[Daily News] NIH Researcher Charged With Conflict of Interest

dava

FROM: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1205/1
By Constance Holden
ScienceNOW Daily News
5 December 2006

An Alzheimer's researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, has become the first federal scientist since 1992 to be prosecuted for conflict of interest. Trey Sunderland, 55, was charged on Monday by the Maryland federal district attorney with accepting $285,000 in drug company fees without getting approval from his superiors or reporting the income over a 5-year period.
Sunderland is one of 44 researchers who did not report relationships with drug and biotech companies, according to a recent investigation by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and the National Institutes of Health (ScienceNOW, 14 June). Most got away with reprimands. But Sunderland's case led some to conclude that he was being paid for NIMH's human tissue samples. As a specialist in Alzheimer's, Sunderland has led the search for early biomarkers of the disease. In 1998, he entered into a research collaboration with New York-based Pfizer Inc. that included providing the company with samples of patients' cerebrospinal fluid as well as clinical data.

According to court documents, Sunderland violated federal regulations by not filling out forms to disclose outside income and consulting jobs. (NIH did not forbid intramural researchers from consulting until 2005). Furthermore, he flouted rules forbidding researchers to "consult and collaborate with the same company," says NIMH Director Thomas Insel. The court document states that at the same time Sunderland was negotiating the collaboration with Pfizer, he negotiated for consultancies on biomarker projects. For 5 years starting in 1998, he was paid $50,000 a year plus expenses.

NIH found Sunderland guilty of "serious misconduct" late last year. Insel recommended that his employment be terminated, but because Sunderland is an officer of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, action was put on hold pending investigations by the Department of Health and Human Services and by the Department of Justice, which ultimately brought the charges.

Sunderland is scheduled to appear in court for arraignment on 8 December. If convicted, he could face up to 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Neither he nor his lawyer, Robert Muse of Washington, D.C., could be reached for comment. Sunderland has said in the past that his staff simply failed to complete the proper paperwork, and Muse has been quoted as saying that scientists tend to regard NIH disclosure forms as "basically a bureaucratic nuisance."

Sunderland was planning in early 2005 to move to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, but sources say that offer has been withdrawn.

perch88

This happens everywhere in China, but none of them would be procecuted.