NIEHS leader out for now

Dr. David Schwartz will step down pending completion of a management review

Dr. David Schwartz, the embattled director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, announced Monday he would temporarily step down while a management review evaluates allegations against him raised by some members of Congress.

Schwartz, who took over the branch of the National Institutes of Health in 2005, has been under fire for maintaining close ties to Duke University, where he worked before joining the research institute; continuing to testify in plaintiff's lawsuits after he became director; and filing expense reports for items some questioned as excessive or personal expenses.

Efforts to reach Schwartz on Monday were unsuccessful. In an earlier interview, he denied wrongdoing and said missteps over expense reports and his testimony in lawsuits have been corrected.

Schwartz broke the news to the more than 600 NIEHS staff by e-mail Monday. He called his move "personally painful" but said he felt the review would benefit the institute and the National Toxicology Program, which he also heads. Schwartz will serve in the interim as chief of the Laboratory of Environmental Lung Disease at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Serving as acting director of the NIEHS is Dr. Samuel Wilson.

Schwartz became the focus of inquiry earlier this year from Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

They raised questions about Schwartz's leadership at the institute, which studies the relationship between environmental hazards and diseases. They requested personal and professional financial records from Schwartz, a pulmonologist who was hired from Duke to lead the NIEHS at an annual salary of $250,000, with possible bonuses of more than $60,000 a year.

In a news release issued late Monday afternoon, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, announced that a panel of senior management experts would review the institute's leadership to investigate and, if necessary, correct the issues raised over the past few months.

Meanwhile, National Institutes of Health managers have distributed "record of congressional inquiry" forms to NIEHS employees.

The forms don't appear to be something given out to "regular" employees, said Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican. Nor do the forms appear to have been distributed elsewhere within NIH.

It is illegal to deny or interfere with a federal employee's right to provide information to Congress.