Senate Commerce Committee’s Sounds of Silence on ImPACT Concussion Software Founder Mark Lovell

I look forward to reading Mark Lovell’s National Institutes of Health grant applications, whenever I receive them. In my experience, a journalist almost always picks up a tidbit or two from the primary-source materials.

But on the critical question of what Lovell and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center disclosed about his financial conflicts of interest in seeking federal taxpayer dollars to subsidize the research and development of ImPACT Applications, Inc., the applications won’t provide the answer. That resides behind the same UPMC bureaucratic stone wall that a couple of years ago hyped its new-and-improved ethics policy, but then never made that policy public. (See “WWE Docs Governed by ‘Private’ Pitt Med Center Ethics Policy,” March 31, 2010, https://concussioninc.net/?p=2093.)

Lovell still has not responded to my email inquiry about his conflicts – which, if not fully disclosed to NIH, take the story beyond the level of outrage first revealed in 2007 by ESPN with respect to Lovell’s work for the National Football League. I’m not holding my breath.

Susan Manko, the responsible UPMC media relations director, also has yet to do any media-relating on this.

Nor has my dear friend Robert Hill, the UPMC vice chancellor for public affairs, gotten back to your humble blogger.

I solicited comment from the chairman, Jay Rockefeller, the senatorial face of the concussion issue, Tom Udall, and all 23 other members of the Senate Commerce Committee. They went 0-for-25. Even the Cardinals did better than that with runners in scoring position last night.

More tomorrow in Beyond Chron.

Irv Muchnick