Surgeon Tied to Bone Product Inquiry Resigns

-The New York Times

08/19/2009 - A former Army surgeon accused of falsifying a study on a bone growth product used on severely injured Iraq war veterans has resigned his teaching position at Washington University in St. Louis, a spokeswoman said Tuesday night.

The surgeon, Dr. Timothy R. Kuklo, 48, was placed on leave earlier this year while the university investigated charges against him. Medtronic, a maker of the bone growth product Infuse, also suspended his consulting contract. The company paid him nearly $800,000 the last few years.

“Dr. Kuklo has agreed to voluntarily resign from the university, effective September 30, 2009,” Joni Westerhouse, a spokeswoman for the medical school, said in an e-mail message Tuesday. “Dr. Kuklo will have no clinical, research, or educational duties for the University between now and that date.”

Dr. Kuklo tendered his resignation on July 30, according to Don Clayton, associate vice chancellor and director for medical public affairs. University officials declined to comment further.

An investigation last year by Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where Dr. Kuklo worked before joining the university, concluded that he had falsified parts of a study that claimed greater benefits than other Army surgeons reported for the Medtronic bone growth product.

The Army reported its findings to the university and a medical journal. Dr. Kuklo was also found to have forged the signatures of four listed co-authors, who told Army investigators that they did not approve the study.

The British Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery retracted the study earlier this year. The New York Times first reported on the controversy in May.

Medtronic and the university, which had given Dr. Kuklo tenure shortly after hiring him in 2006, have been investigating. The university previously said that it also found he had confidential medical information on Army soldiers on his university computer.

Dr. Kuklo, a West Point graduate, listed his house in Wildwood, Mo., outside St. Louis for sale for $2.7 million last month, real estate records show. He did not respond to an e-mail message Tuesday, and a woman who answered the phone at his house declined comment.

Dr. Kuklo, who is also a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, has never commented publicly on the matter.

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