Conflicts of Interest at the NIH: No Easy Solution (Essays; National Institutes of Health‪)‬

Editor's Note: On February 2, 2005, the National Institutes of Health changed course on conflicts of interest and prohibited its scientists from owning stock in or working as consultants with pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies. The following essay, sent to press before the new policy was announced, recommends a very different approach. The author stands by the recommendations. A controversy over conflicts of interest in the intramural research program at the National Institute of Health erupted in December 2003 when the Los Angeles Times published several articles on consulting arrangements between administrators and senior scientists at the NIH and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. (1) The intramural program consists of scientists, postdoctoral students, fellows, and research staff hired by the NIH to conduct basic and applied research, as opposed to the extramural program of research grants and contracts awarded to other institutions. The articles alleged that some officials received hundreds of thousands of dollars from consulting deals that apparently did not violate any of the NIH's ethics rules pertaining to outside activities. Two of the NIH'S directors allegedly received fees or stock options worth several hundred thousand dollars. Most of the officials who had these arrangements did not make any public disclosures. The relationships were possible because Zerhouni's predecessor, Harold Varmus, had loosened the NIH's ethics rules in 1995 to encourage intramural researchers to consult with industry and to recruit and retain top biomedical scientists.