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NIH official faces criminal charges for deal with Pfizer

Pharma Compliance Alert, December 6, 2006

A senior NIH scientist is facing up to a year in prison and a fine of $100,000 if convicted of conflict-of-interest charges related to his financial relationship with Pfizer.

Prosecutors say the head of the geriatric psychology branch at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Pearson Sunderland, accepted $285,000 in consulting fees and travel expenditures from Pfizer without federal approval, Reuters reports.

Pearson is due to be arraigned in a Baltimore US District Court on December 8.

According to Reuters, Sunderland and NIMH began a five-year Alzheimer's disease biomarker project in 1998, around the same time Sunderland signed a consulting agreement with Pfizer. Between 1998 and 2003, Pfizer paid Sunderland $125,000 in retainer fees and a total of $35,000 to attend 14 one-day meetings at Pfizer facilities. Pfizer also paid Sunderland an additional $125,000 for consulting on an ongoing Alzheimer's biomarker research project.

Sunderland also provided plasma and spinal fluid samples to Pfizer.

Six months ago, Sunderland invoked the fifth-amendment in declining to answer questions from a congressional panel investigating conflicts of interest at NIH.

Prosecutors say Sunderland failed to properly report disclose income from his outside activities or file the required HHS and NIH ethics forms. He is also charged with violating the law barring federal employees from representing an outside party before a government agency.

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