Med School Misconduct Addressed

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will today release a statement which recommends a review of practices in a Harvard affiliated hospital laboratory where a former researcher falsified experimental results.

The Medical School has released a set of guidelines for dealing with future allegations of misconduct at the Med School and its affiliated hospitals. The guidelines include the establishment of a faculty committee for formal investigation of incidents such as the one which touched off the NIH review.

False Data

In May 1981 Dr John R Darsee, then a research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), admitted that he had fabricated data in an experiment on the cause of heart attacks.

Although the chairman of the Department of Medicine, Dr Eugene Braunwald, immediately notified BWH and Med School officials and Darsee's Harvard. BWH and NIH fellowships were terminated no Med School or NIH guidelines for notification of the NIH existed at the time and the NIH were not informed of the misconduct.

Med School Dean Daniel C. Tosteson '44 stated in a letter to the Faculty of Medicine that will be released today," despite a good faith effort the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School could have handled the case more effectively.

Recommendations

The NIH statement recommends making Darsee ineligible for Department of Health and Human Services research funding for 10 years.

Tosteson could not be reached for comment last night Braunwald declined to comment on the matter because an investigation of work Darsee performed at Emory University before coming to Harvard is underway.

After an earlier investigation by an outside ad hoc Med School committee concluded that Darsee had falsified data on at least three occasions, two investigations commenced one by Braunwald and the director of the laboratory, Dr. Robert A Kloner, and one by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Panel (NHLBI)

Today's statement by the NIH calls for an on-site review, a year from now, of the laboratory in which Darsee worked. The inquiry will be to "confirm the impression of the NHLBI panel that current laboratory procedures and supervision of research are adequate," a synopsis of the statement reads.

The guidelines, which will be implemented at the Med School and its affiliated hospitals are similar to recommendations made last January by the ad hoc Med School committee.

Besides establishing the committee, the NIH statement outlines the responsibility of the Faculty of Medicine to the Harvard and scientific communities, the importance of maintaining high medical standards, and the necessity of protecting the rights of individuals, including the person who is alleged to have engaged in the misconduct and the person who has made the allegation.

The NIH denied BWH's request that the hospital's part of the four center studs in which the falsified data were included be repeated. They also called for BWH to return the funds awarded it for the study