represent just a fraction of the files the church released Thursday. The Times is now reviewing those files.

DOCUMENT: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files

The records released last week offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

The records contain memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases. In the confidential letters, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they had abused young boys.

Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators. Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations.

Gomez's letter detailed changes in the status of Curry and Mahony in the church.

"Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara,” Gomez wrote in a letter.

The records were released hours after a judge signed an order requiring the church to do so.

In a written order, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias gave the church a Feb. 22 deadline to turn over about 30,000 pages of internal memos, psychiatric reports, Vatican correspondence and other documents.

“Let’s just get it done,” Elias said in court Thursday.

Her order brought to a close five and a half years of legal wrangling and delays and set the stage for a raft of new and almost certainly embarrassing revelations about the church’s handling of pedophile priests.

DOCUMENT: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files

The files Elias ordered released are the final piece of a landmark 2007 settlement between the archdiocese and about 500 people who said clergy abused them. As part of that $660-million settlement, the archdiocese agreed to hand over the personnel files of accused abusers. Victims said the files would provide accountability for church leaders who let pedophiles remain in the ministry; law enforcement officials said the records would be important investigative tools.

But the release was delayed for years by appeals and the painstaking process of reading and redacting 89 files, some hundreds of pages long. A private mediator in 2011 ordered the church to black out the names of victims and archdiocese employees not accused of abuse, saying he wanted to avoid “guilt by association.”

Earlier this month, at the urging of the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, Elias ordered the names restored, saying the public had a right to know what Mahony and others in charge did about abuse. The church complained about the cost of restoring the redactions and suggested to the judge earlier this week that generic cover sheets for the files listing top officials and their dates of service should suffice.

After criticism from attorneys for the victims and the media, the church abandoned that plan and its lawyers said in court Thursday “anybody in a supervisory role” would be named in the documents. Elias’ order specified that the names of the archbishop, the vicar who handled clergy abuse, bishops and the heads of Catholic treatment centers for pedophiles be included.

Here is Gomez's full letter:

My brothers and sisters in Christ,

This week we are releasing the files of priests who sexually abused children while they were serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious.

I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.

We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today. We need to pray for everyone who has ever been hurt by members of the Church. And we need to continue to support the long and painful process of healing their wounds and restoring the trust that was broken.

I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused, has been the saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.

My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.

To every victim of child sexual abuse by a member of our Church: I want to help you in your healing. I am profoundly sorry for these sins against you.

To every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I want you to know: We will continue, as we have for many years now, to immediately report every credible allegation of abuse to law enforcement authorities and to remove those credibly accused from ministry. We will continue to work, every day, to make sure that our children are safe and loved and cared for in our parishes, schools and in every ministry in the Archdiocese.

In the weeks ahead, I will address all of these matters in greater detail. Today is a time for prayer and reflection and deep compassion for the victims of child sexual abuse.

I entrust all of us and our children and families to the tender care and protection of our Blessed Mother Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of the Angels.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

RELATED:

L.A. church molestation records spark call for criminal inquiry

Steve Lopez: It's too late for Cardinal Roger Mahony's apologies

--  Harriet Ryan, Hector Becerra, Ashley Powers and Victoria Kim

Photo: Cardinal Roger Mahony in the entrance processional for the Mass for the Reception of Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

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Is PlayStation 4 Nearly Here? Sony Plans Mysterious Feb. 20 Press Conference

Is the next next-generation console almost here? Wired just received an invitation to “PlayStation Meeting 2013,” a press briefing to be held in New York City on Feb. 20, beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern time. It was accompanied by the cryptic video above and contained no further information.

With Sony heavily rumored to be announcing (and possibly releasing) its next-generation game machine this year, and with absolutely no details being offered on this out-of-the-ordinary press conference, it seems quite likely that Sony is about to debut PlayStation 4. But of course, we won’t know for sure until the day of the show.

“Sony is inviting investors and media to the Feb 20 event; that means console announcement,” wrote Wedbush game industry analyst Michael Pachter on Twitter immediately following the news.

In March of last year, Kotaku reported that Sony’s next console had the development name “Orbis,” which has been repeatedly confirmed by additional reports over the past year. At the time, it reported that Orbis was on track for a holiday 2013 release. Rival Microsoft is also said to be close to announcing and releasing its next Xbox game machine, codenamed “Durango.”

