Former FDA Commish Fired From Med School
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // December 16th, 2007 // 10:10 am
David Kessler, was booted from the University of California at San Francisco’s medical school, after pointing out that a university fund had $100 million less than he was told it would have when he joined the school, Bloomberg News writes. He wrote in an e-mail sent to UCSF personnel that he was terminated Dec. 13 while trying to resolve problems that arose from his role as a “whistleblower.” Bloomberg News received a copy of the e-mail, and Kessler confirmed in a telephone interview it was authentic, and he then e-mailed further documentation on his charges.
In his e-mail, the outspoken Kessler said he found financial irregularities shortly after arriving at UCSF in 2003. The school’s chancellor, J. Michael Bishop, first sought Kessler’s resignation from his $540,000-a-year post last summer, according to Kessler. A statement from the general counsel’s office, given out by spokeswoman Jennifer O’Brien, confirmed to the news service that Kessler was fired while denying any improprieties by the school.
“I continued to try to solve these problems,” Kessler wrote in the letter. On Dec. 13, “Chancellor Bishop terminated my appointment as Dean, effectively immediately.”
When being recruited by UCSF, Kessler said he was told the school was in healthy financial condition. Administrative funds for his office were set to reach $71.8 million for 2007-2008, according to spreadsheets provided to Bloomberg by Kessler after an interview. An audit later showed the discretionary spending fund to be $31.9 million in debt, a $103.7 million difference, according to the documents supplied by Kessler.
The school’s general counsel’s office put out a statement late yesterday that the fund had been investigated and the “whistleblower allegations were not sustained.” USCF held two further reviews by senior financial officers and outside accountants, the statement said. “These additional reviews found no evidence of financial irregularities and, in addition, concluded that the School of Medicine is in very strong financial condition.”
Timothy McCorkell
Really nice. The guy that blows the whistle gets the boot. So, I guess we are left to asume that the supposed investigators are all golf buddies with the crooks or something. Where is CNN etc. when things like this go on?
Dan
When you think about it, such terminations are somehow punishment implemented by the institution or organization for one who has the audacity to attempt to provide an answer that no one asked or wanted to ask.
Melody
Isn’t this the “Enron model” for crisis management? I believe their motto was “Ask Why?” If Dr. Kessler is forced to abandon ship . . . who will answer the question?
Hank
I guess the “rest of the story” will be when we learn what’s up with the missing money (or bad math).
Knowing DK (not personally), I do not think this is going to “go away,” whatever he does next.
Jo B
We had a similar experience with the administration of UCSF when whistleblowing on misuse and abuse of funds, using University resources for personal companies, and using Universitiy employees for personal gain, making employees do work on UCSF payroll time for medical professors’ privately owned companies and patents gained at taxpayer expense in University research labs, on University funding.
All was covered up, under the rug and the reporting employee was fired on the spot!
Another colleague had the identical experience in another department of UCSF, also fired for not going along with doing the medical professor’s work on personal business, personal hobbies, creating a database of professor’s personal side business, using university funds for personal gain…
So what else is new? Dean David Kessler was brought into a snake pit over which he apparently had no control to reform it. Pity.
Hot Fountain
Hot Fountain…
Why would you say that, when you can see that what you sy is not correct….