Documents released by a Senate committee detail $1.14-million in payments from Medtronic, a medical-device company, to a medical professor at the University of Minnesota who received Pentagon research funds to conduct a study involving one of the company's products, The New York Times reports.
The professor, David W. Polly Jr., did not disclose that he was a consultant for the company when he appeared before a different Senate panel in 2006 and urged it to continue paying for Defense Department research into combat-related injuries, the documents indicate. They also show that he billed the company $6,000 for his appearance, the Times reports. Dr. Polly told the newspaper that he had done nothing wrong in connection with his testimony at the hearing.
He is the latest academic physician whose links to medical-device or pharmaceutical companies have come under the scrutiny of Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, who is leading an inquiry into medical ethics and conflicts of interest.
Others Mr. Grassley has criticized include researchers at Emory University, Harvard University. the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Wisconsin.
Senator Grassley has been pursuing legislation that would strengthen federal requirements on researchers to declare potential financial conflicts of interest, including by creating a system for comparing payment data submitted by scientists with payment data reported by companies.
Comments
1. davi2665 - July 30, 2009 at 11:40 am
Here we go again. Yet another professor/research physician is caught accepting money from a commercial vendor without bothering to tell either the NIH or his own university about the conflict of interest, and then accepts federal money to study the product which he is being paid to promote. Why is this not fraud? Why do the universities view this with a wink and a nod. In the case of Emory University, they actually made the professor who similarly failed to disclose his financial ties STEP DOWN as chair. WOW! Maybe they will even take away his parking permit. He should be prosecuted for fraud. But as long as the universities continue to make money from the activities of their tainted superstars, they will never get serious about cleaning up their egregious corruption. And Medtronic, the poster child for such payments to such individuals, continues to be involved in scandal after scandal with little or no real penalty- I guess it is just business as usual, a price to pay when you want to buy off the "thought leaders" in the field. What will it take to clean up this mess? This ongoing type of activity is truly pathetic.