By PAUL THACKER
Yesterday, POGO sent a letter to President Obama asking that Dr. Amy Gutmann be removed as chair of the commission that advises the President on bioethics. We did so because Dr. Gutmann has ignored serious allegations of research misconduct regarding a senior professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is President.
If Dr. Gutmann cannot deal with bioethical concerns on her own campus, with her own faculty, then how can taxpayers trust her to advise the President of the United States?
Quite frankly, I don’t have a clue.
Here are the facts. Last November, POGO sent a letter to Dr. Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health about four cases where federally funded researchers used a ghostwriting company paid by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to write manuscripts that were favorable to Paxil, an antidepressant sold by GSK.
According to documents we included with the letter, GSK apparently paid a ghostwriter to write a scientific editorial for a medical journal with the byline of Dr. Dwight Evans, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Just so you know, Penn has stated publicly that they consider corporate-funded ghostwriting in medicine to be plagiarism. So how did Penn respond to this allegation of plagiarism? Did they launch an investigation? Did they take the matter up with the faculty senate?
Nope. They just blew it off.
A university spokesman told Penn’s student newspaper:
While we support any effort to promote scientific integrity, we believe that the allegations of ghostwriting made by POGO regarding a short editorial authored in 2003 by Drs. Evans and Charney are unfounded. (Emphasis added)
How judicious.
On Friday, a senior professor of psychiatry at Penn filed a complaint against Dr. Evans that includes allegations once again of potential ghostwriting in another study that favors GSK and Paxil. And because this study that Dr. Evans signed his name to was funded with taxpayer dollars, the complaint was sent to the federal government for investigation.
Until the University concludes a sincere and transparent investigation of these charges and takes decisive action to deter future ghostwriting, Dr. Gutmann should step aside as chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. This Commission advises President Obama on bioethics.
Dr. Gutmann’s bona fides on bioethics—to borrow a phrase from Penn’s own spokesperson—appear to be “unfounded.”
Students should really be pissed off that professors get away with this type of fraud when students receive steep penalties. What makes this all even more bizarre and insulting is that Dr. Evans is on the board of Penn’s Scattergood Program for the Applied Ethics of Behavioral Healthcare, a program dedicated to healthcare ethics.
“Ghost writing is definitely a form of cheating. It’s definitely punishable,” said Aaron Roth, a junior majoring in engineering and a member of Penn's student Honor Council, in a story last year in The Daily Pennsylvanian.
According to Roth, the punishment for plagiarism can range from a semester-long suspension to expulsion from Penn. And the punishment will get documented on a student’s transcript.
That’s for students. But for fully mature, grown-ass men running Penn, like Dwight Evans….Dr. Gutmann just looks the other way.
- Read POGO’s letter to President.
- Read Dr. Jay Amsterdam’s letter to the Office of Research Misconduct.
- Read Dr. Jay Amsterdam’s letter to UPenn.
See also: Medical Ghostwriting: Why Hidden Industry Influence is a Threat to Public Health.
Paul Thacker is a POGO Investigator.
What's an even more urgent problem is Dr. Gutmann's non-actions as Chair of the Presidential Commission on Bioethics. There were targeted individuals who are being tortured and criminally assaulted who risked their lives to testify to Dr. Gutmann and the Commission whose torture included electromagnetic assaults, mind control, harassment and torture 24/7, isolation, being falsely profiled, etc. This domestic terrorism and criminal assault, paid for by United States taxpayers, seems to me to be a much bigger problem of waste, fraud and abuse and I would hope that POGO would watch the video on YouTube under Presidential Commission on Bioethics and find out if Dr. Gutmann has taken any action, including a request that Congress investigate the matter. I am one of those victims and tried contacting POGO years ago about this problem and it could be my correspondence was 're-routed' but I never heard back from POGO. There are real victims of waste, fraud and abuse and some of the victims of this involuntary human research have died because of it. I would hope POGO would look into this and other abuses by the intelligence community and military and civilian agencies by rogue individuals who don't reflect the vast majority of good people within those organizations who are conducting themselves in a professional and ethical way.
I think sometimes there is a disconnect between investigative reporting, and sometimes the accolades that a journalist receives, and actual help for the victims of which the journalist writes about.
Posted by: Jeri | Nov 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM
It is beneficial to all of us when POGO looks into waste, fraud and abuse. Regarding Dr. Amy Guttman's non-actions when it comes to the fraud and ghostwriting of some Faculty about prescription drugs, there is a much more urgent matter which is Dr. Guttman's non-action as Chair of the Presidential Commission on Bioethics. There were victims of nonconsensual human research that testified to Dr. Amy Guttman and the Commission (see the video on YouTube under Presidential Commission on Bioethics). These involuntary human research subjects whose torture included mind control, electromagnetic assaults, isolation, being falsely profiled and falsely accused of mental problems in order to marginalize them, etc, risked their lives by testifying. I am one of those victims and am terrorized everyday by a 'citizen's militia' and am assaulted with directed energy weapons. I am paying for my own torture, through my tax dollars, and I wish POGO would look into this terrorism and crime. There are people no longer with us who were tortured as involuntary human research subjects. I pray that other victims can hang on until this horrible problem is addressed. Thank you. My name is Jeri Simmons at [email protected]
Posted by: jeri simmons | Oct 27, 2012 at 10:44 AM
I'm with POGO: My civil rights have been gravely taken advantage of. I had surgery less than 2 months after moving to a particular state in the US. When the swelling went down, I knew something wasn't right. This doctor, whom I barely knew, obviously and willfully placed an illegal implant(s) in my right large toe and grave things have happened with this. He did not inform me, he did not consult with me--nothing, not prior, during or after surgery nor has he even sent me a bill for this. I found the following on your site, and have been in touch with others who went to the Bioethics Committee and I too feel Ms. Gutman should step-down.
Posted by: Chris Myers | Mar 29, 2012 at 08:06 PM
We at Electro Well, Inc. (www.CointelproToday.org) also ask that Ms. Gutmann step down.
We are an organization of human test experiments who have already approached Ms. Gutmann and the Bioethics Committee. We have had no success in obtaining any further investigative activities to help the cause of stopping all non-consenting human experimentation. We at Electro Well, Inc. also ask that Amy Gutmann be investigated herself beyond stepping down because she has not answered our requests to have our complaints investigated or addressed in some way by the Commission.
Posted by: Suzanne LeBoeuf | Jul 17, 2011 at 10:22 PM
A+!
As you say, the people in high places that don’t act to protect the integrity of academic institutions are as guilty as the offenders. What else are they for, if it’s not that? And what good is a Bioethics Commission if its members are there for the prestige, and miss the point of the task at hand?
Posted by: John M. Nardo MD | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:37 PM