There have been many purported leaks of the design and specification of Orbis, including one recent story from January 28. But it’s not likely that the raw processing power of the next PlayStation will be what truly defines it as a product. In an app-driven age, software — the interface and functionality of the device — is key. So that’s what Sony is likely to spend a lot of time discussing on February 20: What can PS4 do for you?

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Relativity Buys Into Jim Carrey Heist Comedy ”Loomis Fargo”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Relativity Media has acquired worldwide rights to the Jim Carrey heist comedy “Loomis Fargo,” which it will finance, produce and distribute, the studio announced on Thursday.

Jared Hess, who co-wrote and directed “Napoleon Dynamite,” will direct the movie from a script by Emily Spivey that also counts Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer as writers. Inspired by true events, it tells the story of four Southerners who stole nearly $ 20 million from an armed Loomis Fargo truck in 1997.

“Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels and John Goldwyn are producing the movie while Danny McBride, Jody Hill, Michael Aguilar, Kevin Messick are executive producing with Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh and president Tucker Tooley.

Brett Dahl will oversee the project for Relativity, which is aiming for an April start to production.

Carrey can next be seen in “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” which will premiere at South by Southwest before it theatrical release. Relativity just acquired Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut “Don Jon’s Addiction” at Sundance and will next release the romantic thriller “Save Haven.”

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During Trial, New Details Emerge on DuPuy Hip

When Johnson & Johnson announced the appointment in 2011 of an executive to head the troubled orthopedics division whose badly flawed artificial hip had been recalled, the company billed the move as a fresh start.

But that same executive, it turns out, had supervised the implant’s introduction in the United States and had been told by a top company consultant three years before the device was recalled that it was faulty.

In addition, the executive also held a senior marketing position at a time when Johnson & Johnson decided not to tell officials outside the United States that American regulators had refused to allow sale of a version of the artificial hip in this country.

The details about the involvement of the executive, Andrew Ekdahl, with the all-metal hip implant emerged Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court during the trial of a patient lawsuit against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against DePuy in connection with the device — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — and the Los Angeles case is the first to go to trial.

The information about the depth of Mr. Ekdahl’s involvement with the implant may raise questions about DePuy’s ability to put the A.S.R. episode behind it.

Asked in an e-mail why the company had promoted Mr. Ekdahl, a DePuy spokeswoman, Lorie Gawreluk, said the company “seeks the most accomplished and competent people for the job.”

On Wednesday, portions of Mr. Ekdahl’s videotaped testimony were shown to jurors in the Los Angeles case. Other top DePuy marketing executives who played roles in the A.S.R. development are expected to testify in coming days. Mr. Ekdahl, when pressed in the taped questioning on whether DePuy had recalled the A.S.R. because it was unsafe, repeatedly responded that the company had recalled it “because it did not meet the clinical standards we wanted in the marketplace.”

Before the device’s recall in mid-2010, Mr. Ekdahl and those executives all publicly asserted that the device was performing extremely well. But internal documents that have become public as a result of litigation conflict with such statements.

In late 2008, for example, a surgeon who served as one of DePuy’s top consultants told Mr. Ekdahl and two other DePuy marketing officials that he was concerned about the cup component of the A.S.R. and believed it should be “redesigned.” At the time, DePuy was aggressively promoting the device in the United States as a breakthrough and it was being implanted into thousands of patients.

“My thoughts would be that DePuy should at least de-emphasize the A.S.R. cup while the clinical results are studied,” that consultant, Dr. William Griffin, wrote.

A spokesman for Dr. Griffin said he was not available for comment.

The A.S.R., whose cup and ball components were both made of metal, was first sold by DePuy in 2003 outside the United States for use in an alternative hip replacement procedure called resurfacing. Two years later, DePuy started selling another version of the A.S.R. for use here in standard hip replacement that used the same cup component as the resurfacing device. Only the standard A.S.R. was sold in the United States; both versions were sold outside the country.

Before the device recall in mid-2010, about 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about a third of them in this country. Internal DePuy projections estimate that it will fail in 40 percent of those patients within five years; a rate eight times higher than for many other hip devices.

Mr. Ekdahl testified via tape Wednesday that he had been placed in charge of the 2005 introduction of the standard version of the A.S.R. in this country. Within three years, he and other DePuy executives were receiving reports that the device was failing prematurely at higher than expected rates, apparently because of problems related to the cup’s design, documents disclosed during the trial indicate.

