WASHINGTON — Three senior researchers at the center of a controversy at the National Institutes of Health over moonlighting for the pharmaceutical industry are leaving the government, officials said.
The departures come at a time when the NIH is implementing tougher conflict-of-interest rules that prohibit all agency employees from accepting consulting fees, stock options or any compensation from the industry.
The three departing researchers are: Dr. H. Bryan Brewer Jr., a vascular-disease specialist at the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; Dr. Lance A. Liotta, a laboratory chief at the National Cancer Institute; and Liotta's research partner, Emanuel F. "Chip" Petricoin III, who has been based at NIH but is employed by the Food and Drug Administration.
Brewer, 66, is taking a position with a research institute in the Washington area, according to an e-mail distributed Tuesday to agency employees. From 2001 to 2003, Brewer accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medicines, government and corporate records show. His paid arrangements with the companies were approved in advance by the NIH, an agency spokeswoman said.
As part of his federal role, Brewer helped draft national guidelines urging more aggressive use of drugs to lower cholesterol. In an article published Aug. 21, 2003, in the American Journal of Cardiology, Brewer extolled the safety and effectiveness of a new cholesterol drug, Crestor, without disclosing to readers that he was a paid consultant to the manufacturer, AstraZeneca. Company sales representatives later distributed copies of Brewer's article to doctors nationwide.
Brewer did not respond to messages seeking his comment for this article.
Petricoin and Liotta will join the life-sciences division of George Mason University's College of Arts and Sciences in Manassas, Va., according to a university announcement. "We are excited that Drs. Liotta and Petricoin are joining us in our mission to build a research program of national prominence," said university President Alan Merten.
Liotta and Petricoin told colleagues this week of their pending departures in separate e-mails. Liotta, a past deputy director of the NIH who in recent years has been chief of the cancer institute's laboratory of pathology, said that accepting the new position "was a very hard decision to make," but that he "could not pass up the exciting opportunity."
