Last year an international furore broke out over Nancy Olivieri, the Toronto-based scientist who broke a confidentiality agreement with the pharmaceutical company Apotex and published research concerning the level of toxicity of its drug Deferiprone for children suffering from thalassaemia. The Hospital for Sick Children, part of Toronto University, at one point tried to sack her. James Turk, executive director of the Association, draws a parallel with the treatment of Healy. We can't see how this can be other than a serious erosion of academic freedom. Turk says that the wording of Goldbloom's email is telling.
Development is a euphemism here for fundraising.
I read that as meaning your appointment will make it more difficult to raise the money that we need to pursue our programmes. Healy's views are well known. That someone, says Healy, may have been Charles Nemeroff, a professor of psycho-pharmacology at Emory University in Atlanta who has strong links, including shareholdings, to Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, the three companies that make SSRIs which are, or have been, involved in court cases where Healy has been an expert witness. Predictably, rumours about his alliances, or lack of them, abound. Nemeroff was at the Toronto meeting, giving a talk of his own, but he did not stay for the second day.