Emory University
Emory University officials a n nounced in October 2008 that prominent psychiatric researcher Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff had been accused multiple times in the past of failing to disclose the full amount of his earnings from drug companies. Nemeroff, then chairman of Emory's department of psychiatry, stepped down from his post of allegations that he failed to report $1.2 million of the $2.8 million he received in consulting fees from many companies. Nemeroff was accused of being paid by drug companies and evaluating their drugs at the exact same time. The case raised bigger questions not only for Emory University, but for medical universities in general, as many receive hundreds of millions from NIH for research grants (Emory received $251 million in 2008), and whether university boards are capable of monitoring their own doctors. Nemeroff helped bring in millions from the government to the university; however, from 2000 to 2006, he made almost $1 million in speaking fees from GlakoSmithKlien and disclosed only $35,000 of it to Emory. In a letter signed July 15, 2004, he promised Emory that GSK would only pay him $10,000; that exact day Nemeroff was playing golf in Jackson Hole and earning $3,000 of the eventual $170,000 that GSK would pay him that year.
The new year didn't bring better news for Emory: details began to come out over the relationship between another one of its prominent psychiatrists, Zachary Stowe, and GlakoSmithKlien, the same company that lined Nemeroff's pockets. GSK had made payments to Stowe at the same time he was performing federal research on the use of antidepressants, such as GSK's Paxil, in pregnant women. One of the larger, more ethical questions presented by the Emory examples is the role that doctors can play in pushing potentially harmful uses of certain drugs: Just two years before Stowe's case became public, GSK agreed to pay federal prosecutors $64 million over charges that it issued misleading statements about the safety of Paxil's use in minors.