Along with other DePuy executives, he also participated in a meeting that resulted in a proposal to redesign the A.S.R. cup. But that plan was dropped, apparently because sales of the implant had not justified the expense, DePuy documents indicate.

In the face of growing complaints from surgeons about the A.S.R., DePuy officials maintained that the problems were related to how surgeons were implanting the cup, not from any design flaw. But in early 2009, a DePuy executive wrote to Mr. Ekdahl and other marketing officials that the early failures of the A.S.R. resurfacing device and the A.S.R. traditional implant, known as the XL, were most likely design-related.

“The issue seen with A.S.R. and XL today, over five years post-launch, are most likely linked to the inherent design of the product and that is something we should recognize,” that executive, Raphael Pascaud wrote in March 2009.

Last year, The New York Times reported that DePuy executives decided in 2009 to phase out the A.S.R. and sell existing inventories weeks after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company for more safety data about the implant.

The F.D.A. also told the company at that time that it was rejecting its efforts to sell the resurfacing version of the device in the United States because of concerns about “high concentration of metal ions” in the blood of patients who received it.

DePuy never disclosed the F.D.A. ruling to regulators in other countries where it was still marketing the resurfacing version of the implant.

During a part of that period, Mr. Ekdahl was overseeing sales in Europe and other regions for DePuy. When The Times article appeared last year, he issued a statement, saying that any implication that the F.D.A. had determined there were safety issues with the A.S.R. was “simply untrue.” “This was purely a business decision,” Mr. Ekdahl stated at that time.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

A headline on Thursday about a patient lawsuit against DePuy Orthopaedics, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, misstated the start of the trial in some copies. It began last week, not on Wednesday.

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Wall Street Journal Reports Attack by China Hackers

One day after The New York Times reported that Chinese hackers had infiltrated its computers and stolen passwords for its employees, The Wall Street Journal announced that it too had been hacked.

On Thursday, The Journal reported that it had been attacked by Chinese hackers who were trying to monitor the company’s coverage of China. It said hackers had broken into its network through computers in its Beijing bureau.

In a written statement, the business newspaper owned by News Corporation described the attack as an “ongoing issue” and said it was working closely with authorities and security specialists to clean up its systems. It said that it completed a “network overhaul” on Thursday in an effort to rid its systems of hackers.

China’s Ministry of National Defense has denied any involvement in the cyberattack at The Times or any other American corporations.

But security experts said that in 2008, Chinese hackers began targeting American news organizations as part of an effort to monitor coverage of Chinese issues.

In a report for clients in December, Mandiant, a computer security company, said that over the course of several investigations it found evidence that Chinese hackers had stolen e-mails, contacts and files from more than 30 journalists and executives at Western news organizations, and had maintained a “short list” of journalists for repeated attacks. Among those targeted were journalists who had written about Chinese leaders, political and legal issues in China and the telecom giant Huawei.

Bloomberg News, another American news organization, was targeted by Chinese hackers last year, and some computers were infected, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s internal investigation. The attack occurred after Bloomberg published an article on June 29 about the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, a Chinese official who is expected to become president in March.

Bloomberg has confirmed that hackers had made attempts but said that “no computer systems or computers were compromised.”

The timing of the attacks on The New York Times coincided with the reporting for an investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks found digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that officials in the Obama administration were considering more assertive action against Beijing to stop Chinese computer espionage campaigns.

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said Thursday a global effort was needed o establish “rules of the road” for cyber activity.  In her final meeting with reporters at the State Department, Mrs. Clinton addressed a question about China’s efforts to infiltrate computer systems at The New York Times. 

 “We have seen over the last years an increase in not only the hacking attempts on government institutions but also non-governmental ones,.” Mrs. Clinton said.

The Chinese, she said , "are not the only people who are hacking us." 

 In her final meeting with reporters at the State Department, Mrs. Clinton addressed a question about China’s efforts to infiltrate computer systems at The New York Times. 

 “We have seen over the last years an increase in not only the hacking attempts on government institutions but also non-governmental ones,” Mrs. Clinton said.

The Chinese, she said , "are not the only people who are hacking us." 

"There is a lot that we are working on that will be deployed in the event that we don’t get some kind of international effort under way," Mrs. Clinton added without elaborating.

