Major misconduct at NIH

Post #258,911 by JayMehaffey 6/14/06 2:10:32 PM Reply	Major misconduct at NIH A world-renowned Alzheimer's disease researcher at the National Institutes of Health took advantage of the agency's lax oversight by improperly forwarding valuable tissue specimens to a pharmaceutical company and then accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from it, according to congressional investigators. Trey Sunderland, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, failed to tell agency officials about his arrangement with the drug giant Pfizer Inc., as required by federal rules, the investigators concluded in a 27-page preliminary report released yesterday. Pretty nasty. What I don't understand from reading this is why Pfizer was cleared. Even if Pfizer didn't know that Sunderland was essentially stealing the samples, they should have known it would be a conflict of interest for Sunderland to deal with Pfizer like he did. Jay
Post #258,913 by jake123 6/14/06 2:13:22 PM Reply	That's because your gov is highly resistant to the idea that commercial entities can be capable of doing bad things. Part of the overall CEO-ocracy... :P --\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca \n [link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] [link\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] \n Kingston Ontario Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #258,917 by Andrew Grygus 6/14/06 2:21:04 PM 6/14/06 2:22:13 PM Reply	Pfizer? Since when has 'conflict of interest' . . . . . been a concern? Practically every contact Big Pharma has with health and medical professionals is a conflict of interest, from research to promotion to sales. You simply presume conflict of interest without fear of being wrong - it's the normal mode of operation. If you wanted to prosecute this rigorously, you'd just have to shut down Big Pharma entirely. About all that can be done is jump on medical professionals when they step seriously out of line. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx] Edited by Andrew Grygus June 14, 2006, 02:22:13 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #258,973 by inthane-chan 6/14/06 7:16:40 PM Reply	If I wasn't NDA'ed, I'd have some serious stories to tell.

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