Ethics event spawns a tussle at Tufts
Speaker is out; now organizer is, too
Tufts University has withdrawn an invitation for a top aide to US Senator Charles E. Grassley to give the keynote speech at a conference on conflicts of interest in medicine and research, leading one conference organizer to pull out and question the university's commitment to academic freedom.
The University-wide Committee on Ethics rescinded the invitation on March 13, according to e-mails obtained by the Globe. The messages said top Tufts officials refused to allow other administrators to be panelists at the meeting if Grassley's aide spoke, saying it was inappropriate to do so while Grassley is investigating ties between a Tufts professor and the drug industry.
The senator, a Republican from Iowa, sent a letter on Feb. 17 to the president of Tufts, Lawrence S. Bacow, requesting detailed information on the relationship between a "Dr. Boucher" and the pharmaceutical industry, including the amount and dates of all industry payments between January 2006 and December 2008. Dr. Helen Boucher is an infectious diseases specialist at the Tufts medical school.
Grassley's letter did not explain why he was seeking information about Boucher. She did not respond to messages left for her yesterday by phone and e-mail. Tufts issued a statement saying, "We're gathering the requested information in coordination with our colleagues at Tufts Medical Center and preparing a response."
As part of a far-ranging examination of drug and device companies' influence over medical research and education, Grassley is investigating whether physicians at Harvard Medical School, Emory University, Stanford University, and other medical schools and hospitals have made required disclosures of speaking fees, consulting agreements, and other types of relationships with industry. He has sponsored legislation called the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, which would require drug and device makers to make public any payments to doctors that exceed $500.
Sheldon Krimsky, cochairman of the ethics committee and a conference organizer, withdrew the invitation to Grassley investigator Paul D. Thacker, who had agreed to speak at the conference after Grassley declined. Krimsky, an environmental policy professor at Tufts, declined to comment, but the Globe obtained a copy of his e-mail.
He wrote to Thacker that the ethics committee wanted Thacker to speak at the conference scheduled May 13, but that if he did, university administrators would not be panelists.
When "Tufts administration learned that one of the suggested speakers was from Sen. Grassley's office, the word was sent to the committee that there was no objection to having someone from Sen. Grassley's office, however, if that were the committee's choice, no administrators would be allowed to participate on the panel, pending the University's response to the Feb. 17 letter from the Senator," Krimsky wrote. The ethics committee decided to have Tufts administrators on the panel, he said.
Krimsky wrote that he felt his role as organizer had been "compromised and I recused myself from any involvement in the organization of the meeting." The e-mail continues: "I received several telephone messages from Tufts administrators upholding the academic freedom of faculty to invite anyone to campus for an exchange of ideas. But the same academic freedom does not apply to members of the administration . . ."
Krimsky originally e-mailed Grassley's press secretary, Jill Kozeny, on Feb. 13, suggesting Thacker as the speaker and explaining that the meeting would draw participants from Harvard and Boston universities' medical schools, as well as from hospitals and insurance companies.
He said the committee "would like to highlight new initiatives on the management of conflicts of interest and I can think of no other legislative agenda that has brought these issues to the public's attention more visibly than those spearheaded by Senator Grassley and his staff."
Other ethics committee members did not respond to requests for comment from the Globe.
The medical school provided two different answers as to why Thacker was disinvited.
Spokeswoman Christine Fennelly first said in an e-mail that when Grassley declined the invitation, "it was decided to refocus the symposium on a smaller scale, where the panelists would be faculty from Tufts University and affiliated faculty from Tufts Medical Center."
Later, when told that Krimsky's e-mails explicitly said the speaking offer was rescinded, she said the invitation to Grassley's aide had been withdrawn. "Indeed . . . the administration felt it prudent to not engage someone from the Senator's office while we respond to the Senator's inquiry," she wrote.
Kozeny, Grassley's press secretary, said, "These issues merit more discussion and less circling the wagons. It's too bad a reform perspective has been removed from the program."
Liz Kowalczyk can be reached at kowalczyk@globe.com. 