MetaEzra beat me to this one, but a federal court jury ruled yesterday that Weill Medical College submitted falsified claims to NIH to continue grant funding under false premises:
The grant was awarded by the NIH from funds specifically allocated by Congress for HIV/AIDS research. A clinical neuropsychologist then at Cornell, Wilfred van Gorp, now at Columbia, applied for a training grant from NIH, promising to train post-doctoral fellows committed to a career in research in the neuropsychology of HIV/AIDS.
One of those fellows, Daniel Feldman, brought suit under a federal whistleblower statute, known as the False Claims Act, alleging that van Gorp and Cornell instead used the funds for inappropriate purposes, including requiring the fellows to see an excess of private fee-for-service patients with other medical conditions. At trial, Dr. Feldman showed that of approximately 160 clinical patients seen by the fellows over five years on the NIH-grant, only three patients were HIV- positive. Instead of seeing HIV- patients, the fellows often evaluated “medicolegal” cases, referred by insurance companies or attorneys who were in litigation over disability or worker’s compensation claims, or criminal defendants. Indeed, Dr. van Gorp was well-known for his expert witness testimonies for the defense of several high-profile criminal defendants in New York during that period, including mob boss Vincente Gigante and Andrew Goldstein, the “subway pusher.”
The judge has not ruled on the damages Cornell is responsible for paying, but it appears that this figure will in the 1-3 million dollar range.
