Banes’ Role on Obscure Board Raises Questions

An obscure state medical research board headed by Marlene Bane, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser who is married to Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana), has operated with extraordinary autonomy in dispensing nearly $6.2 million in state funds to scientists.

The state Lupus Appropriations Board’s makeup, evaluation process, some of its grant decisions and its link to the campaign fund-raising operation run by Marlene Bane have raised troubling questions over the years among grant applicants, state Department of Health Services officials and even current board members, according to state records and interviews. The board finances research on lupus, an incurable and potentially fatal disease of the autoimmune system.

Among the concerns are these:

* The top recipient of funds from the three-member board has been a longtime friend of the Banes’ and a regular contributor to Tom Bane’s campaign committee, Dr. Raymond L. Teplitz. Five prominent lupus authorities told The Times that Teplitz is a virtual unknown in the field and has published little on the subject.

* The board is the only panel under the auspices of Health Services with the power to actually dispense grants, rather than simply make recommendations. Unlike most academic and government grant-making panels, furthermore, the lupus board does not circulate proposals among a dozen or more recognized experts in a given field for formal peer review before awarding grants.

* Numerous scientists and physicians who are not politically active say they have been repeatedly solicited to buy costly tickets to fund-raisers for Tom Bane and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) after applying for lupus board grants. Marlene Bane oversees both lawmakers’ fund raising in Southern California. “It raises questions whether our grant would be approved or rejected for reasons other than the quality of our research,” said Dr. Christy I. Sandborg of UC Irvine, who received a total of $70,000 in 1986 and 1987 research funds.

* The educational qualifications of Marlene Bane, who has chaired the board since it was created by the Legislature in 1976, for judging complex scientific research proposals have been called into question. It was disclosed last year that a resume she filed with Health Services claims that she is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UC Berkeley who holds a master’s degree from UCLA and an honorary Ph.D. in genetics from UC Davis. But records show, and Tom Bane has acknowledged, that her formal education ended when she left UC Berkeley after two years in 1952.

The Banes are one of the state capital’s most powerful couples. Tom Bane, 75, is a 20-year legislative veteran, chairman of the influential Assembly Rules Committee and a close ally of Speaker Brown. Marlene, 56, who is Bane’s former aide and has suffered from lupus for many years, has raised millions of dollars in campaign funds for her husband and the Speaker. Much of the money has been used to elect other Democrats who support Brown.

Tom Bane refused to permit his wife to answer questions for this story. He answered questions for her as well as those put to him.

Defends Wife

He defended his wife’s qualifications. “Marlene has intensely studied lupus for over 20 years. She has worked with lupus research during most of those years. She is extremely knowledgeable about past research projects.”

Some of the most pointed criticism about the state lupus board’s operation concerns Teplitz, the Banes’ friend and political backer. Over the years, the board has awarded $801,473 for his research, prompting several lupus experts to challenge the board’s judgment.

“He’s never attended any meetings I’m aware of in our field and he’s written two papers on lupus in the last seven years, which are of marginal relevance,” said Dr. Dan Wallace, a Los Angeles rheumatologist, lupus researcher and co-author of a recent text on lupus that included an extensive bibliography.

Overall, Teplitz has co-authored seven papers in the last 23 years that mention lupus, according to Medline, a widely used compilation of medical journal publications. In contrast, other respected lupus researchers in California--including several funded by the lupus board--published scores of papers on the disease in the last decade.

Teplitz, 64, received $751,473 when he headed the Division of Cytogenetics and Cytology at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte. He oversaw two laboratories, one of which examined patients’ tissues for cancer and the cells of fetuses taken from pregnant women through amniocentesis. The other conducted research on developmental biology and genetics, including projects on lupus. He has published widely on cancer and genetics.

Board Funded Hospital

Tom Bane is a longtime member of the City of Hope’s voluntary board of trustees, which raises funds but does not make policy. The City of Hope, renowned for its cancer research, has received nearly $1.2 million from the lupus board, 19% of the board’s grants.

The lupus board awarded grants to Teplitz every year from 1980 to 1986 at Marlene Bane’s insistence and over the objections of other members. At various times, each of the others who served on the board recommended less funding or none at all for Teplitz, records show.

They repeatedly questioned his lack of relevant publications; his non-involvement in lupus professional circles; the quality, originality or significance of his proposals, and whether his expertise was even in the field of lupus, transcripts of the annual board meetings show.

