Former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler, who refused to allow DTC advertisingduring his term, has been fired from his $540,000-a-year position as dean ofthe University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine, but remainsas tenured faculty member.
According to a Washington Post report, the termination cameafter what Kessler called years of university questioning “financialirregularities” that predated his 2003 appointment.
He told the Post he had “tried to solve the problems,because this money was not being used for the medical center, for programdevelopment, recruitment, medical education.”
The problems, which involved the apparent depletion of about$90 million in dean’s office reserves over 18 months, were reported to theuniversity by Kessler in 2005, the newspaper said. After an anonymous letterblamed Kessler for the declining finances, an audit and additional reviews wereconducted but reportedly found no irregularities.
According to a university statement, the medical school hasa policy protecting whistle-blowers, and Kessler had access to a confidentialretaliation grievance procedure. The Post quoted from an email sent tocolleagues by chancellor J. Michael Bishop announcing Kessler’s departure fromthe dean’s office and saying: “I thank him for his energetic service to theuniversity and his substantial achievements on behalf of UCSF.”
An audit cleared Kessler of wrongdoing, the Post said, andthe university counsel named him as a whistleblower. Kessler gave the newspaperspreadsheets of school finances and financial analyses he said he prepared forUCSF.
Kessler said he was asked to resign at theend of June, but “I refused. I couldn’t.”
From the February 01, 2008 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
