The Sloan-Kettering affair: could it have happened anywhere?

Abstract

<h3>The Sloan-Kettering affair: Could it have happened anywhere</h3> ? The July issue of<i>Transplantation</i>contained an article that enjoyed considerable pre-publication publicity. Entitled "Allogeneic transplantation of organ cultures without immunosuppression. An evaluation using adult mouse skin," the report was written by John L. Ninnemann, PhD, a research fellow, and Robert A. Good, MD, PhD, president and director of Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City. There had been a third author, but some time after March 26, William T. Summerlin, MD, asked the Williams &amp; Wilkins Company to withdraw his name from the article, which delineated Dr. Ninnemann's failure to repeat Dr. Summerlin's original work. Dr. Summerlin, who had been a full member of the institute, acting chief of the Department of Cutaneous Biology and Medicine, and chief of Transplantation Immunology at Sloan-Kettering, is now on medical leave of absence, with full salary, for a period of up to