CONGRESS Both parties criticize ethics policies at NIH

Drug company payments to some scientists don't have to be reported.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress from both parties criticized conflict-of-interest policies at the National Institutes of Health and told the agency's director that the recent recommendations of his blue ribbon advisory panel fall short of what is needed.
After listening to the criticisms at a hearing on Capitol Hill, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni conceded for the first time that the agency's policies had "failed."
Zerhouni said that, as of this week, he is seeking to force an additional 500 senior employees to begin publicly disclosing any fees paid to them by drug companies or other parties. Two months ago Zerhouni compelled public disclosure from 93 other NIH leaders.
'Option of corruption'
But members of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee said the NIH is not making a serious enough effort to stop or to publicly air the flow of drug company payments to agency scientists. Leaders of NIH have encouraged what one congressman called "the option of corruption."
Other subcommittee members cited examples of how NIH officials or lawyers with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have not cooperated with congressional investigators.
The hearing Wednesday opened a new phase of the controversy focusing on payments from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to NIH scientists. The recommendations last week of Zerhouni's blue ribbon panel did not satisfy the members of Congress who spoke Wednesday. The panel proposed banning paid consulting deals for top NIH management, and banning payments of stock or stock options to all NIH employees.
However, it would allow many agency scientists to continue consulting for industry while not reporting their income publicly.
The subcommittee has scheduled another hearing for next Tuesday.
Newspaper article
The hearings have been called in response to Dec. 7, 2003, articles in the Los Angeles Times, documenting hundreds of payments by drug companies to NIH scientists, totaling millions of dollars, and reporting that more than 94 percent of the agency's top-paid employees were not required to publicly disclose outside income.
More than 4,000 of those employees would remain exempt from public disclosure under the new initiative announced Wednesday by Zerhouni.
"It is clear from the cases we have reviewed that some NIH scientists are either very close to the line [of propriety] or have crossed the line," said Rep. James C. Greenwood, the chairman of the House subcommittee. "This has been a persistent problem at NIH for years -- not because of confusion [about ethics rules], but because of a deliberate, permissive attitude."
Greenwood announced that NIH officials and attorneys for the Department of Health and Human Services have yet to divulge all of the payments by drug companies to NIH employees, and that the subcommittee would now request the information from the companies.