Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2014 - Motion to Proceed - Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Earlier this year I learned about a case of research misconduct that happened at Iowa State University. A team of scientists was working on a vaccine to fight HIV. One of the researchers, Dr. Han, committed fraud to make it appear as though the vaccine for HIV was working. He purposely spiked the testing samples so it looked as if the vaccines actually fought HIV. Dr. Han's fraud helped his team get $16 million in national grant money from the National Institutes of Health or around here we refer to that as the NIH. NIH is part of the Department of Health and Human Services or what we refer to as HHS.
HHS gives out billions of dollars in research grants every year. In 2013 NIH gave out over $20 billion in research grants. Obviously that is a huge amount of money by any standard.
The government has a responsibility to make sure this money is well spent. Unfortunately, it looks as if the government is relying on the grant recipients to do oversight instead of the government seeing that the money is well spent.
In this case officials at Iowa State University were unaware of the fraud until another team of scientists couldn't duplicate the results. Iowa State University took the problem very seriously and notified Health and Human Services. I compliment them for that. But if it weren't for Iowa State University's actions, I doubt the Government ever would have found out about this tremendous amount of fraud.
The Office of Research Integrity at Health and Human Services was created for the specific purpose to prevent and investigate research misconduct. The Office of Research Integrity investigated the allegations of misconduct at Iowa State University and in fact confirmed that Dr. Han knowingly committed fraud. Dr. Han even admitted to the fraud. The Office of Research Integrity imposed only a 3-year ban on Dr. Han from receiving any more Federal grant money.
That is basically a slap on the wrist from the Office of Research Integrity. It makes absolutely no sense that someone who admitted to that level of fraud could be eligible for another Federal grant in just 3 years.
I asked the Office of Research Integrity why the penalty for Dr. Han was so light and if it would try to recover any of the $19 million in research grants. The taxpayers subsidized what was supposed to be promising HIV research, but it was based on Dr. Han's fraud. His phony results were the basis for those grant applications. The Office of Research Integrity says it considers a 3-year ban a very strict penalty. To Iowans, that doesn't sound like a very commonsense penalty.
In fact, the Office of Research Integrity says that 3 years is the maximum penalty it can give unless there are aggravating circumstances. That 3-year limit is set by the White House Office of Management and Budget. So the Office of Research Integrity claims that somehow its hands are tied. But in this case the Office of Research Integrity did not even try to demonstrate aggravating circumstances to enforce a longer debarment than 3 years against Dr. Han.
The Office of Research Integrity admitted that there is nothing to keep Dr. Han from conducting research again funded by American taxpayers after those 3 years. The Office of Research Integrity claims it does not have the authority to recover funds in case of research conduct.
Now, think about that for a minute. This Office of Research Integrity, with the responsibility to make sure money is wisely used and research is honest, says it does not have the authority to recover funds obtained by fraud.
The Office of Research Integrity--we are talking about research integrity--says it is the responsibility of the agency that issued the research grant to recover money obtained by fraud.
So I asked the National Institutes of Health about its involvement in this case. The National Institutes of Health first said that only $500,000 of the $19 million in research grants would be recovered. The National Institutes of Health also claimed it was not responsible for recovering the fraudulent grant money. According to the National Institutes of Health, oversight is the responsibility of the educational institution receiving the money. NIH said:
ISU as grantee is legally responsible and accountable for the use of funds provided for the performance of grant-supported project or activity.
It looks as if each office I asked just simply passes the buck along to somebody else. But a pass-the-buck attitude doesn't work when it comes to government oversight.
I also asked Health and Human Services about the case. Health and Human Services said that:
Grant recipients have the primary obligation to conduct investigations of their own researchers.
Universities need to be responsible and accountable with Federal research grants. By taking action when it learned of the fraud, Iowa State University did that in this case. But that does not give the government an excuse not to do oversight. And if the government is relying on universities to report fraud instead of doing the oversight, there are probably other cases of fraud that are never caught.
If someone writes a taxpayer-funded check, they should be responsible for making sure the money is being well spent. The funding agency, and Health and Human Services as a whole, should do more to protect taxpayers' dollars, especially when many are calling for even more taxpayer funding for the National Institutes of Health.
The Office of Research Integrity has a clear mission to prevent and investigate cases of research misconduct.
But I am concerned not only about this case but allegations about the Office of Research Integrity made by its former director, Dr. David Wright. Dr. Wright resigned only days after I started my investigation.
In his resignation letter, Dr. Wright said that bureaucratic red tape was keeping him--Dr. Wright--from doing his job. He said up to 65 percent of his time was spent ``navigating the remarkably
dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy to secure resources and ..... get permission for ORI to serve the research community.''
We ought to take his allegations very seriously, and HHS should do so as well. When researchers abuse the public's trust, the Office of Research Integrity should use all the powers at its disposal to resolve the problem.
I recently learned that Dr. Han has been indicted for four felony counts of making false statements. Regardless of the outcome of this indictment, it is encouraging to see an effort to increase accountability for spending of taxpayers' money.
Also earlier this week the National Institutes of Health confirmed for the Des Moines Register that it would stop the final grant payment. That of course will save taxpayers $1.4 million.
So it is good news that the National Institutes of Health is taking action to recover taxpayers' money in this fraud case. But this is only one case, and the National Institutes of Health's actions came after months of public attention and my investigating. I worry that more cases may go unnoticed and even unaddressed if there isn't a public outcry. We can't afford that. We can't afford to have cases like this go unnoticed and unaddressed.
Federal oversight of research funds is far too weak. The government is doing far too little to recover money lost to fraud. We can't afford a ``fund it and forget it'' attitude. Fraudsters need to be held accountable, and people handing out taxpayers' money need to know that if they are careless with that money, Uncle Sam will come knocking at the door for a refund.
Although Secretary Sebelius recently left Health and Human Services, I expect the new Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to take this issue very seriously. Ultimately, the Secretary of HHS has the responsibility to ensure that health research grants are not abused. She needs to ensure that agencies within HHS have all the tools they need to recover money lost to fraud and to prevent it from happening in the first place. Secretary Burwell should investigate Dr. Wright's allegations about the Office of Research Integrity and fix the problems that Dr. Wright outlined before his resignation.
Oversight is an extremely important part of the government's role. Unfortunately, it is often ignored and taxpayers' dollars are abused. When researchers abuse the public's trust, Health and Human Services and its components should use all the power they have to investigate, resolve the problem, and get the money back. They owe it to the American taxpayers.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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