When Pfizer named Garry Nicholson last week as general manager of its new oncology business unit, the appointment seemed like just another new hire. But as it turns out, Nicholson is “no stranger to controversy,” as The Day writes.

In 2001, Nicholson found himself in the middle of one of the country’s deadliest drug-tampering cases, the paper reports. At the time, he headed Lilly’s cancer biz and there were hundreds of lawsuits filed over at least 17 deaths attributed to the deliberate dilution of cancer drugs by a Kansas City pharmacist.

The episode raised questions about the extent to which Lilly responded properly to reports about dilution of its Gemzar cancer med and, the paper writes, Nicholson was the one called on to explained why the drugmaker failed to detect the scheme.

”Anybody who claims Lilly was aware of dilution in the year 2000 is flat wrong,” Nicholson told The Indianapolis Star at the time.“We had no indication there was anything untoward happening.”

A 2002 court motion filed as part of a series of lawsuits alleged that internal documents showed Lilly had reason to suspect fraud as early as 1998 and failed to act, despite tracking systems that found a discrepancy in the amount of Gemzar the pharmacist had dispensed, according to the paper.

The motion alleged that a Lilly sales rep detected a problem in 2000 and brought it to his superior’s attention, but the drugmaker, after an initial investigation to determine if the pharmacist had found an outside supplier, let the matter drop, the paper writes.

There is no indication that any of this info was brought directly to Nicholson or that Nicholson had any part in deciding to drop the matter, if in fact that’s what happened. Nicholson could not be reached for comment, and a Pfizer spokesman, while not directly addressing the controversy, expressed support for the new executive vp, the paper writes.

”We are just excited to have a person of his caliber overseeing our oncology team,” Pfizer spokesman Ray Kerins tells The Day. And he questioned whether any story about Nicholson’s role in the drug-dilution case would be more than speculation.

It was Nicholson, however, who served as the first spokesman called upon in 2001 to defend Lilly, saying Gemzar was difficult to track, partly because doc dispense it in their offices without writing scrips. He added that data from tracking companies are often inaccurate and Lilly didn’t consider the possibility of dilution when it discovered a discrepancy in the sales numbers, the paper writes.

It was only when a Lilly sales rep mentioned the discrepancy to a nurse at a local oncology practice that pharmacist Robert Courtney’s scheme unraveled. A doc at the oncology practice, Verda Hunter, said in court documents Lilly didn’t respond to her concerns about the dilution when she sent a letter and fax after becoming suspicious, the paper writes. Lilly said it has no record of receiving them.

Hunter, according to an employee at her oncology practice reached last week, has consistently refused to comment about the case, the paper continues. It is unclear who notified authorities about the pharmacist; a timeline of the drug-dilution case released by Lilly never mentions telling police about its suspicions.

Courtney, later sentenced to 30 years in prison, diluted expensive cancer drugs - as many as 98,000 scrips to 4,200 patients - to pocket the difference in cost. The owner of two pharmacies, he was estimated to have $18.7 million in assets when he was arrested, according to The Day, which adds that victims obtained an initial $2.2 billion civil settlement against him, later reduced to $330 million.

Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb settled out of court for an estimated $71 million about 300 lawsuits related to diluted drugs, while never admitting any wrongdoing in the case. “Lilly helped uncover this…and had it not acted, there’s no telling how long this would have gone on,” the drugmaker said at the time the suits were filed.

Michael Ketchmark, a Kansas City attorney who filed several of the suits in Jackson County Circuit Court, would not comment last week on the drug-dilution cases, saying he is constrained to do so by a confidentiality clause, the paper writes.

However, The Day notes that, in previous stories, Ketchmark said Lilly’s investigation into sales irregularities in 2000 showed that Courtney was selling as many as three times the amount of Gemzar as it was buying from the company.

”It appears to us Eli Lilly was more interested in protecting the millions of dollars in sales it might have in 2001 from Gemzar than the lives of the patients who could have been saved,” Ketchmark told Reuters as the lawsuits were being filed.