Charles B. Nemeroff, former School of Medicine psychiatry chairman who resigned his post in January after failing to report $800,000 in outside income, will assume the role of chairman of the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at the University of Miami (UM) medical school Dec. 1.

Dean and Senior Vice President of the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at UM Pascal Goldschmidt said that Nemeroff will help the University of Miami build an extraordinary psychiatry department.

“Chairman Nemeroff is the best chairman of psychiatry in the country,” Goldschmidt said. “If you ask the experts of other chairs of departments across the country, they will all give you the same evaluation of him and this is an individual who has accomplished an extraordinary amount of work in a very important area of psychology.”

Nemeroff wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel that he is delighted to join the UM staff.

“The school and health system is very invested in psychiatry as evidenced by almost 300 inpatient psychiatry beds at Jackson Memorial Hospital, the University of Miami hospital and the Miami VA Center,” he wrote. “Moreover, the school is investing considerable resources in the department, which will allow me to recruit several additional research and clinical faculty.”

Goldschmidt said he recognizes that Nemeroff “has been the epicenter of significant investigations and scandals of conflict of interest and disclosure of University income” and that UM will take steps to ensure transparency in the future.

“Dr. Nemeroff has committed fully to accept the rules of the University of Miami and to therefore provide all information relative to his out of University activities which will be very carefully reviewed by experts to make sure that the activities are in the interest of medicine, patients and the advancements of mental health sciences,” Goldschmidt said.

Goldschmidt said Nemeroff has called this scandal a series of “honest mistakes” due to policy confusion.

“He is remorseful for it because he realizes that it has had a negative impact,” Goldschmidt said.

Nemeroff wrote that UM is well aware of conflict of interest issues that have arisen in the past year and added that Emory’s extensive review of his research and patient care indicated that he was not influenced by any outside activities.

A Dec. 22, 2008 Emory press release corroborated Nemeroff’s statement, but also stated that Nemeroff “should have abided by the policies and/or sought clarification if, as he later stated, he believed the policies and regulations were ambiguous.”

“I believe that I had complied with the appropriate Emory regulations concerning financial disclosures in years past,” Nemeroff wrote. “Those regulations were quite confusing and have now been modified.”

Goldschmidt said that Nemeroff has agreed to undergo a period of moratorium in which UM will analyze his activity.

“There will be particular scrutiny of his activities to protect him and the institution and to take sure there is no bias in his work,” Goldschmidt said.

Goldschmidt said that the progress of medicine must be aided by the economic world and that conflicts of interests are not always made transparent.

“It is very unfortunate that there were these issues of disclosure, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that [Nemeroff] is a major leader in the field and will continue to be a major leader in the field,” Goldschmidt said.

Nemeroff stepped down as chair of Emory’s psychiatry department in December 2008 after an internal investigation headed by Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Earl Lewis determined that Nemeroff had violated University and federal conflict-of-interest policies.

Emory’s internal investigation was launched in fall 2008 after Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, alleged that Nemeroff had neglected to disclose a substantial amount of fees paid to him by pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers for consulting activities and speaking fees.

Nemeroff, who was the principal investigator on a grant sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research drugs manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), allegedly received $500,000 in fees and expenses from GSK throughout a five-year period. Per NIH regulations, receiving more than $10,000 annually from GSK would be a violation of conflict-of-interest policies.

From summer 2003 to summer 2008, Nemeroff served as the primary investigator of the Collaborative Mood Disorders Initiative, a five-year, $3.9 million joint grant between Emory, GSK and the National Institute of Mental Health. Grassley suggested that Nemeroff’s conflicts of interest may have sullied his research.
In October 2008, the NIH announced that it would be imposing tighter conflict-of-interest guidelines on all ongoing and future grants to Emory.

Emory responded to national scrutiny in part by creating a University-wide office to oversee conflicts of interest in research headed by the Director for the Center for Ethics Paul Wolpe.

However, the President’s Advisory Commission (PAC) on Research Integrity and Professional Conflict did not consider the Nemeroff case.

“The President’s Advisory Commission didn’t decide anything about the Nemeroff case because we were explicitly directed not to consider Nemeroff,” Wolpe said. “It was about using the experience of the Nemeroff case to examine the University’s policies and procedures and see how they could be strengthened or changed.”

The PAC has since submitted several suggestions to the University on conflicts of interest issues.

Goldschmidt said that while Nemeroff has undergone scrutiny over the past year, he believes Nemeroff will bring a level of expertise to UM.

“Individuals like Dr. Nemeroff are very important to help us move the knowledge of medicine forward, but I have no tolerance for conflict of interest,” Goldschmidt said. “I can’t change the past, but I think I can help with the future and providing patients with the opportunity to have someone like Dr. Nemeroff engaged in research and engaged in making progress for patients.”

— Contact Kate Borger