As reported in the Guardian, with a lot more information
A professor who taught at one of Britain's most prestigious medical institutes while appearing regularly as an expert on the BBC online, has been accused of being a fraud and has a warrant out for his arrest. Tonmoy Sharma, who was a senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, is accused of deceiving the NHS and some of the world's largest drug firms, and lying about his academic credentials.
Sharma, who denies all the claims, is being accused by the pharmaceutical companies' trade body of taking part in wide-ranging research fraud involving tests of powerful drugs on schizophrenic patients.
He says the firms have targeted him as 'a scapegoat' to cover their own failures and protect people in the industry. He also believes he is the victim of academic rivals jealous of his success.
The high-profile dispute is to come before the General Medical Council (GMC) in September. It will be embarrassing for the medical and academic establishments and raise questions about how UK drug trials are conducted.
At one stage Sharma was offered the chair of psychiatry at University College London, and over a period of years from 1996 he was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by drugs giants such as Novartis and Sanofi to conduct trials of anti-psychotic drugs on patients with schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease.
The firms belong to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), which will ask the GMC to find him guilty of professional misconduct. The association is expected to allege that he failed to obtain proper approval from ethical committees to conduct a number of major studies. These approvals are a vital component in any trial to protect the patients taking part.
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