Nih

The director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who last month said new ethics restrictions against owning biomedical company stocks would prompt his departure, has decided to stay in his federal post. Dr. James F. Battey Jr. said Thursday that he would continue to lead the deafness institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health.

A Duke University physician, whose concerns about some of the new, more stringent conflict-of-interest rules at the National Institutes of Health had delayed his decision to become an agency director, said Tuesday that he would start his federal position next week. Dr. David A. Schwartz said he decided to accept the job as director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences after several recent conversations with the NIH's director, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Tuesday that he was reviewing -- and might soften -- a strict new conflict-of-interest policy that had led to complaints from some scientists at the National Institutes of Health. "There have been concerns raised," Leavitt told reporters during a question-and-answer session in his office. "We are in the process now of analyzing those comments, and then we'll make a judgment."

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health who are fighting new rules that would end their financial ties to the drug industry have hired, at a favorable rate, a law and lobbying firm that also represents the companies. The hiring has added firepower to the government scientists' campaign, which already is getting results: Senior aides to NIH Director Elias A.

Elias A. Zerhouni, the director of the National Institutes of Health, is being battered by his own scientists and by Congress to ease the strict conflict-of-interest rules he imposed last month. Zerhouni should stand them off. Before he laid down the law, staff scientists were accepting lucrative consulting fees and other deals with the very biomedical industries whose products they were supposed to be independently reviewing.

Re "Rules Are Killing Good Science," Commentary, March 14: I love how Henry I. Miller feels that engaging in conduct that earns "hundreds of thousands of dollars" is unlikely to be related to any sort of misconduct. It's only "outside part-time employment or volunteer work, as is largely the case in academia." I don't know what world Mr. Miller lives in, but I'm an academic and I don't get those kind of offers. Maybe it's because I'm not naive enough to think they're without strings. It seems Miller thinks National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni is a "mediocre" bureaucrat who can't "stand up to [his]

Citing a desire to avoid an "undue burden on employees," the National Institutes of Health is exempting its temporary researchers from a pending requirement to divest stock holdings in biomedical companies. The agency this week also told permanent staff researchers that they had an additional six months -- until early October -- to dispose of such holdings. The adjustments to the NIH's new and more restrictive conflict-of-interest policy were announced in an internal memo by Dr. Raynard S.

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.

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.

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.