Cook County Health officials for nearly 10 months have halted new clinical trials at one of the nation’s leading HIV/AIDS research centers as they investigate “concerns” about a nonprofit organization that for decades has managed the county’s medical research grants.
The county in April told researchers at CORE Center, a clinic based on Chicago’s Near West Side medical district and run by Cook County Health and Rush Medical Center, that they were to “pause” starting new clinical trials while awaiting results of a county review of the Hektoen Institute for Medical Research, a nonprofit founded in the 1940s by Cook County hospital physicians, according to CORE staff interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times.
