NIH officials have not adequately disciplined agency scientists found to have violated ethics rules, members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations said at a hearing last Wednesday (Weiss, Washington Post, 9/14).
Only two of the 44 NIH scientists found to have violated ethics rules on outside consulting agreements with health care companies face possible prosecution for criminal activity, and they remain employed by the agency. Trey Sunderland, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, provided Pfizer with human tissue samples in exchange for payments in violation of HHS ethics rules and federal laws, according to a preliminary report released in June by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Senior NIH researcher Thomas Walsh accepted more than $100,000 in unauthorized fees from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, according to an internal NIH report. The report found that Walsh received outside income from 25 companies from 1999 through 2004 and failed to report the income to NIH. In addition, Walsh led studies sponsored by NIH that involved medication manufactured by some of the companies from which he received fees, according to the report. The other 42 scientists received reprimands or were allowed to retire without punishment (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 9/13).
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