The United States has been increasingly vocal about such efforts against government and private industry. In a November 2011 intelligence report, government officials specifically accused China and Russia of stealing intellectual property for economic gain.

Michael Gordon contributed reporting from Washington.

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California restricts hiring after dual-paycheck revelations

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has restricted state departments' hiring authority following revelations that hundreds of public employees were receiving pay for second state jobs in addition to their normal salaries.

Workers receiving more than one state paycheck, known in official parlance as "additional appointments," were found in a variety of departments and agencies, including the California Public Employees Retirement System and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and in several state hospitals.

The Brown administration did not ban the practice, but any such hire must now be approved by its Office of Human Resources.

"It appears that in some cases people were paid additionally for the job they were hired to do in the first place," said Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (R-Camarillo), who introduced a bill Wednesday to ban salaried state employees from holding more than one state job. "It's inappropriate at best and potentially abusive," he said.

Gorell said the proliferation of double paychecks highlights the need for more legislative oversight of the executive branch.

"It's clear that the governor and his administration don't fully understand what's happening in these agencies," he said.

Documents provided by the state controller's office show that 571 nonunion employees hold more than one position in various departments. The records do not show what those employees were paid.

The Sacramento Bee reported that dozens of state corrections officers received additional compensation beyond that of their regular jobs — some of which paid up to $20,000 per month. The paper also reported that the chief psychiatrist at Napa State Hospital, who receives an annual salary of more than $275,000, was receiving an additional $125 per hour for work as a staff psychiatrist.

"It's a scam," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit advocacy agency. "Many people in all kinds of different jobs work for a set salary understanding that sometimes that means working long hours. Unfortunately, that's not always the culture of government."

A spokesman for the state's largest public employee union said the extra pay was for managers and other nonunion employees who are not eligible for overtime. Most unionized workers receive overtime if they put in extra hours.

A spokesman for CalPERS said it had allowed salaried workers to receive extra pay since June 2011 to help the agency launch and test a new technology project. Brad Pacheco said that using existing workers saved CalPERS an estimated $1.6 million that would have been spent to hire outside consultants and train new staff.

The human resources agency issued a statement saying that officials were "conducting a full review to determine whether there is any justification for continuing this practice."

anthony.york@latimes.com

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Kim Dotcom's Mega Gets Third-Party Search Engine

The file-sharing site Mega, introduced two weeks ago by infamous file-sharing kingpin Kim Dotcom, just became a lot more useful to content pirates, thanks to a community-fed search engine of links to content hosted on Mega’s servers.

The search engine doesn’t crawl Mega content — which is not possible because of Mega’s architecture. Instead, it relies on Mega users voluntarily providing links to files hosted on Mega’s service. Then downloaders can click and pull the content into their own Mega stash, or download it to their hard drives.

And the downloads are fast — way faster than a typical BitTorrent download.

Combined with Mega, the mega-search.me search engine — which is hosted from an anonymous domain — makes for a full blown piracy site, closer to what Megaupload was before it was brought down. Dotcom’s lawyer, Ira Rothken, said “no” when asked if his client had anything to do with the search engine.

The number of users for the Mega service is unclear, but Dotcom said it surpassed one million members one day following its initial launch two weeks ago from New Zealand.

Mega was launched one year after police shuttered Dotcom’s Megaupload, and arrested founder Dotcom and top lieutenants who were running the service. They were charged with criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and other crimes and are awaiting a possible extradition to the United States from New Zealand to face trial while free on bail.

Megaupload, which had some 150 million registered members, was on the recording and movie industries’ most-hated lists, often being accused of facilitating wanton infringement of their members’ copyrights. The year-old indictment claims Megaupload paid users to upload copyrighted works for others to download, and that it often failed to comply with removal notices from rights holders under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

David Kravets is a senior staff writer for Wired.com and founder of the fake news site TheYellowDailyNews.com. He's a dad of two boys and has been a reporter since the manual typewriter days.

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Follow @dmkravets and @ThreatLevel on Twitter.

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UK’s Prince Charles takes first “Tube” trip since 1986

LONDON (Reuters) – Four million Londoners cram onto the city’s Underground passenger railway nearly every day, but it is a rarer event for Prince Charles. He rode the British capital’s bustling commuter network on Wednesday for the first time since 1986.

