National Institutes of Health criticised for not preventing conflicts of interest

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7456.10-b

BMJ 2004;329:10 (3 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7456.10-b

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National Institutes of Health criticised for not preventing conflicts of interest

Janice Hopkins Tanne

New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been criticisedby members of Congress for letting employees accept lucrativeconsultancy assignments from drug and biotechnology companies.

On 22 June the director of the NIH, Dr Elias Zerhouni, toldthe House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,"In retrospect, there was not a sufficient safeguard againstthe perception of conflict of interest." He said the NIH wouldtighten rules about employees' consultancy work.

The NIH's troubles began on 7 December 2003. In a front pagearticle the Los Angeles Times described how a small number ofthe institutes' 17 000 employees had received millions of dollarsof income from outside sources since 1995 ( 2003 December 7;sectA: 1).

That in itself was not illegal, although the public and evenmany senators and representatives were probably unaware of thepractice.

Restrictions on outside work by NIH employees were loosened. . . [Full text of this article]

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