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.
The association will also claim Sharma used the same patients as subjects for a number of different studies without telling the drug firms, which had each paid him six-figure sums for what they believed to be unique research. Sharma will deny any improper conduct.
He worked as a consultant psychiatrist for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and recruited patients in Kent and parts of the capital for the research. His position at the institute helped him secure funding worth close to £1m from five drug firms. Most of the money was channelled not through the institute but a private firm he set up called Psychmed. Sharma claims the institute knew about this arrangement and had approved it.
The fraud allegations against him surfaced in 2001 when Dr Catherine Baxter, a medical adviser to Sanofi, uncovered alleged financial irregularities surrounding a £250,000 contract it had awarded Sharma. The firm had asked him to conduct a study comparing the effectiveness of its drug Amisulpride with that of a treatment from a rival company, Eli Lilly.
Although Baxter believed the study was to be undertaken at the institute, she became alarmed about a Sanofi cheque for £65,000 that had been paid to Sharma's company. She also became 'extremely concerned' that Sharma appeared not to have received proper ethical approval for the study.
Sanofi hired private investigators to check Sharma's research activities. The inquiries were led by Peter Jay, a former Metropolitan Police detective chief inspector. When Sharma found out about Jay's investigation he sued him for defamation, claiming the inquiry had unfairly destroyed his reputation. Sharma dropped the case last March for what he said were financial reasons.
Among the allegations that surfaced in the High Court before the case ended was a claim that Sharma attempted to get data changed in one study to show that the drug risperidone worked better against schizophrenia than rival conventional treatments.
He insisted, however, that he had 'never sought to pressurise anyone to manipulate the data'.
He was also accused of lying about his academic background. Sharma, who qualified as a doctor in India, describes himself as a professor in the media and in promotional literature for his companies. He has claimed he was entitled to do so because he was a 'visiting professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA'.
Yet Theresa Ratti, executive administrator of the university's School of Medicine, has denied this. In a letter, she wrote: 'Dr Sharma currently does not hold the appointment of visiting professor of psychiatry at the university, nor has he held such a title in the past.'
In the libel case, Jay said Sharma asked Novartis for a free supply of the drug Clozaril for a study, but allegedly sold it to a hospital pharmacy for tens of thousands of pounds.
These claims have led to charges of deception being brought against Sharma by the government health watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHPRA). He failed to answer a summons to appear at Bow Street court in London last February, and a warrant was later issued for his arrest.
Sharma, speaking this weekend from India where he said he was caring for his sick father, claimed he had not been aware of the charge nor of the court hearing. He would be happy to come back to Britain to defend himself. There was a legitimate explanation for the transaction from which he made no personal gain.
Sharma said he was looking forward to the GMC hearing as an opportunity to tell his side of the story publicly and prove the fault lay with the drug companies.
'When these allegations first surfaced the Institute of Psychiatry investigated them and exonerated me of any wrongdoing,' he said. He claimed Sanofi knew this but decided to blame him for mistakes in its administrative and research procedures. 'Everything spiralled from there,' he said.
Asked about his academic background, Sharma said he has a letter to prove he was invited by a psychiatry professor at Pittsburgh Uto give lectures there as a 'visiting professor'.
The Institute of Psychiatry declined to comment. The ABPI confirmed it was taking Sharma to the GMC but refused to discuss any details.