“We have seen very poor results in previous state funding, now stretching over 10 years,” board member Dr. Joshua Levy said during a discussion of Teplitz’s 1987 proposal. “And there are no publications listed . . . that relate to any of the state’s supported projects.”

Board member Dr. Kenneth M. Nies concurred. He also criticized Teplitz’s laboratory procedures, saying that Teplitz’s disclosure in a progress report “that all his cell lines were infected” was “absolutely inexcusable.”

Proposals Rated

Each board member rates the quality of grant proposals numerically. Some years, Marlene Bane’s dramatically higher rating of Teplitz’s research overcame lower ratings by her colleagues when the scores were combined; sometimes she simply prevailed during discussions.

Teplitz, who transferred from the City of Hope to UC Davis in mid-1985, declined to comment about his research or grants.

Tom Bane often attended lupus board meetings up until 1984 as chairman of an Assembly Select Committee on Genetic Diseases and occasionally participated in funding discussions. He said Teplitz had been “a good friend” for many years and had “given an education to me and Marlene” about lupus. He said Teplitz did “real good work on testing whether people have lupus” and “his basic research proved basic facts about lupus.”

Bane also pointed out that the state contracts with universities and hospitals, not individual researchers. When Teplitz was at the City of Hope, Bane said, “it was a leader in lupus research.”

This was disputed by four lupus experts. Wallace, who treated the City of Hope’s lupus patients as the hospital’s chief rheumatology consultant from 1980 to 1988, called Bane’s assertions “absolutely rubbish and nonsense.” Bevra Hahn, chief of rheumatology at UCLA and a leading lupus researcher who was funded by the lupus board, also said the City of Hope is not known for its lupus work.

And, in 1986, board member Levy noted that Teplitz “consistently . . . does not show any other grant support.”

Proposal Rejected

In 1984, when the lupus board approved $85,000 for Teplitz, it rejected a proposal by Dr. Eng M. Tan, director of the W.M. Keck Autoimmune Disease Center at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla. Tan, one of the nation’s leading authorities on lupus who has published hundreds of papers on the disease, appealed the decision. A Health Services official recommended that the board reconsider but it refused.

“The questions raised by the board were trivial and illustrate their lack of understanding of advanced biotechnology,” Tan responded in a 1986 letter.

Marlene Bane, who has worked with her husband for two decades, was appointed to the non-salaried lupus board by then-Assembly Speaker Leo T. McCarthy in 1977 and has served at Brown’s pleasure since 1980. Previously, she ran Bane’s district office, managed his election campaign and for four years was the consultant to the Select Committee on Genetic Disorders, which focused on lupus.

The other lupus board members are appointed by the Senate president pro tem and by the Health and Welfare Agency secretary. There is no set term.

Systemic lupus erythematosus is a rheumatic affliction related to arthritis in which the patient’s body develops antibodies against its own tissues. Most victims are women.

Lupus Symptoms

Symptoms include fatigue, aching joints and rashes. Lupus can also destroy the kidneys, attack the heart, central nervous system, joints and lungs. It can lie in remission for an unpredictable period, then suddenly flare up. It is notoriously difficult to diagnose; little is known about the cause. There is no cure.

Half a million to a million people in the United States suffer from the illness. But it ranks well behind heart disease, cancer and other maladies as the leading causes of death in California, prompting Health Services officials periodically to question the unique role of the lupus board in the face of increasingly tight funding.

Yet, each year, Tom Bane shepherded money through the budget process for the grants. In fact, when the lupus board was established, Bane helped hold up the entire state budget, successfully demanding funding for it, recalled former Sen. George N. Zenovich (D-Fresno), who sponsored the bill that created the board.

The lupus board differs in several respects from the more than 20 other boards set up to advise the Health Services Department on medical matters. Each of the others is composed of recognized experts--a dozen or more in most cases--in their respective fields, such as AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease. The three lupus board members occasionally exercised their prerogative to solicit expert opinion on grant applications even though they are not required to do so.

The lupus board also is the only one that awards grants for basic medical research. The other boards focus mostly on epidemiology and other studies of trends or patterns of diseases, leaving basic research to universities.

“The way the board funds research is different than the way most research agencies do it,” said Nies, the Health and Welfare secretary appointee since 1985. “We did not have peer review, which I feel is the best way to do it. . . . It’s always nice to have research reviewed by people who are really experts.”

