Med Dean Squibb Board Member, Accused of Conflicting Interests

In response to objections raised by some of his students, the dean of the Harvard Medical School may resign from the board of directors of one of the nation's major drug companies.

Two groups of medical students have appeared in the last few days to ask Dr. Robert H. Ebert, the Med School dean, to give up his seat on the board of Squibb-Beech-Nut Inc., makers of Squibb pharmaceuticals.

A group of second-year students-in a letter to Ebert that will appear in tomorrow's CRIMSON-claims there is a basic conflict of interest between Ebert's role as a corporation director and his responsibility to the Medical School.

Ebert will meet with the other group-made up of third year students-today to discuss the same questions. Ebert said last night that he is "perfectly prepared to resign" from the Squibb board, but that he wants a chance to talk with students and explain his situation first.

There are no charges of financial impropriety. When Ebert became a director last January, he owned about $15,000 worth of Squibb-Beech-Nut stock and was eligible for a yearly salary of several thousand dollars as a director.

Over the summer, Ebert decided that the arrangement might give the appearance of a conflict. He says he tried to resign from the board, and finally agreed to stay on as a "public" director. He sold all his Squibb stock and no longer has any personal financial interest in the company's performance.

What the students have argued, however, is that Ebert cannot fill his role as protector of the medical consumers' rights as long as he also has a responsibility to a commercial drug company.

The 19 students who signed the letter to Ebert said they "cannot help but view such an arrangement [with Squibb] as a conflict of interest," and urged Ebert to leave the Squibb board.

To explain their view of the "conflict," they said that:

the medical community of physicians and medical schools should be "a severe and constructive critic of the so-called ethical drug industry";

physicians - and the schools that educate them - havea first obligation to "the patient, his welfare and well-being both medical and economic";

corporation directors, on the other hand, owe their loyalty to "the stockholders of that corporation and to the profits of that corporation."

The letter went on to say that the drug companies' profits are primarily determined by physicians' prescribing habits, which are developed in medical school and the first few years after it.

A legislative aide to Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.) joined the attack on Ebert's role at Squibb. He said last night that "there is absolutely no question" that Ebert is involved in a case of conflicting interests.

Nelson's Senate Select Committee on Small Business recently held a series of hearings on the role of drug companies in the current American medical situation.

In response to questions from Senators, the Library of Congress Legislative Reference Service provided a statement for Volume 10 of the hearings on the job corporate directors are supposed to do:

"Each director must exercise his unbiased judgment, influenced only by considerations of what is best for the corporation... Many courts have spoken of the rule as being that a director owes a loyalty that is undivided and an allegiance that is influenced in action by no consideration other than the corporation's welfare."

Ebert suggested last night that he could fill a different role as a "public" director of Squibb. "It's clear that drug companies have to be reformed," he said. "The question is whether this is a place where I can potentially be a useful citizen."

Ebert said he wanted to explain the possibilities of the "potential usefulness" when the students come to meet with him today. As examples of the way he has helped improve Squibb from within, he said that he has been part of an effort to re-focus the company's research programs. He has also given advice on which drugs the company should take off the market.

But Ebert said he had little influence on one of the issues most troubling to many of the students-the question of "generic" drugs versus brand-name drugs.

Generics are drugs sold under the official name describing their contents-for instance, penicillin. Most drug companies sell exactly the same drugs under their own trade name, usually at a much higher price.

One of Squibb's largest-selling items, for example, has the registered brand name Pentids (R). The same drug-sold under the generic name penicillin-costs less than 25 per cent as much.

Some medical students-who say they are concerned about the high cost of drugs to consumers-have asked medical schools to encourage the use of generics. One of the students who signed the letter to Ebert-Fred Fox '68-has also asked the Med School to require its professors to use generic names in lectures and other instruction to students.

Ebert said last night the generics question "is a far more complex one than as it is normally presented." Instead of simply attacking brand-name, drugs, he said, students should "see that the cost of drugs is the real problem."