Harvard Med Hires Lilly Exec As Research Chief
21 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // February 11th, 2010 // 8:51 am
Bill Chin, who was senior vice president of discovery research at the drug maker, will join Harvard Medical School as executive dean for research on May 1, and will not only oversee research efforts but will also work with affiliated hospitals and develop a strategy for scientific interactions with industry, such as the HMS faculty policy on conflicts of interest.
“Bill will engage the community in support of our key research initiatives designed to sustain HMS as the leading biomedical research institution well into the future,” Harvard Med School deal Jeff Flier, says in a statement. “There are very few people capable of rising to such a challenge.”
But one wag calls the appointment puzzling and suggests the move implies industry is actually co-opting academia. “Does this appointment signify that Harvard Medical School intends to even further strengthen its research ties to the pharmaceutical industry?” Arnold Relman, a professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard and a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, tells The Boston Globe. “If so, I think many people will worry that the separate roles for academic medicine and drug companies are becoming more confused, leading to more conflicts of interest.”
But Lee Nadler, dean of clinical and translational research at the medical school, called Chin his second-most important recruit, because he brings skills from academic medicine and industry. Before joining Lilly in 1999, Chin was on the faculty of Harvard Med School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “As opposed to what Dr. Relman says, he learned what it takes to move basic science to impact patients,” Nadler tells the Globe. “We hired Bill to knock down those blocks. Bill Chin only cares about our patients and their families. It’s not about the drug companies, it’s about people with illness.”
patrons99
OMG, please say it isn’t true. So much for just saying ‘no’ to conflicts. Evidentally, Harvard Med’s “prestige” can’t survive without pharma and academic sinecure. The Faustian Bargain lives on.
Christopher
Where is the conflict? He was in academia before joining the industry, has left his employer and has now returned to a new position. He is not paid by Lilly. He left and has started a new job. Surely having worked in industry should not preclude any other career choices.
pharmavet
I was formerly Director of Phase IV Thyroid Clinical Research for a major pharma company and had several opportunities to meet with Dr. William Chin. He is not only talented, but a scientist with the highest standards of ethics and integrity. Many of the leading thyroidologists in academic positions today have come through the Harvard program and did their training at MGH and Brigham and Women’s. Dr. Chin will strengthen an already outstanding academic endocrine department.
patrons99
I suppose his next gig after Harvard med will be with FDA, having had time for the ‘evil humors’ (pharma) to have left his system. It’s business as usual…a revolving door between pharma, academia, FDA, CDER, and WHO. None of these folks are likely to ever do anything that will substantively damage the franchise (pharma). Their links to pharma represent their meal ticket. There’s much more to it than just an appearance of impropriety…it’s symbiotic.
Christopher
The assumption that all those entities listed (pharma, FDA, WHO etc) are in conflict, or somehow should be, seems to be the root of much of the discussion we have here. If one presumes impropriety simply because individuals move from one to the other the discussion is over before it begins.
A succesful healthcare system demands collaboration between its consituent parts. No one group can handle it all. An example I have used before: a couple of years ago the cost of providing care to those with schizophrenia (in US) was $63bn. Of that $5bn was spent on drugs. The remainder was in complementary care, hospitalisation, support, etc. It’s a collaborative effort - or should be - that is neither dominated not spoiled by pharma.
Re Dr Chin’s story: Academia must understand and when appropriate collaborate with pharma in the best interests of understanding disease and finding better medicines. It is not wrong and I’m not naive for believing that. It’s the best way to move forward assuming always it it done appropriately. Having a holistic understanding of healthcare and its needs is surely in the best interests of us all. Conflicts will continue to happen, but I believe by exception, not the rule, but I think it’s cynical and damaging to assume the worst. It’s difficult enough as it is - let’s give it a chance to work.
Clark Baker
With people like Daniel Kuritzkes “teaching” at Harvard already, what difference will one more pharmaceutical goon make on the already-compromised campus? According to Shannon Brownlee (Overtreated) and former Eli Lilly executive John Virapen PhD, 75 percent of all medical and scientific academics are already compromised by pharmaceutical funding. If the Gambino Family already owns the campus, why complain about another godfather’s entry?
Apologies to the Gambino Family - they could never dream of killing or injuring the number of people Lilly has deliberately harmed for profit. When Lilly makes $8 billion on a criminal scam that kills and injures thousands and pay a $1.4 billion fine to avoid prison, criminal settlements become nothing more than the cost of doing business. Since Harvard lost $1.8 billion in the 2008 financial collapse, having a Lilly kingpin is good for business.
SteveM
Re: pharmavet & Clark Baker
Objectively, Eli-Lilly can be considered a criminal enterprise. Given Dr. Chin’s purported integrity, why did he stay there for a decade?
David Moskowitz MD FACP
Bill Chin is one of the smartest people, and best researchers, I know. I first met him in Joel Habener’s lab in the late 1970s, when I was a medical student and Bill was a post-doc. I don’t consider industry evil, although I want to acknowledge another hero of mine, Bud Relman. As a captain of industry myself, I can hardly bad-mouth industry.
Al Gore and the Democratic Party got it wrong. Big Pharma is hardly evil. It’s the only institution still doing clinically relevant research. The NIH got out of funding clinical research in the 1960s, preferring to fund mechanistic studies in model systems. They left clinical research to Big Pharma. So the only hope that patients have for seeing new drugs in their lifetimes is if companies like Lilly fund the research.
