What can happen when neurologists get too close to industry?

#MSBlog: Insider trading; another blow to the credibility of neurologists working with industry

Drew Armstrong. Michigan Professor Tied to Insider Trading Case Resigns. Bloomberg News November 30, 2012.

.... Sid Gilman, the University of Michigan neurologist linked to an insider trading case, has resigned his university position.....

.... Gilman, 80 was named by authorities as the person who leaked data to Mathew Martoma, 38, an SAC Capital Advisors LP hedge fund manager charged with insider trading. Gilman quit his university post on Nov. 27, Pete Barkey, a spokesman for the Ann Arbor-based university’s medical school, said in an e-mail......

...... Gilman had been paid $1,000 an hour to act as a consultant to Martoma and in 2008 allegedly gave the hedge fund manager details of a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug being developed by Wyeth LLC. The neurologist treated Martoma as a “friend and pupil” while leaking him secret data for 18 months, authorities said.......



Read the full article.

"This is bad news for the field. After my experience with business analysts at the official press conference after my presentation at the AAN, on the pivotal oral cladribine results, I made a conscious decision not to speak to business analysts in private. Unfortunately, you can't avoid them at conferences. When you present market sensitive results either as a platform presentation, or as a poster, more than 50% of the people wanting additional information are either business analysts or pharma employees from competitive companies. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to define any safe ground with them. Saying no is easier than justifying why you said yes; and it is obviously worse if you get paid $1,000 per hour for saying yes."

"And we (neurologists) wonder why we  have lost, or are losing, credibility. These types of stories provide the fodder for the conspiracy theories that underpin the CCSVI anti-science campaign! "

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