As a result, the NIH is one of the most secretive agencies in the federal government when it comes to financial disclosures. A survey by The Times of 34 other federal agencies found that all had higher percentages of eligible employees filing reports on outside income. In several agencies, every top-paid official submitted public reports.
The trend toward secrecy among NIH scientists goes beyond their failure to report outside income. Many of them also routinely sign confidentiality agreements with their corporate employers, putting their outside work under tight wraps.
Gallin, Germain, Katz, Schlom and Trent each said that their consulting deals were authorized beforehand by NIH officials and had no adverse effect on their government work. Eastman declined to comment for this article.
Dr. Arnold S. Relman, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said that private consulting by government scientists posed "legitimate cause for concern."
"If I am a scientist working in an NIH lab and I get a lot of money in consulting fees, then I'm going to want to make sure that the company does very well," Relman said.
Relman and others in the field of medical ethics said company payments raised important questions about public health decisions made throughout the NIH:
* Will judgment calls on the safety of individual patients be affected by commercial interests?
* Can study participants trust that experimental treatments are chosen on merit and not because of officials' personal financial interests?
* Will scientists shade their interpretations of study results to favor their clients?
* Will officials favor their clients over other companies that seek NIH grants or collaborations?
Conflict-of-interest questions also arise in the potentially lucrative awarding of patents.
Thomas J. Kindt, the director of in-house research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, accepted $63,000 in consulting fees from a New York biotechnology company, Innovir Laboratories, and wound up an inventor on one of its patents.
Asked why the government received no consideration, Kindt said that he had contributed to the "basic idea" while using vacation time.
"No work was done on it as a government employee," said Kindt, whose annual salary at the NIH is $191,200. His consulting with Innovir was approved by NIH officials, Kindt said.
