Lawmakers want answers on faulty $11M cancer grant
By PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press
Updated 3:37 p.m., Friday, November 30, 2012
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Key lawmakers demanded answers Friday on why Texas' troubled $3 billion cancer-fighting agency gave $11 million in taxpayer funds to a biomedical company without scrutinizing the merits of the proposal.
It's the second time this year the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has acknowledged that a project wasn't fully vetted before receiving a lucrative award. But the agency's improper grant to Peloton Therapeutics Inc., which was revealed Thursday, has reaped the most publicly stated concerns yet from state leaders.
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Dozens of the agency's outside peer-reviewers resigned alongside Gilman, one of whom accused the agency of "hucksterism." The resignation letters of others expressed concerns of politics playing a bigger role in funding decisions than science.
Gimson has denied those accusations. He has said the type of proposal M.D. Anderson submitted did not require a scientific review under the agency's former rules, but has conceded missteps in how the application was handled.
"Mistakes occur at every agency," Nelson and Keffer wrote in their letter. "But CPRIT's mission is too important to be de-railed by lapses in the process established by law and by rules to ensure that every dollar allocated goes through a rigorous review process."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/texas/article/Lawmakers-want-answers-on-faulty-11M-cancer-grant-4081897.php#ixzz2DoIZDiDy
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