Paid Consulting and Conflicts of Interest at NIH

By Ned Feder | Filed under letter | July 26, 2005

Memo from Ned Feder (10 pages plus attachments), then a Scientific Review Administrator at NIH, to Elias Zerhouni, Director, NIH, July 26, 2005. (The memo was written before Feder retired from NIH to become an investigator at POGO.) In his memo Feder challenges Director Zerhouni to correct serious deficiencies in the handling of conflicts of interest in the NIH’s intramural program. Feder suggests that one step in dealing with these deficiencies is to disclose as much as possible, as quickly as possible, about the details of past consulting by NIH scientists and their possible conflicts of interest. In April 2007 POGO sent a copy of the memo to the Inspector General, DHHS (see below, April 4, 2007); a few weeks previously, the IG had announced that he would be examining these problems (see below, March 20 and 23).