The Wall Street Journal reports, “Washington University said a surgeon accused by the US Army of falsifying a study favorable to Medtronic Inc. failed to tell the school he had a paid consulting arrangement with the medical-device maker.” Timothy Kuklo, “a member of the medical faculty” at the university, is currently “on paid personal leave at the request of the” school. In a letter “to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who is investigating the matter,” Washington University medical-school Dean Larry J. Shapiro said that, “at the time he failed to report his relationship with Medtronic, Dr. Kuklo was involved in at least two studies of Medtronic products.” The university also claimed that “at the time the study protocols were approved, Dr. Kuklo indicated…that he wasn’t receiving any payments from the company whose products were being studied.”
The New York Times reports that for its part, “Medtronic has consistently said it was not aware of, and had not supported, the Walter Reed study about Infuse.” Documents from the university, however, “show that for more than a year Medtronic financed a separate, unpublished research study by Dr. Kuklo while he was at Washington University that also reviewed the use of Infuse on Walter Reed patients with combat-related leg injuries.” Kuklo did not disclose “that he was a Medtronic consultant, making more than $50,000 annually from the company” until “mid-2007, nearly a year after joining the medical school.”
From the American Association for Justice news release.