The heir to the British throne and his wife Camilla took a one-stop journey from Farringdon to King’s Cross on the Metropolitan Line as part of celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of a transport service affectionately known to Britons as the “Tube”.

The short journey was a rare enough event to cause some confusion at the prince’s press office, which initially said he had last ventured onto the Tube in 1979.

“This is just to let you know that it has come to our attention that The Prince of Wales has travelled on the London Underground more recently than 1979. In 1986 The Prince and Princess of Wales travelled by tube to Heathrow Airport to open Terminal 4,” a spokeswoman said in an email to media.

“We’re sorry that our previous information was incorrect. Our archives of Royal engagements prior to 1988 are not computerized and in this particular instance a search under ‘The Prince of Wales takes the Tube’ did not bring up an event which had been logged as the ‘official opening of Terminal 4′.”

(Reporting By Estelle Shirbon, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.

The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.

What they found was reassuring.

To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. They protect your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder Halldor Helgason over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed head-first on the snow, and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.

Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.

Why? A telling 2009 survey of ski patrollers from across the country found that 77 percent did not wear helmets because they worried that the headgear could reduce their peripheral vision, hearing and response times, making them slower and clumsier. In addition, many worried that if they wore helmets, less-adept skiers and snowboarders might do likewise, feel invulnerable and engage in riskier behavior on the slopes.

In the past several years, a number of researchers have attempted to resolve these concerns, for or against helmets. And in almost all instances, helmets have proved their value.

In the Innsbruck speed experiment, the researchers found that people whom the questionnaires showed to be risk takers skied and rode faster than those who were by nature cautious. No surprise.

But wearing a helmet did not increase people’s speed, as would be expected if the headgear encouraged risk taking. Cautious people were slower than risk-takers, whether they wore helmets or not; and risk-takers were fast, whether their heads were helmeted or bare.

Interestingly, the skiers and riders who were the most likely, in general, to don a helmet were the most expert, the men and women with the most talent and hours on the slopes. Experience seemed to have taught them the value of a helmet.

Off of the slopes, other new studies have brought skiers and snowboarders into the lab to test their reaction times and vision with and without helmets. Peripheral vision and response times are a serious safety concern in a sport where skiers and riders rapidly converge from multiple directions.

But when researchers asked snowboarders and skiers to wear caps, helmets, goggles or various combinations of each for a 2011 study and then had them sit before a computer screen and press a button when certain images popped up, they found that volunteers’ peripheral vision and reaction times were virtually unchanged when they wore a helmet, compared with wearing a hat. Goggles slightly reduced peripheral vision and increased response times. But helmets had no significant effect.

Even when researchers added music, testing snowboarders and skiers wearing Bluetooth-audio equipped helmets, response times did not increase significantly from when they wore wool caps.

So why do up to 40 percent of skiers and snowboarders still avoid helmets?

“The biggest reason, I think, is that many people never expect to fall,” says Dr. Adil H. Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and co-author of a major new review of studies related to winter helmet use. “That attitude is especially common in people, like me, who are comfortable on blue runs but maybe not on blacks, and even more so in beginners.”

But a study published last spring detailing snowboarding injuries over the course of 18 seasons at a Vermont ski resort found that the riders at greatest risk of hurting themselves were female beginners. I sympathize.

The takeaway from the growing body of science about ski helmets is in fact unequivocal, Dr. Haider said. “Helmets are safe. They don’t seem to increase risk taking. And they protect against serious, even fatal head injuries.”

The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which Dr. Haider is a member, has issued a recommendation that “all recreational skiers and snowboarders should wear safety helmets,” making them the first medical group to go on record advocating universal helmet use.

Perhaps even more persuasive, Dr. Haider has given helmets to all of his family members and colleagues who ski or ride. “As a trauma surgeon, I know how difficult it is to fix a brain,” he said. “So everyone I care about wears a helmet.”

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During Trial, New Details Emerge on DuPuy Hip

When Johnson & Johnson announced the appointment in 2011 of an executive to head the troubled orthopedics division whose badly flawed artificial hip had been recalled, the company billed the move as a fresh start.

But that same executive, it turns out, had supervised the implant’s introduction in the United States and had been told by a top company consultant three years before the device was recalled that it was faulty.

