Loose lips may sink ships — but they certainly don’t sink clinics running drug trials.
The New Jersey geriatrician who admitted violating confidentiality agreements with his pharmaceutical clients still runs a clinic performing experimental drug trials on Alzheimer’s patients.
Dr. Joel Ross’ clinic, the Memory Enhancement Center of America, in Eatontown, NJ, has eight to 10 trials going on at the moment, with big-pharmaceutical clients, he said Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, where he has testified that he gave accused inside trader Mathew Martoma illegal tips on drug trials being run by Elan and Wyeth.
Ross, who has entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the government, testified that he gave confidential information to Martoma and other investors as part of his lucrative consulting business through six expert networks.
Despite that admission, which first came to light last year, big pharma clients continue to do business with him.
To be sure, a number of drug companies did pull their business from the clinic when Ross’ role in the case was made public last summer.
“I lost a significant amount of business,” he told jurors Wednesday.
A lawyer for Ross told The Post that about 40 percent of his clients — including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson — dropped him.
Other clinics he was involved with also shut down.
Two pharma giants, Merck and Hoffman-LaRoche, clinic clients, according to its website, could be reached.
Ross did not give Martoma the information that SAC allegedly used to make $276 million in profits and avert losses on Elan and Wyeth shares after getting early word on the negative drug trial results.
The government alleges the key illegal tips came from Dr. Sidney Gilman — the star witness against the former SAC portfolio manager.
Ross seemed to corroborate what Gilman is expected to say.
On the eve of a conference where the trial results were to be made public, Ross and other doctors involved in the trials first learned of the results.
Ross arranged to meet Martoma at the conference to give him the lowdown.
But Martoma — who allegedly had already sold SAC’s Elan and Wyeth stakes and shorted the companies — seemed to already know everything Ross was telling him.
“It was like he was in the room with me and the slides I had just seen,” Ross told the court.