Cleveland, OH - Dr Eric Topol is leaving the Cleveland Clinic to be a genetics professor at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Medical School, according to the Associated Press (AP). The AP cites the dean of medicine at CWRU, Dr Ralph I Horwitz, as saying that Topol's "departure from the clinic is imminent." Topol is already a professor at CWRU.

Last week, a widely reprinted AP story by Janet McConnaughey cited a statement from Merck that Topol had obtained legal representation from Mark Lanier, the Texas lawyer who won the first lawsuit against Merck in the Vioxx controversy. According to a Merck spokesperson cited in the AP story, a Merck lawyer told a New Orleans judge in the current ongoing Vioxx lawsuit in that city that Lanier had said that Topol was leaving the Cleveland Clinic, that Lanier had announced he was Topol's "personal lawyer over his departure from the Cleveland Clinic," and that Lanier had indicated he was "trying to get Topol to work for him as a consultant."

In a response to the earlier reports, Topol, in an email to the AP, denied that he had been asked to work as a consultant: "I will NOT work as a consultant for any plaintiff lawyers—I have NOT been asked to do so and have CATEGORICALLY refused all invitations to do so for years since the Vioxx issues arose. My only deposition (first federal case) was because I had been subpoenaed."

The AP story also said that Lanier confirmed that he had not asked Topol to be a consultant and that Topol was still working at the Cleveland Clinic. Neither Topol nor the Cleveland Clinic would comment about his future status at the clinic.

Topol is the editor-in-chief of www.theheart.org.