Researcher’s outside activities vexed Emory officials

Emory University officials struggled for the past eight years to rein in questionable outside activities of internationally known psychiatrist Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, documents released on Monday by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance show.

Emory’s concerns were revealed in more than 140 pages of e-mails and letters between Nemeroff and Emory officials posted Monday on a Web site of U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). The senator is leading an investigation into the financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and the scientists who research their products. The issues include potential conflicts of interest and unreported outside earnings. Grassley is the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Despite the university’s concerns about and investigations of Nemeroff’s relationships with drug companies, going back to 2000, he remained chair of Emory’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences until Friday, when he stepped aside because of internal and external investigations.

Grassley outlined his concerns about Nemeroff in an eight-page letter to Emory University President James W. Wagner last month, saying that “funding by pharmaceutical companies may influence scientific studies, continuing medical education, and the prescribing patterns of doctors.”

Earl Lewis, Emory’s executive vice president of academic affairs, said Monday, “We’ve worked hard over the past couple of years with Charlie to manage the [conflicts of interest], and where possible to eliminate” the conflicts.

He added, “It’s an ongoing process.”

Nemeroff “is one of the leading psychiatrists of our time, in the U.S. and abroad,” said Dr. Glen Gabbard, professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Nemeroff “is always objective and scientific in what he presents in his lectures,” said Gabbard, who said he has a 20-year professional acquaintance with Nemeroff.

Emory officials seemed uncomfortable both with Nemeroff’s apparent financial conflicts of interest and the time he spent away from his university work, according to the documents.

On May 15, 2000, Emory Medical School Dean Thomas Lawley wrote to Nemeroff that he was “astonished to note that you have external involvement with more than 20 non-Emory entities” and asking that copies be provided of “all consulting agreements or letters of understanding including start and end dates and the compensation you receive.”

Lawley went on, “Charlie, I believe the extent of your external activity and your time away from Emory is inappropriate for a full-time Chairman in the School of Medicine and I feel I cannot defend it as Dean of the School of Medicine.”

The dean asked for a plan for a “dramatic decrease” in Nemeroff’s outside activities.

Nemeroff followed up a week later with a letter detailing specifics of his relationships to pharmaceutical companies and nonprofit boards, and added: “Surely you remember that Smith-Kline Beecham Pharmaceuticals donated an endowed chair to the department and that there is some reasonable likelihood that Janssen Pharmaceuticals will do so as well. In addition, Wyeth-Ayers Pharmaceuticals has funded a Research Career Development Award program in the department, and I have asked both AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb to do the same. Part of the rationale for their funding our faculty in such a manner would be my service on these boards.”

Emory said Lawley would not be available for comment. Attempts to reach Nemeroff on Monday were not successful.

Emory officials several times demanded, and Nemeroff agreed, to curtail his outside roles.

In June 2004, a 14-page report by the university’s Conflict of Interest Committee found “many violations of the Conflict of Interest, Consulting and other policies.”

Nemeroff replied the next month that he would follow a plan for dealing with conflicts. “I regret any shortcomings in my adherence to these policies, oversights on my part for which I take full responsibility.”

He wrote that no research had been compromised. “None of the consulting relationships that I have with the pharmaceutical industry have influenced, in any way, the conduct of research in the department.”

Two years later, another controversy erupted when Nemeroff stepped down from the editorship of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology after being lead author on an article about a new device for treating depression without revealing his financial ties to the manufacturer.

Emory spokesman Ron Sauder said, “We’re not going to discuss these things bit by bit. We’re going to do a fair, thorough, careful investigation.”

Richard Wurtman, an MIT psychiatrist who criticized Nemeroff over the 2006 journal article, said Monday, “I find it remarkable that nothing has changed since 2006.”

In his letter to Emory President Wagner, Grassley said the university provided Nemeroff’s financial disclosure forms from January 2000 through June 2007. But Grassley also said the university’s report conflicted with information provided by the pharmaceutical companies. Grassley’s findings show Nemeroff apparently failed to disclose to Emory numerous payments, including $138,000 from Pfizer for at least 40 speaking engagements and consulting fees and “the vast majority of the over $900,000 that he received in speaking fees and expenses related to talks he has given on behalf of

GlaxoSmithKline.”

Nemeroff’s actions “or lack thereof,” Grassley wrote, “may have placed Emory in violation of federal disclosure regulations regarding at least two NIH grants.”

The university is still checking whether Grassley’s allegations are true, Lewis said Monday. He also said Emory may be changing the way it tracks professors, such as implementing spot audits.

Staff writer Alison Young contributed to this article.