Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14478

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Silverman E.
NIH Scolded Employee For Flagging Conflicts
Pharmalot 2008 Oct 22
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/nih-scolded-employee-for-flagging-conflicts/

Full text:

Three years ago, Ned Feder began complaining publicly about what he perceived as the National Institutes of Health’s failure to monitor conflicts of interest involving academic researchers, who receive government grants for drug research while simultaneously getting paid by pharma for consulting, research or speaking.

And so the scientific review administrator, who at the time worked for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, began writing memos to NIH officials and then letters to various publications – Nature, The Scientist and The Los Angeles Times – to raise public awareness. “A proposal to require readily accessible financial disclosure will probably be fought tooth and nail by those who benefit from leaving things as they are: some university researchers and administrators, officials at the NIH and scientists in the industry,” Feder wrote in a September 2005 letter to Nature (http://www.pharmalot.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/feder-nature.jpg).

What was the NIH’s reaction? Feder was reprimanded for signing his letters as an NIH employee (you can read the official reprimand here and numerous related documents here. Meanwhile, the NIH allegedly failed to address the underlying issue Feder wanted to correct – which the US Senate Finance Committee has been busy investigating for much of this year. Among the targets – several prominent academic psychiatrists at Stanford, Emory, Harvard and Brown universities, and a Columbia University cardiologist.

Remember that, since 1995, an NIH regulation has required scientists to report to their universities any “significant financial interests” they hold in research projects financed by the agency. Those are defined as income or equity interest of $10,000 from a company or 5-percent ownership of its stock. The universities, in turn, are required to tell the NIH whether they were able to manage or eliminate the conflicts in order to avoid bias in the research findings (here are the rules – http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coifaq.htm).

We have asked the NIH to comment, but a spokesman says personnel matters can’t discussed. As to Feder, who retired from NIH two years ago and now works as a staff scientist at the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit. “I’ve been pointing out these problems for years and, unfortunately, they ignored it,” he tells us. “I don’t feel bitter. I feel much less strongly about the reprimand than I do that they ignored my good advice.”