Concerns Expressed

Health Services officials have repeatedly expressed concerns about the board’s decision-making. In 1983, Dr. Dileep G. Bal, chief of the department’s Office of Special Projects, said in a memo that “some of the highest ranked proposals are somewhat arbitrarily not funded . . . and lower ranked proposals are being equally arbitrarily funded.”

Two years later, Dr. Kathleen H. Acree, chief of the department’s Preventive Medical Services Branch, said in a memo that “the awards and the composition of the board could raise questions regarding objectivity of the process and possible conflict of interest.”

In 1984, she noted, 32% of the board’s awards went to the City of Hope, which also was the recipient of research funds from the private, nonprofit National Lupus Erythematosus Foundation Inc., chaired by Tom Bane. The foundation, which is not affiliated with the better-known Lupus Foundation of America, is run out of Bane’s legislative office.

Acree also pointed out that Dr. Edgar G. Engleman of Stanford University had received 13% of the lupus board funds awarded at a time when his father, Dr. Ephraim P. Engleman, was on the board. Both are respected members of the lupus research community.

These concerns led the board to adopt in 1985 standardized criteria for evaluating grant proposals in a manner consistent with state law. Previously, Marlene Bane wrote in a June, 1985, letter, the board had not used specific criteria. “As members of the board are acknowledged experts in the field,” she said, “it was determined that review and evaluation would meet the highest standards.”

Lacks Training

Marlene Bane’s ability to judge the scientific value of grant proposals, however, has been called into question by the disclosure that she has no academic training in the field. She has insisted on being called “doctor,” leading at least some who dealt with the lupus board to assume that she was a physician. Yet, her only academic credential is an honorary law degree from the Valley College of Law in Van Nuys, which has since merged with another school.

Lupus experts and state health officials describe the lupus grant applications as highly complex even for physicians to evaluate.

“It was always clear to us that Mrs. Bane did not have the credentials to review those grants,” said a senior Health Services official who asked not to be named. “She could not analyze those esoteric applications.”

At least nine of those funded by the lupus board contributed to Tom Bane’s campaign, records show. Teplitz and his wife have given eight contributions totaling $3,700 since 1979. Bane said Teplitz’s contributions were made “on a personal basis, not a grant basis.” He also said grant proposals were decided strictly on their merits.

“About every person I or Willie had ever met, talked with or worked with received invitations to the dinners,” Bane said of the fund-raisers. “The solicitors did not know why or what the connection was with me or Willie. All they had were names in a card file.”

But Kevin Sullivan, a scientist at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, said that when he was solicited to buy tickets to Bane’s event after applying for a lupus grant, he was pointedly told that “Bane was interested in funding health-related programs and sat on a couple of committees in Sacramento concerned with driving California’s research programs.”

‘Appearance of Conflict’

Acree of Health Services said the fund-raising overtures “created the appearance of a conflict of interest. That’s definitely not health department policy.”

When Marlene Bane’s aggressive fund-raising tactics drew criticism last year, Brown defended her as the best in the business. He has paid her $468,000 since 1982 to peddle tickets to his $1,000-a-head dinners, records show.

The lupus board is now in limbo, apparently because the Banes resented challenges by Health Services officials. It has not met for 16 months, $572,000 appropriated for research this year remains unspent and 25 grant applications are pending.

Health Services officials have become more involved in recent years after they decided the board’s “decisions were being made on criteria that were like shifting sand,” said Bal, who is now chief of the department’s Chronic Diseases Branch.

According to a department memo, Bane angrily asserted in December that Health Services was engaged in a vendetta against him and his wife. The memo quoted Bane as telling a department employee that research funded by the board was “not making progress in the cure or prevention of lupus.”

Bane told The Times that his dispute was not with Health Services but with Bal, whom he described as “a lower-echelon bureaucrat.” He said Bal had supported the appeals of two applicants and had urged the board to make grants that would violate the law. The board ignored Bal’s recommendations.

Bal and other Health Services officials say they merely sought to ensure that the lupus board’s conduct was above reproach.

Bane said he will not seek funding for the board for next year and may introduce legislation to abolish it.

The assemblyman said Clifford Allenby, secretary of the Health and Welfare Agency, which includes Health Services, “thinks the funds are critically needed elsewhere.”

Allenby said the agency has periodically considered redirecting the lupus money to other areas but had run into Bane’s resistance. This year, Allenby said, Bane suggested reallocating the money. It is expected to be used for research on AIDS or sudden infant death syndrome.

Staff writer Mark Gladstone in Sacramento contributed to this report.