NIH behaving badly - hindered by faults cited by fired whistleblower
- From: "georgia" <jwissmille@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 9 Jul 2005 18:32:47 -0700
"..........."To have the senior management... behave in this manner,
spend
incredible amounts of time feuding, and writing numerous long e-mails
while
seemingly unaware of the need for appropriate behavior, decorum, and
enforcement
of good management practices and the rules of supervision and concerns
about
appearance of reprisal clearly indicate a serious problem," the report
said.
Fishbein's lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, said Friday that he had not seen
the
report obtained by the AP, but he hailed its conclusions.
"NIH's internal admissions are unprecedented and damning. Dr. Fishbein
was
right. NIH must fix its troubled management and stop harassing the
whistle-blowers," Kohn said............."
Posted on Mon, Jul. 04, 2005
Report: AIDS research agency is 'troubled'
An internal review said the National Institutes of Health was hindered
by
many of the faults cited by a fired whistle-blower.
By John Solomon
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The government's AIDS research agency "is a troubled
organization," and its managers have engaged in unnecessary feuding,
sexually explicit
language, and other inappropriate conduct that hampers its fight
against the
disease, an internal review has found.
The review for the National Institutes of Health director's office,
obtained
by the Associated Press, appears to substantiate many of the concerns
that
whistle-blower Jonathan Fishbein raised about the agency's AIDS
research division
and its senior managers.
The division suffers from "turf battles and rivalries between
physicians and
Ph.D scientists" and the situation has been "rife for too long," the
report
concluded.
Nonetheless, the agency fired Fishbein on Friday, over the objections
of
several members of Congress. The top Republican and Democrat on the
Senate Finance
Committee are protesting, saying the firing was an example of
whistle-blower
punishment.
"Retaliation against an employee for reporting misconduct or voicing
concerns
is unacceptable, illegal, and violates the Whistleblower Protection
Act,"
Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R., Iowa) and Max Baucus (D., Mont.) wrote
to the
institutes late last week.
"Moreover, it would have a chilling effect on other NIH employees who
might
make truthful but critical comments about the NIH," the senators said.
Citing personnel privacy, agency officials declined to address the
senators'
letter or Fishbein's termination, except to say that his last day was
Friday.
In the past, the institutes' officials have said they were terminating
Fishbein for poor performance.
Fishbein, an accomplished private-sector safety expert, was hired in
2003 to
improve the safety of the agency's AIDS research.
He alleges that he was let go because he raised concerns about several
studies and filed a formal complaint against one of the division's
managers,
alleging sexual harassment and a hostile workplace.
In a series of recent stories, the AP has reported that:
One of the institutes' AIDS studies in Africa violated federal safety
regulations.
Senior managers engaged in sexually explicit pranks and sent
expletive-laced
e-mail messages to subordinates.
Agency-funded researchers used foster children to test AIDS drugs since
the
late 1980s.
An internal report, written on Aug. 9, 2004, by a special adviser to
agency
chief Elias A. Zerhouni but never made public, raised concerns that
efforts to
fire Fishbein at the very least gave the "appearance of reprisal."
The report says no documentation was ever provided to Fishbein
suggesting
poor performance until after he complained about safety in one
sensitive AIDS
study and filed a formal complaint alleging that the division's deputy
director
was acting unprofessionally with subordinates.
The report said that after formally complaining about the conduct of
the
deputy director, Jonathan Kagan, Fishbein was inexplicably forced to
begin
reporting to Kagan, who then went ahead with efforts to fire Fishbein.
The report said Kagan and the division's director, Edmund Tramont,
acknowledged that Kagan "uses sexually explicit and colorful language,
saying that no
one ever complained until" Fishbein did.
The report broadly condemns the agency's Division of AIDS.
"It is clear that DAIDS is a troubled organization," the report
concluded,
saying the Fishbein case "is clearly a sketch of a deeper issue."
"To have the senior management... behave in this manner, spend
incredible
amounts of time feuding, and writing numerous long e-mails while
seemingly
unaware of the need for appropriate behavior, decorum, and enforcement
of good
management practices and the rules of supervision and concerns about
appearance of
reprisal clearly indicate a serious problem," the report said.
Fishbein's lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, said Friday that he had not seen
the
report obtained by the AP, but he hailed its conclusions.
"NIH's internal admissions are unprecedented and damning. Dr. Fishbein
was
right. NIH must fix its troubled management and stop harassing the
whistle-blowers," Kohn said.
The report, however, also criticized Fishbein, citing some of his
supervisors' statements that he did not take enough time to adapt to
the "culture" of the
AIDS division before attempting to make sweeping changes to improve the
agency's research safety.
"It seems apparent that both sides behaved badly, that a new senior
employee
did not orient himself about the division, and that the most senior
people
engaged in inappropriate behavior," the report said.
The report urged the institutes to require sensitivity training for its
senior managers and provide instruction about "inappropriate personnel
procedures."
.
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