On Feb. 3, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni issued a moratorium on researchers receiving compensation for "extracurricular" activites, and forbade NIH employees from holding stock in biotech companies. This was in response to a brewing scandal about certain researchers who allegedly entered into contracts with pharma companies without notifying the NIH of their deals.
Only 20 days later, about 80% of the scientists who were under investigation for such dealings have been exonerated. It turns out that a lot of the raised eyebrows came about because the documents turned over to inquiring Congressmen by biotech companies did not encompass the same dates as the data supplied by the NIH. The biotech companies included all transactions through 2004, while the NIH produced records through 2003, so there were some names that were on the biotech list and not on the NIH list only because they entered into a contract in 2004. Most of these had actually told the NIH about the arrangement (as they were supposed to) and had been approved.
That leaves a small handful of scientists (20 or so?) whose names have not yet been cleared. I suspect that most of them will be cleared, and it might just be a very very few who circumvented rules.
Those who recruit scientists for the NIH have stated that the moratorium has deterred some scientists from working there, so it will be interesting if we see a sudden about-face from NIH in the policy. I hope it's not that facile. There seem to be some questions about the rules regarding payment, so this is actually a great opportunity for Dr. Zerhouni and those at NIH to try to clarify the rules, which are a bit vague. So my simple plea is for Dr. Zerhouni to lift the current ban, with the caveat that he immediately appoint certain persons to a task force to evaluate the existing rules and see how they can be improved.
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