In addition, the executive also held a senior marketing position at a time when Johnson & Johnson decided not to tell officials outside the United States that American regulators had refused to allow sale of a version of the artificial hip in this country.

The details about the involvement of the executive, Andrew Ekdahl, with the all-metal hip implant emerged Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court during the trial of a patient lawsuit against the DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson. More than 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against DePuy in connection with the device — the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R. — and the Los Angeles case is the first to go to trial.

The information about the depth of Mr. Ekdahl’s involvement with the implant may raise questions about DePuy’s ability to put the A.S.R. episode behind it.

Asked in an e-mail why the company had promoted Mr. Ekdahl, a DePuy spokeswoman, Lorie Gawreluk, said the company “seeks the most accomplished and competent people for the job.”

On Wednesday, portions of Mr. Ekdahl’s videotaped testimony were shown to jurors in the Los Angeles case. Other top DePuy marketing executives who played roles in the A.S.R. development are expected to testify in coming days. Mr. Ekdahl, when pressed in the taped questioning on whether DePuy had recalled the A.S.R. because it was unsafe, repeatedly responded that the company had recalled it “because it did not meet the clinical standards we wanted in the marketplace.”

Before the device’s recall in mid-2010, Mr. Ekdahl and those executives all publicly asserted that the device was performing extremely well. But internal documents that have become public as a result of litigation conflict with such statements.

In late 2008, for example, a surgeon who served as one of DePuy’s top consultants told Mr. Ekdahl and two other DePuy marketing officials that he was concerned about the cup component of the A.S.R. and believed it should be “redesigned.” At the time, DePuy was aggressively promoting the device in the United States as a breakthrough and it was being implanted into thousands of patients.

“My thoughts would be that DePuy should at least de-emphasize the A.S.R. cup while the clinical results are studied,” that consultant, Dr. William Griffin, wrote.

A spokesman for Dr. Griffin said he was not available for comment.

The A.S.R., whose cup and ball components were both made of metal, was first sold by DePuy in 2003 outside the United States for use in an alternative hip replacement procedure called resurfacing. Two years later, DePuy started selling another version of the A.S.R. for use here in standard hip replacement that used the same cup component as the resurfacing device. Only the standard A.S.R. was sold in the United States; both versions were sold outside the country.

Before the device recall in mid-2010, about 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about a third of them in this country. Internal DePuy projections estimate that it will fail in 40 percent of those patients within five years; a rate eight times higher than for many other hip devices.

Mr. Ekdahl testified via tape Wednesday that he had been placed in charge of the 2005 introduction of the standard version of the A.S.R. in this country. Within three years, he and other DePuy executives were receiving reports that the device was failing prematurely at higher than expected rates, apparently because of problems related to the cup’s design, documents disclosed during the trial indicate.

Along with other DePuy executives, he also participated in a meeting that resulted in a proposal to redesign the A.S.R. cup. But that plan was dropped, apparently because sales of the implant had not justified the expense, DePuy documents indicate.

In the face of growing complaints from surgeons about the A.S.R., DePuy officials maintained that the problems were related to how surgeons were implanting the cup, not from any design flaw. But in early 2009, a DePuy executive wrote to Mr. Ekdahl and other marketing officials that the early failures of the A.S.R. resurfacing device and the A.S.R. traditional implant, known as the XL, were most likely design-related.

“The issue seen with A.S.R. and XL today, over five years post-launch, are most likely linked to the inherent design of the product and that is something we should recognize,” that executive, Raphael Pascaud wrote in March 2009.

Last year, The New York Times reported that DePuy executives decided in 2009 to phase out the A.S.R. and sell existing inventories weeks after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company for more safety data about the implant.

The F.D.A. also told the company at that time that it was rejecting its efforts to sell the resurfacing version of the device in the United States because of concerns about “high concentration of metal ions” in the blood of patients who received it.

DePuy never disclosed the F.D.A. ruling to regulators in other countries where it was still marketing the resurfacing version of the implant.

During a part of that period, Mr. Ekdahl was overseeing sales in Europe and other regions for DePuy. When The Times article appeared last year, he issued a statement, saying that any implication that the F.D.A. had determined there were safety issues with the A.S.R. was “simply untrue.” “This was purely a business decision,” Mr. Ekdahl stated at that time.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 30, 2013

An earlier version of this article, in the summary, described the start of the DePuy trial incorrectly. It began last week, not this week.

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