From the Houston Chronicle: Armstrong's foundation should be scrutinized, too

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Hart-Armstrong-s-foundation-should-be-3961992.php

Armstrong's foundation should be scrutinized, too

By Patricia Kilday Hart | Thursday, October 18, 2012 

Translation: I'm absolved from my sins. "Once you cloak yourself in the mantel of cancer, you become unassailable," Gifford told me in a telephone interview.

How true. For more proof, look no further than the story published Thursday by my colleagues Eric Berger andTodd Ackerman, on the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Founded by a $3 billion bond project passed by the Texas Legislature largely because of celebrity Armstrong's support, the cancer institute has become enmeshed in a power struggle between scientists and entrepreneurs.

Conflict of interests

Texas voters approved these bonds, which, according to ballot language, would be used "for research in Texas to find the causes of and cures for cancer." Now, advocates for "commercialization" - i.e. helping bring new drugs to the marketplace - don't want to have to answer to research scientists.

The Texas Legislature envisioned an oversight committee in which research scientists would provide a check against cronyism. But as Berger and Ackerman have reported, their influence was sidestepped last spring when the cancer fund awarded a controversial grant to M.D. Anderson and Rice University. Although a University of Texas investigation concluded no nepotism was involved, one scientist argued in an email obtained by the Chronicle that M.D. Anderson cancer Center President Dr. Ron DePinho orchestrated a "coup d'etat" to ensure the award of an $18 million commercialization grant to be supervised by his wife, Dr. Lynda Chin.

After the controversy, two Nobel laureate scientists and seven other chief scientific reviewers concerned about the award process resigned in protest. How did the cancer institute react? "Better to get them all out of the way now," wrote CPRIT chairman Jimmy Mansour, in an email obtained by the Chronicle this week. Referring to Nobel Laureate Dr. Alfred Gilman, Mansour added tartly: "Gilman is gone and so is his influence."