Unfortunately, Big Pharma is imploding. There are fewer and fewer companies, and they’re spending less and less on R&D. The bigger they get, the more risk-averse they’ve become. Drug discovery carries a 99.9% failure rate. The real tragedy in the world is the lack of any funding for drug discovery.
This vacuum won’t last long. My guess is that Third World capital (China, perhaps India) will take over the pharmaceutical industry.
We’ve found a huge number (2,500 per cancer x 6 cancers) of cancer targets. Unfortunately, Bill thought they were too risky while he was at Lilly. But we’re hopeful that an Asian partner can be found to help us develop our first five compounds.
If people want to know the evil force in healthcare, it’s the healthcare plans, not the drug makers. Health insurance plans do no research, spend nothing for prevention, and thrive on ever higher costs. Since they’re what’s called in the business “pass-throughs,” last year’s costs mean this year’s revenues.
Rail against the real defenders of the lucrative status quo. I include academic medicine in this group, since they derive all their income from the ICU and OR. When was the last time a medical school eradicated a disease?
In my opinion, Bill was doing more for public health at Lilly than he’ll ever do at Harvard. And I say this as a graduate of Harvard and HST, like Bill.
pharmavet
Thanks, Dr. Moskowitz. I daresay that the people who are dissing Dr. Chin probably have never met the man or taken the time to learn about his work.
Dr Chin is the 1992 Sidney Ingbar Award from the American Thyroid Association. This is one of the highest awards an academic endocrinologist can receive. The Ingbar award recognizes outstanding academic achievements in thyroidology, in keeping with the innovation and vision that epitomized Dr. Ingbar’s brilliant investigative career. The Ingbar award is bestowed upon an established investigator who has made major contributions to thyroid-related research over many years.
An outstanding appointment indeed.
harry
What type of background check does harvard require?
the “right” connections it seems.
perhaps Harvard are developing a new curriculum “off-label marketing 101″.
pharmavet
Dr. Kuritkes is indeed radical. He has the audacity to claim that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus is the proximate cause of AIDS. Wow!
mike
Normally an industry exec would be welcome in academia. But this is Big Pharma. They’ve shown a willingness to subvert anything they can to get people on their products. Does GE ghostwrite in engineering journals? Does Quaker State pay “speaking fees” to the Jiffy Lube guys to get them putting their oil in your car? Big Pharma is unlike any other business.
Christopher
Interesting pharmavet that you mention AIDS. The other mention of Dr Kuritkes was from Clark Baker (above). I don’t know Mr Baker and offer no comments or opinion on his views, but if you should click on his name it leads to a site called Pharmaslut. It is ‘enlightening’ to see some of the comments re AIDS (amongst other hot opics) which is, according to citations listed on that page, a non-disease in terms of cause of death.
Perhaps in the US: try selling that one in Africa.
Josh
So if someone works in the pharma industry, they cannot make the transition to another industry because they are tainted in some way? Way to denigrate the entire industry and the people working in it. Labeling an entire group of people because of the misdeeds of the few is pretty narrow minded.
By that same logic, one cop that takes money means that all cops are on the take…
Justice in MI
In all respects–the entire spectrum–big pharma and big academia have much more in common than otherwise. It should be an easy transition.
where is my handout
so lost
Justice in MI
Allow me to explain…Academia is often romanticized by those outside of it, just as pharma is demonized. The reality is, indeed, that “big academia” is full of competing brands, characters and corners of all sides and stripes, just like industry.
And if we’re talking about a big research university, corporate culture and university culture are almost identical–with their fiefdoms, resisters, marketers, idealists, narcissists, deals, deals, and deals…
John
JiM, I agree entirely that there is little difference between pharma and academia. Or between the aforementioned and politics (whether of the mainstream or “defender of the public interests” flavor), or marketing (on behalf of any industry), or any form of sales, office politics, software design, automobile repair, etc.
Each has its good, bad, and ugly. What is needed is to put structures in place that encourage the former and discourage the latter. I think Hatch-Waxman clearly created an industry structure that pushes those members of the pharmaceutical industry with weak moral character in the wrong direction. It was a horrible mistake, and I for one don’t see how senator Waxman’s career survived it.
We need to talk about structures and not silly ideas about people who work in one industry having lower moral character than those who work in others. There is no credible basis for this type of idea.
pharmavet
There is one major difference between Pharma and academia. For example, the combined market capitalization of Pfizer after the Wyeth acquisition is around $100 billion. This is greater than the combined endowments of all of the Ivy League Universities (which have been steadily losing money due to poor investments), and we’re only talking about one company here. The equation is very simple. Pharma has the money; academia wants some of it. Hence the symbiotic relationship.
Justice in MI
Agree that the core issue is incentive structure and, as Vet says relatedly, scale.
Also, as has been said many times, there are so many different corners in each. The bases for “advancement” within academic medicine or engineering are, in general, very different than within a department of English or Philosophy. A large research university is imagined to be about the latter–because that is the part most of its “consumers” have seen up close–but it is, in actuality, mostly about the former.
The role of Hatch-Waxman is another issue. Rep (not Sen.) Waxman has been around a very long time. I doubt a reconsideration of H-W, even if indicated, would affect his tenure.
JB
Are you kidding, Dr. Moskowitz? Sure, pharma R & D is important, but reading any one of the cases of document concealment and fraudulent misrepresentation of the past few years makes it very clear that the well-being of humans isn’t anywhere on their list of priorities. I don’t expect profit not to come first, but killing people (Vioxx, Zyprexa, Avandia) is for them, clearly an acceptable byproduct, assuming they can get away with it long enough to make a class action suit just another cost of doing business.