Coastal Cancer Center announced Wednesday that it has cut ties with the former Duke oncologist following the airing of a 60 Minutes investigation regarding his work.
Potti began working at the South Carolina-based practice a few months after resigning from Duke in November 2010. Dr. Lawrence Holt, president of Coastal Cancer Center, declined to answer The Chronicle’s questions regarding the decision to fire Potti. He referred all comment to a public relations firm the organization hired.
“[The 60 Minutes story] prompted many concerned people to contact Coastal Cancer Center with comments and questions,” Holt said in a statement released by LHWH Advertising and Public Relations. “It has become obvious that this issue is going to take precious focus away from patient care.”
The 60 Minutes segment, called “Deception at Duke, ”drew national attention to a scandal that has played out publicly for more than two years. The Cancer Letter, a trade publication, first published reports in the summer of 2010 that Potti had exaggerated his credentials, including a Rhodes Scholarship.
Potti has also been accused of manipulating data used in academic papers and is the subject of a research misconduct review at Duke. Dr. Joseph Nevins, Barbara Levine professor of breast cancer genomics and Potti’s mentor, broke the silence regarding that investigation during the 60 Minutes segment.
Nevins said it is “abundantly clear” that Potti manipulated the data he used for research published in major academic journals. This week, the journal Clinical Cancer Research retracted one of Potti’s articles, making it the 10th of his works to receive such treatment.
Potti has declined to comment publicly on the allegations and told 60 Minutes that it would be inappropriate for him to comment.
In an interview with local CBS affiliate WBTW earlier this week, Holt said that Coastal Cancer Center had no knowledge of the 60 Minutes investigation prior to its airing and said the segment caught the staff out of the blue. When The Chronicle asked Holt whether or not this comment meant that Coastal Cancer Center was unaware of the allegations against Potti, he refused to comment, said “thank you,” and abruptly hung up the phone.
Lei Gainer, public relations director for LHWH, said Coastal Cancer Center was aware of the allegations against Potti. It was the airing of the segment, and not the allegations, that caught the staff off guard. Gainer said she could not comment further.
Holt defended Potti’s hiring in the statement by citing the recommendations written on Potti’s behalf by Duke doctors, including Dr. Jeffrey Crawford, chief of the division of medical oncology at Duke. Holt did not acknowledge in yesterday’s statement that in December, Crawford told both The Cancer Letter and The Chronicle that since writing the letter, he learned more about the controversy that made him realize the recommendation was a mistake.
“While I was certainly aware of the controversy that was growing, I didn’t have first-hand knowledge regarding the extent of the issues involved,” Crawford wrote in an email to The Chronicle Dec. 28. “Without that understanding, it was premature for me to write the letter of recommendation that I did.”
Dr. David Rizzieri, associate professor of medicine, wrote in an email to The Chronicle Wednesday that he stands by his recommendation referring to Potti’s clinical abilities. In his letter Jan. 21, 2011, he called Potti an outstanding teacher and said that if a member of his own family contracted cancer he would feel comfortable with Potti treating them.
Rizzieri added that he did highlight concerns about Potti’s research on a form submitted to the South Carolina Board of Medical Examiners that has not been released to the public. It is unclear why this document was not included in the copy of the application that The Chronicle obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Assistant professors of medicine Dr. David Hsu and Dr. Arati Rao also recommended Potti for a medical license in South Carolina. Hsu and Rao could not be reached for comment.
Although the North Carolina Medical Board formally reprimanded Potti in November for unprofessional conduct while at Duke, Potti’s South Carolina licence is in good standing. Lesia Kudelka, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said the state’s medical board does not list disciplinary actions taken against doctors in other states, according to The Sun News, a daily newspaper in Myrtle Beach.
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