Medtronic rebuked by Grassley for failure to disclose consulting relationship

Medical devicemaker Medtronic has announced that it has suspended its consulting arrangements with a former military physician who has been accused of falsifying research involving the use of a Medtronic product. The announcement came in the wake of a scolding by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), whose staff had found that the suspect physician was not on a list of consultants supplied by the company.

Grassley has been investigating Medtronic for about a year, in an attempt to determine whether Medtronic illegally promoted unapproved uses for one of its products, a bone-growth treatment called Infuse. One of the physicians researching Infuse, Dr. Timothy Kuklo, was on active duty at Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the time.

Medtronic's relationship with Dr. Kuklo began to look questionable when a British medical journal retracted an article he had written. The article praised the success of Infuse in healing broken legs of American soldiers wounded in the Iraq war.

When asked why Dr. Kuklo had not been on the previously disclosed list of consultants, a Medtronic spokesperson told a reporter that it was because he had a general consulting contract with the company, rather than one specific to Infuse.

To learn more about the Medtronic investigation:
- read this article [1] from The New York Times

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Suit says Medtronic gave doctors plush gifts [3]
Medtronic will settle accusations on kickbacks [4]