National Institutes Of Health

In a bold but uncertain bid to spur cancer treatment, federal medical researchers announced a $100-million project Tuesday to begin cataloging the disease's molecular underpinnings. The Cancer Genome Atlas, as the project is called, will start as a three-year pilot program to identify the genes behind two or three types of cancerous tumors. If the research proves promising and affordable, it would be expanded to study thousands of cancerous tumors.

Reversing course, the government's premier health research agency has reinstated a medical safety expert who was fired after raising allegations of scientific misconduct and sexual harassment in federal AIDS research, his lawyer said Friday. The National Institutes of Health's reinstatement of Dr. Jonathan Fishbein settles a two-year battle that prompted congressional and federal investigations.

Three leading House Democrats on Friday asked the General Accounting Office to investigate consulting fees and stock options paid by drug companies to employees at the National Institutes of Health. Citing details from a Los Angeles Times article published last month, the House members called for an "investigation into potential conflicts of interest" at the federal government's center for medical research on humans.

Top-level officials at the National Institutes of Health -- amid sharp criticism from congressional leaders -- have stopped accepting consulting fees and stock options from drug companies, the agency's leader told a Senate hearing on Thursday. "As of this moment, no director has any outside biotechnology or pharmaceutical relationship," said the leader of the NIH, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, referring to the directors of the agency's research institutes and centers. "Those have been stopped." Sen.

The National Institutes of Health has not yet reported to Congress how much money its scientists have made consulting for drug companies despite a request made more than two months ago, a subcommittee chairman complained Wednesday. Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, asked Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson for his assistance in forcing disclosure.

Two leading Democrats in the House of Representatives called on 10 major drug companies Thursday to reveal how much they had paid in consulting fees and stock options to scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The request comes as congressional investigators have been frustrated in their recent attempts to pry the information from NIH officials. Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, and Rep.

Federal ethics lawyers announced Monday that scores of high-level scientists at the National Institutes of Health will now be required to publicly disclose any income from drug companies or other outside employers. Lawyers from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics said that all deputy directors, scientific directors and clinical-research directors at the NIH would now have to state their outside income and other assets on a yearly basis.

The National Institutes of Health should prohibit its top officials from accepting many consulting payments from drug companies, and require public disclosure of any payments made to such officials, former NIH Director Harold E. Varmus said on Friday. Appearing before the NIH's blue-ribbon panel on conflict of interest, Varmus also said the agency should discourage its scientists from accepting large amounts of money from companies or spending too much time on nongovernment work.

The National Institutes of Health should publicly disclose all drug company payments to its scientists, and should bar employees from accepting stock or stock options from industry, according to a draft report from a panel examining conflict of interest at the agency. The report stops short of calling for a ban on company consulting deals with NIH scientists, but it recommends that the agency block top officials from participating in such arrangements.

Senior officials at the National Institutes of Health should be barred from accepting income of any kind from drug companies, a panel examining conflict of interest at the agency recommended in its final report Thursday. The long-anticipated report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Conflict of Interest Policies places the greatest pressure to date on NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni to toughen agency policies. The report urged Zerhouni to adopt the recommendations "as quickly as possible."