US scientist accused of selling tissue samples
Deal said to earn $285,000 for vials that cost millions
WASHINGTON -- A senior government scientist pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars as a drug company consultant in exchange for human tissue samples that cost the federal government millions to acquire, congressional investigators said yesterday .
The House Energy and Commerce Committee report, the culmination of a one-year inquiry, was released hours before a two-day hearing began to explore the government's practices for procuring human tissue samples.
According to congressional investigators, the National Institutes of Health's Dr. Trey Sunderland agreed to collaborate with Pfizer Inc. , the world's largest drug company. Sunderland, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch of the National Institute for Mental Health , sent Pfizer 3,200 tubes of spinal fluid and 388 tubes of plasma collected for Alzheimer's research.
The government spent $6.4 million to obtain the 3,500 samples that showed how Alzheimer's disease progressed in 538 subjects.
Pfizer paid Sunderland $285,000 in consulting fees related to the samples, investigators said. In total, Pfizer paid him more than $600,000 from 1998 to 2004 for outside consulting and speaking fees. Sunderland is scheduled to testify today at the hearing.
``Contrary to the House committee report, Dr. Sunderland did not receive any payments from Pfizer for human tissue samples," said Robert F. Muse, the scientist's Washington, D.C., attorney. ``He acted properly, ethically, and legally in his relationship with Pfizer."
Pfizer spokeswoman Kate Robins said the company had a transfer agreement endorsed by the NIH that permitted Sunderland to send cerebrospinal fluid from research participants with Alzheimer's, the participant's relatives who were at higher risk of developing the neurological disease, and elderly adults with normal Alzheimer's risk.
Sunderland's consulting role tapped his Alzheimer's disease expertise to look for signals in the samples that could help identify and diagnose the disease.
``The payments over a six-year period were reasonable and customary for an expert of Dr. Sunderland's stature, and reflect the fair-market value of his consulting services," Robins said.
The report said the tissue transfers, reported by a government whistleblower, raised serious questions about how the government ensures its scientists do not abuse their positions and about the agency's ability to track the valuable samples.
``NIH tells us it has no centralized inventory system that could tell the NIH director how many vials of tissues are in freezers at a particular institute," said Representative Joe Barton , Republican of Texas and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman . ``It would really be a shame if we find out that the National Institutes of Health has more control over its paper clips and trash cans than it has over its human tissue samples."
John T. Burklow , a NIH spokesman, said the agency shares ``the committee's concerns in regard to the ethical management of human tissue samples."
Sunderland's arrangement with the drug maker -- made without NIH knowledge, according to Burklow -- occurred after the agency relaxed its ethics policy covering scientists' outside activities and ended before the agency enacted more stringent rules.
The NIH, pressured by Barton's committee, on Aug. 25 curbed outside consulting deals between its scientists and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Diedtra Henderson can be reached at dhenderson@globe.com. 
