The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?
This article is a very important read. These are the types of conditions that lead to tragedies like lobotomy. Everyone elses interests come before that of the patient.
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The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?
By David Willman Times Staff Writer
For 15 million Americans, it is a daily ritual: gulping down a pill to reduce cholesterol.
They do it because their doctors tell them to. Their doctors, in turn, rely on recommendations from the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) and its scientists, such as Dr. H. Bryan Brewer Jr.
Brewer, as a leader at the NIH, was part of a team that gave the nation new cholesterol guidelines that were expected to prompt millions more people to take the daily pill. He also has written favorably of a specific brand of cholesterol medication, Crestor, which recently proved controversial.
What doctors were not told for years is this: While making recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the companies that sell the drugs. Government and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor.
...
But a July report by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics concluded that the NIH was beset by a "permissive culture." The office found that 40% of the 155 outside payments to NIH employees it sampled randomly had not been approved in advance or accounted for within the agency.
Zerhouni proposed another compromise: a one-year "moratorium" on industry consulting. Details of the moratorium have not been completed.
Last month, nearly 200 NIH researchers said in a letter to Zerhouni that a permanent ban would make the scientific staff — who are paid between $130,000 and $200,000 a year by the government — "second-class citizens in the biomedical community."
Dr. Raynard S. Kington, a deputy NIH director, said Tuesday that the agency had "moved actually quite fast" to carry out tougher restrictions. Yet he acknowledged that unless new rules were put into effect, perhaps in the new year, the scientists were free to continue collecting stock options and consulting fees from drug companies.
"Fundamentally," Kington said, "we are operating under the same rules."
link
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The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?
By David Willman Times Staff Writer
For 15 million Americans, it is a daily ritual: gulping down a pill to reduce cholesterol.
They do it because their doctors tell them to. Their doctors, in turn, rely on recommendations from the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) and its scientists, such as Dr. H. Bryan Brewer Jr.
Brewer, as a leader at the NIH, was part of a team that gave the nation new cholesterol guidelines that were expected to prompt millions more people to take the daily pill. He also has written favorably of a specific brand of cholesterol medication, Crestor, which recently proved controversial.
What doctors were not told for years is this: While making recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the companies that sell the drugs. Government and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor.
...
But a July report by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics concluded that the NIH was beset by a "permissive culture." The office found that 40% of the 155 outside payments to NIH employees it sampled randomly had not been approved in advance or accounted for within the agency.
Zerhouni proposed another compromise: a one-year "moratorium" on industry consulting. Details of the moratorium have not been completed.
Last month, nearly 200 NIH researchers said in a letter to Zerhouni that a permanent ban would make the scientific staff — who are paid between $130,000 and $200,000 a year by the government — "second-class citizens in the biomedical community."
Dr. Raynard S. Kington, a deputy NIH director, said Tuesday that the agency had "moved actually quite fast" to carry out tougher restrictions. Yet he acknowledged that unless new rules were put into effect, perhaps in the new year, the scientists were free to continue collecting stock options and consulting fees from drug companies.
"Fundamentally," Kington said, "we are operating under the same rules."
link
posted by Christine at Wednesday, December 22, 2004
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