NIH Report Revealed "Ethical Problems Are More Systemic and Severe Than Previously Known"

The Los Angeles Times reported that an internal review conducted by the National Institutes of Health showed that 44 of 81 scientists investigated violated the then current NIH policies on conflicts of interest. NIH Director Elias Zerhouni wrote to senior members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that "we discovered cases of employees who consulted with research entities without seeking required approval, consulted in areas that appeared to conflict with official duties, or consulted in situations where the main benefit was the ability of the employer to invoke the name of the NIH as an affiliation."
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said that the "ethical problems [at the NIH] are more systemic and severe than previously known."
The 44 people found in this effort may be but a fraction of NIH employees and officials who had conflicts of interest. The LA Times referred to "industry consulting deals that involved hundreds of agency scientists." However, the NIH would not provide Congress with documentation of the extent of this problem. The 81 identified for the current review were derived from responses from 20 companies to letters sent by the Congressional committee inquiring about NIH employees who had consulted for them. Many other companies were not contacted.
Also keep in mind that the policies the individuals mentioned above violated had already been substantially relaxed in the 1990's from the previously stringent rules. Furthermore, individuals previously identified by LA Times investigative reporters as having major conflicts of interests included not just rank-and-file scientists, but leaders of NIH laboratories and divisions. (See the LA Times summary article from December, 2004 here, and this Health Care Renewal post, which recounts how Director Zerhouni concluded that the NIH had a systemic problem, and refers to many previous posts on the subject.)
One can only hope that Director Zerhouni stands firm against those who are still protesting his new, more rigorous conflict of interest rules (See relevant posts here, here, and here). Too much damage already has been done to this once proud institution.

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