"It's big and it's bad," said HHMI chairman George Thorn about the results of the six-month review conducted by the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, about which he declined to provide details. Thorn is serving as acting chief executive officer while a search continues for a new president.
Fredrickson, a former NIH director, has a sharply different view of the events that led to his departure from the $5 billion institute that he had headed since 1984. An investigation into "rumors" that his wife, Henrietta, had too large a role in HHMI activities soon mushroomed into brutal personal questioning that made it "impossible [for me] to go back," he said.
Fredrickson acknowledges that one item that came under scrutiny is a $2.5 million cost overrun in a $12.5 million project to renovate the Cloisters, a former convent on the NIH campus being converted into ...
