Group Questions Bane Role in Lupus Research Funding

A coalition of lupus support groups asked the state attorney general on Wednesday to investigate a nonprofit lupus foundation headed by Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana) and a series of allocations of public funds by a state lupus research board headed by Bane’s wife.

The groups questioned the state board’s allocation of $800,000 to a physician friend of the Banes and claimed, in a letter to Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, that the research “contracted for by the state was simply not done, unless it was done so badly that it was not publishable.”

The concern was contained in a letter from Dr. Daniel J. Wallace, a medical adviser to the American Lupus Society’s Southern California chapters and the Lupus Foundation of America, the two largest lupus organizations in the nation. Nancy G. Horn, president of the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America, also wrote a letter to Van de Kamp requesting an inquiry.

Copies of both letters were provided to The Times but had not reached the attorney general’s office late Wednesday.

‘Don’t Add Up’

“Things don’t add up,” Horn said in an interview. “Funds were not where they should be. I just want an accounting. And I think Tom Bane should be made accountable.”

Bane did not respond to an interview request Wednesday. In the past, he has maintained that he and his wife have done nothing improper in the way they have championed research on lupus, a debilitating and potentially fatal autoimmune disease.

Duane Peterson, a spokesman for Van de Kamp, said, “When we receive the allegations, we’ll review them to see what, if any, action is appropriate.”

The lupus organizations’ letters are the latest chapter in a controversy involving Bane and the three-member state Lupus Appropriations Board headed by Marlene Bane. The board has dispensed $6.2 million in state funds to scientists since 1977 to do research on lupus.

Bane angered the lupus support groups when he agreed earlier this year to end the board’s funding, apparently because he was upset that the state Department of Health Services had determined that some of the panel’s decisions raised questions of fairness and favoritism.

Grants Questioned

In his letter to Van de Kamp, Wallace questioned $801,473 in lupus board grants for research by Dr. Raymond L. Teplitz, a longtime friend of the Banes and a contributor to the assemblyman’s campaign committee. Teplitz received most of the money while he was at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte; he transferred to UC Davis in mid-1985.

Wallace, a Los Angeles rheumatologist and co-author of a recent lupus text, said an index of medical publications listed four articles by Teplitz on lupus since 1980.

“Their contributions to lupus were marginal and they appeared in obscure journals,” Wallace said, citing findings by the Lupus Foundation of America’s Medical Advisory Board. Further, he said the board “estimates that at most, about $20,000 could have been spent on the work that was published.”

He asked Van de Kamp to audit Teplitz’s files “to see if state monies were properly used.”

Teplitz, who previously declined to discuss his research with The Times, could not be reached Wednesday. Bane has said that Teplitz did “real good work on testing whether people have lupus” and that “his basic research proved basic facts about lupus.”

Bane is also the volunteer chairman of the National Lupus Erythematosus Foundation, which was founded in 1957 to promote lupus research and fund lupus clinics. Bane took over the organization in the mid-1970s; Marlene Bane, who suffers from lupus, is also on its non-salaried board.

The nonprofit foundation, which is operated from Bane’s legislative office in Van Nuys, has raised several hundred thousand dollars from various sources, including special interests regulated by the state.

Annual Meeting Required

Although the foundation’s bylaws stipulate that its board of directors meet annually, Wallace said one member told him that he had not spoken to the Banes or been told about any board meetings in 15 years.

Three other board members, including state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana) and Rosalind Wyman, a former Los Angeles city councilwoman, told The Times on Wednesday that they had not been contacted for a meeting or other foundation matters for more than a decade. Wyman and board member Norma Holland of Placentia expressed surprise that they were still listed as directors.

Between 1984 and 1987, the most recent year for which records were available, the foundation dispersed only $10,000--which went to the Lupus Foundation of America, Wallace said. In 1983, it gave Teplitz $100,000 for his research.

It “provides no services for lupus patients, supports no ongoing research and has no speakers program,” Wallace said. Each year, $3,000 to $7,000 is spent on overhead, the foundation reports. It listed a balance of $274,092 at the end of 1987.

Wallace asked Van de Kamp to freeze the assets of the foundation “until these funds can be allocated to lupus.”