Date: November 21, 2011
Auteur: Brendan Maher
URL: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/11/researcher_arrested_over_missi.html
Researcher arrested over missing lab notebooks
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The travails of Judy Mikovits and the Whittemores have all the makings
of a soap opera serial. On Friday 18 November, Mikovits, a chronic
fatigue syndrome researcher, was arrested and jailed by Ventura County
police in relation to a lawsuit brought by her former employer, the
Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) in Reno, Nevada claiming that she
had absconded with lab notebooks and proprietary information. She is
being held without bail and may face extradition to Nevada.
As lawyers and patient advocates line up to debate who is right and
who is wrong in this bitter dispute, there is still the question of
what will become of a US$1.5 million grant from the National
Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) that is held by
WPI with Mikovits as the principal investigator.
Mikovits had authored a controversial paper in Science in 2009 linking
chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalopathy) to a
mysterious retrovirus called XMRV. The veracity of this link had been
strongly questioned and all but dispelled early this fall when a
working group that included Mikovits failed to replicate the findings
and several authors on the original Science paper retracted their
contributions, blaming contamination.
On 29 September Mikovits' was fired from her post as research director
at the WPI, a private non-profit research institute in Reno, Nevada
set up by Annette Whittemore and her husband Harvey Whittemore a
powerful attorney with ties to US Senator Harry Reid. The Whittemores'
daughter, Andrea, has CFS, and the institute was set up on the campus
of the University of Nevada to study this disease and similar
neuro-immune disorders. The reason given for Mikovits' dismissal was
that she had refused to share cell lines with a colleague, the Science
paper's first author, Vincent Lombardi, who is now the interim
director of research.
Last week ScienceInsider reported that on 4 November, the WPI had
filed a lawsuit against Mikovits demanding that she return several
laboratory notebooks, a laptop computer and flash drives with
propriety WPI information and all emails pertaining to work-related
matters from her personal Gmail account. Through a lawyer, Mikovits
has said that she does not have the notebooks and files in question
and has not returned to the lab since her dismissal. WPI requested and
was granted a temporary restraining order to prevent her from
destroying the property.
ScienceInsider reported on the arrest on Saturday, and it appears from
the Ventura County Sherif's office website that Mikovits is being held
in for felony charges, as a fugitive from justice, without possibility
of bail. She is set for a hearing tomorrow (22 November) the same day
that an injunction trial will be held in Nevada on the civil suit. The
complaint and request for a temporary restraining order made no
mention of extradition and did not stipulate that Mikovits not leave
the state. Annette Whittemore, the President of WPI issued a statement
to ScienceInsider saying that they merely reported the theft to the
authorities 'These authorities are taking the actions that they deem
necessary.'
Through a representative, Whittemore told Nature that the 'notebooks
hold many years of research data which has yet to be fully evaluated.'
And that they are 'used to support patent filing which may one day
prove to be a valuable resource for patient diagnostics as well as
financial support for further research.' As we reported in March the
WPI owns a company that had been charging individuals with CFS about
$549 for an XMRV test. But they had reportedly put testing on hold
after the recent negative results. This testing business may figure
into the 'irreparable harm' claimed by the institute, although no
mention in the complaint was made of the remainder of a five-year R01
research grant from NIAD, awarded in 2009 and worth about $300,000 per
year.
Officials at NIAID would not comment on the status of the grant or
whether missing notebooks could jeopardize a grant. They did however
point to NIH policy
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps_2011/nihgps_ch8.htm#_Toc271264935
which stipulates that grants generally remain in the possession of the
institution and can be transferred to a new investigator as approved
by the NIH. The grant doesn't stay with the investigator, although in
less drama-filled interactions grants are generally transferred to an
investigator's new institute. Whittemore said, 'Fortunately, most of
the data from the R01 is also on the WPI lab computer.'
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(c) 2011 Nature
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