Healthy Skepticism Library item: 458

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Publication type: news

Fox M.
Health Agency Proposes Ethics Crackdown
Reuters 2004 Jun 22

Full text:

Scientists at the federal government’s top health-research agency would face new limits on their stock ownership and outside consulting under a conflict-of-interest crackdown the agency proposed on Tuesday.

The proposal is a response to ethics probes and revelations that some employees of the National Institutes of Health had lucrative outside contracts with drug and biotechnology companies, NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni told Congress.

“I have reached the conclusion that drastic changes are needed as the result of an intensive review by NIH of our ethics program,” Zerhouni told a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

“In retrospect, there was not a sufficient safeguard against the perception of conflict of interest,” he said. But he added he did not believe NIH employees broke any rules.

Members of the congressional committee read out figures showing that some NIH researchers made millions of dollars from outside activities.

Zerhouni said he was working with the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, to come up with new rules aiming to preserve the agency’s reputation.

The NIH is considered the world’s leading research institution, with an annual budget of $28 million and 18,000 employees.

Zerhouni said the rules under development would prohibit agency scientists from holding stock in individual biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, as done at the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The agency would also impose new guidelines on honors awarded by outside groups to agency scientists, to ensure that they are not bribes or payoffs in disguise.

He would also prevent NIH scientists who decide on research grants to outsiders from consulting with industry for pay. Furthermore, no NIH employee could sit on a corporate board in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Consulting and speaking for nonprofits that do not receive NIH grants would also be forbidden, he said, which is line with his goal to prevent any perception of outside influence.

But Zerhouni said he wanted to keep the NIH a place that attracts the best and brightest researchers, despite the proposed new limits that could reduce their overall income.

“For sure we will have people who will leave,” as a result of the new rules, he said.

He said he would ask Congress for a budget that would let him pay top scientists salaries competitive with universities and the private sector.

He cast the rules as less than a blanket prohibition on outside income and relationships for all NIH employees.

An absolute ban would punish bright and promising researchers who are not breaking any rules or laws, he said.

The whole issue had “damaged the morale, especially of the over 95 percent of scientists who have given NIH their lives,” Zerhouni said. “The core value of the NIH is to serve the public.”

Tuesday’s hearing is one in a series chaired by Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Jim Greenwood.

Zerhouni said some of the cases of outside activities took him by surprise and were still under investigation. For instance, committee staffers said that Dr. Michael Brownstein, chief of the Laboratory of Genetics at the National Institute of Mental Health, had earned $2 million from four biotech companies as a member of the board or scientific adviser.

Brownstein, who is listed as the patent owner on several DNA-related inventions, declined comment.