With restraints on grants and contracts for two years, psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff is being allowed to stay on as a full professor at Emory University, but his record suggests that Emory’s sanctions have not gone far enough.
Following a Senate investigation last year which found alleged conflicts of interest among academics who received payments from Big Pharma while receiving NIH research grants, psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff of Emory University must relinquish his 17-year post as department chief, but is being allowed to remain as a full professor.
Emory has also ruled that Nemeroff must follow restrictions on his outside activities, and cannot be included in any National Institutes of Health (NIH) or other grants or contracts as an investigator or in any other capacity for a period of ‘at least two years’.
Nemeroff, who raked in more than $2.8 million in ‘consulting’ fees from drug makers between 2000 and 2007, violated federal grant rules by not reporting at least $1.2 million of it to Emory as required under federal law. According to documents provided by a Congressional investigation led by Sen. Charles Grassley, Emory officials knew that Nemeroff failed to properly disclose payments, but did nothing about it.
The NIH has awarded Emory more than $251 million in funding this year — 61 percent of its total research funds from outside sponsors. But in the wake of the Nemeroff scandal, the NIH has frozen payments for a $9.3 million project on depression led by Nemeroff after completing only two of its proposed five years. The NIH has also levied new constrictions on grant approvals for Emory, demanding more thorough investigations on researchers’ outside activities and conflicts of interest.
With that kind of funding on the line and the NIH’s tough new stance, you get the idea why Emory is finally taking an interest in conflict-of-interest among its staff instead of turning a blind eye to corruption.
Nemeroff’s many critics say he collected millions of dollars in speaking and consulting fees from Big Pharma reviewing and promoting their drugs to the medical profession, both in print and through speaking engagements. Some question the validity of scientific trials he has overseen, because personal payments obviously can compromise science.
According to Ed Silverman at Pharmalot, Emory claims it could find no evidence that Nemeroff’s activities on behalf of Big Pharma affected clinical care for patients enrolled in clinical trials, and no evidence his activities biased scientific research. Nemeroff says his lectures were limited to general medical topics such as depression and bipolar disorder and not product-specific, a contention that Emory officially supports.
Alison Bass, a former Boston Globe medical reporter, and author of the excellent Big Pharma expose ‘Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and A Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial’, claims just the opposite is true.
In her blog about Emory letting Nemeroff ‘off the hook’, Bass states:
“Over the years, Nemeroff has most definitely given product-specific lectures on behalf of drug companies,” Bass writes. “As I note in Side Effects, Nemeroff spoke on behalf of Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, during the pivotal 1991 FDA hearing on concerns that Prozac increased the risk of sucidal thoughts and behaviors among patients taking the SSRI antidepressant. (At the time, Nemeroff had lucrative consulting arrangements with Eli Lilly and also owned stock in the Indianapolis-based drug company). As part of his presentation to the FDA, Nemeroff specifically talked about the available research on Prozac and other SSRI antidepressants (including Paxil) and went so far as to dismiss case reports then emerging about the suicidal risks of these drugs. According to people who attended that hearing, Nemeroff’s ‘elegant’ and very product-specific lecture that day helped convince the FDA advisory board to dismiss concerns about these drugs’ side effects. As a result, it took the federal agency another 13 years to put black box warnings about the suicidal risks on Prozac, Paxil and other antidepressants.”
One can only wonder how many hundreds or thousands of lives were lost or ruined during that 13 years that are directly attributable to Nemeroff’s pimping on behalf of Big Pharma.
For a good idea of just how far out (dare I say ‘crazy’?) Nemeroff is in his quest for cash from Big Pharma, the good doctor hired himself to write for a magazine he edited for a payment of several thousand dollars an article ‘celebrating’ the 5-year anniversary of Wyeth’s Effexor antidepressant. Ed Silverman reports on Nemeroff’s letter, and you can read the wack-o “Dear Me” letter itself.