FDA Debars Doc In Pfizer Research Scandal
November 16th, 2011 // 2:11 pm @ jmpickett
Do you remember Scott Reuben? He was accused of faking research for a dozen years in published studies suggesting after-surgery benefits from Vioxx and Celebrex. Last year, he was sentenced to six months in jail plus three years supervised release after pleading guilty to fraud. The former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center received grants from various drugmakers but never performed the studies, fabricated patient data and submitted info to journals that was unwittingly published.
Now, the FDA has permanently debarring him from providing services in any capacity to a person that has an approved or pending drug product application, according to the debarment order, which was published today in The Federal Register. The agency will also not accept or review any abbreviated new drug applications submitted by or with his assistance during his period of debarment, which is forever .
In the aftermath, by the way, the hospital asked the journals to retract the studies, some of which reported favorable results from painkillers including Pfizer’s Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica, and Merck’s Vioxx. His studies also claimed Wyeth’s Effexor antidepressant could be used as a painkiller. Pfizer gave Reuben five research grants between 2002 and 2007, and he was a member of its speakers bureau, giving talks about Pfizer drugs to colleagues. Separately, the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia retracted 10 of Reuben’s studies, while the journal Anesthesiology retracted three studies.
