National Institutes Of Health

Federal prosecutors on Monday charged a senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health with conflict of interest for taking $285,000 in fees from a drug company that was involved with his government research. Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III is the first official in 14 years to be prosecuted for conflict of interest at the NIH, an agency rocked in recent years by revelations of widespread financial ties to the drug industry. Sunderland accepted the fees from 1998 to 2003 from Pfizer Inc.

A senior government scientist from the National Institutes of Health who took about $300,000 in unauthorized payments from a drug company pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge that he committed a criminal conflict of interest. The admission by Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III came after years of denials by his attorneys and six months after the scientist had asserted his constitutional right against self-incrimination to a congressional subcommittee.

A federal judge on Friday spared a convicted National Institutes of Health researcher, Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III, any prison time but ordered him to hand over $300,000 in illicit payments he took from a major drug company. U.S. District Judge J. Frederic Motz also sentenced Sunderland to two years of supervised probation and 400 hours of community service. "Obviously, this was unacceptable conduct," Motz said. Sunderland had pleaded guilty Dec.

Ethics specialists at the National Institutes of Health have requested an outside investigation of an Alzheimer's disease researcher who accepted more than $500,000 from a drug company without seeking permission or reporting the income to the agency as required, according to government officials familiar with the matter. In response, the investigations unit of the inspector general's office at the Department of Health and Human Services has opened an inquiry into the researcher, Dr. P.

Under a far-reaching reform to be announced today, all staff scientists at the National Institutes of Health will be banned from accepting any consulting fees or other income from drug companies, and the employees must also divest industry stock holdings, officials said.

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, said that rules he announced Tuesday banning all staff scientists from taking drug-company fees would help the federal research agency set the highest ethical example. Referring to the pervasive intermingling of pharmaceutical marketing with medical research nationally, Zerhouni said the time had come for the NIH to provide "at least one source of public health information in the country that can be completely trusted."

The director of the National Institutes of Health -- describing consulting payments from drug companies as a "systemic problem" that threatened the integrity of his agency -- has called for a summit of government and academic leaders to address conflicts of interest throughout American medical research. Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni last week banned all of his agency's scientists from accepting consulting fees, stock or any other compensation from the biomedical industry.

A strict new conflict-of-interest policy at the National Institutes of Health has provoked renewed protest from staff scientists at the nation's premier institution for medical research, but a top official said Wednesday it was unlikely that the rules would be significantly changed as a result. The new rules, announced this month by NIH Director Elias A.

When a group of senior government scientists announced their opposition to new and restrictive conflict-of-interest rules at the National Institutes of Health last week, they complained that the agency's mission was in danger of being irreparably compromised. They said the new rules, which ban NIH employees from accepting consulting fees or stock options from biomedical companies, would victimize even food handlers and elevator operators.

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.