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Bipolar Anesthesiologist Dr. Reuben Sentenced To 6 Months For Research Fraud While Manic
Scott Reuben MD has been sentenced today in federal court to 6 months in prison after pleading guilty in February to one count of health care fraud. Dr. Reuben, 51, former chief of the acute pain clinic at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, $361,932 in restitution to the drug companies that funded his research and to forfeit $50,000 in assets in the case. Once his prison term is up, Dr. Reuben must undergo three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.
When Reuben entered his guilty plea, his attorneys claimed that he had been suffering from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder during the period when he committed the fraud, the apparent result of a manic phase. Reuben was unusually prolific with “research” projects during a 2000-2001 sabbatical, having published 8 papers. Dr. Reuben’s wife, Susan Romm Reuben, MD, is a psychiatrist. Dr. Reuben attempted suicide twice in 2002, his lawyers said. His claim of mental illness has been called under question however.
Glenn J. Treisman, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry, behavioral science and internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said that although some criminals have bipolar disorder, the condition does not necessarily foster antisocial behavior. “Lots and lots of people have bipolar disorder who don’t commit fraud,” Dr. Treisman said. Equally strange is when “that person was better and knew that he did wrong but didn’t come forward.” Dr. Treisman said it was “unlikely” that Dr. Reuben’s disease would have gone undiagnosed for so long, given that he was a physician married to a psychiatrist. “By the time someone’s tried suicide twice, their psychiatrist wife would have known something was going on,” he said.
Reuben’s bogus research was published in various prominent journals including Anesthesia & Analgesia, Anesthesiology, Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, Journal of Arthroplasty and other titles, which have since retracted the papers. The journals stressed that Dr. Reuben’s co-authors on those papers have not been accused of wrongdoing. He has been accused by at least two of his co-authors of putting their names on his papers without their consent. Anesthesiology News uncovered fraudulent inclusion of one a co-author by contacting the alleged research partner he claimed.
Dr. Reuben’s research helped lay the foundation for an emerging area of perioperative care known as “multimodal analgesia”. The scope of the fraud has left “a large hole in our understanding of this field,” said Steven L. Shafer, MD, editor of Anesthesia and Analgesia, “It will take a while for science and practice to sort this out.”Anesthesia and Analgesia published more of the tainted papers than any other journal and quickly announced changes to its guidelines to avoid similar incidents. Allegations of rampant fraud involving Dr. Reuben’s research and the retraction of papers were first reported by Anesthesiology News (March 2009) after Baystate Medical Center officials uncovered evidence of wrongdoing following a routine audit. Falsified reports involved at least 21 articles dating back to 1996. The “research” was funded by grants from Pfizer, Merck & Co. and Wyeth/Rays of Hope for the drugs Celebrex, Vioxx and others.
Anesthesiology News Pain Medicine News Outpatient Surgery
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