October 23rd, 2009

New York Times reports:

Two years after becoming vice president for research at the biggest hospital in this university town, Suzanne Stratton said she had finally seen enough.

She had clashed repeatedly with a doctor who oversaw the local patients enrolled in more than 130 federally sponsored cancer studies — work that the hospital promoted in local television advertisements but that Dr. Stratton, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, said was often putting patients and science at risk.

In a meeting with Carle Foundation Hospital administrators late last year, Dr. Stratton demanded that they take action. She cited an outside audit that had found “major deficiencies” in 12 of 29 experiments being overseen by that doctor, potentially endangering patients or skewing the studies’ results. Dr. Stratton says her bosses responding by firing her, ushering her out of the hospital later that same day.

But federal officials, alerted by Dr. Stratton, have corroborated many of the shortcomings she found. They are continuing to investigate — an inquiry with implications for the nation’s cancer research effort that go far beyond the Carle Cancer Center.

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