FOIA Request Turns Up Interest Conflicts
Medical headlines these days focus on the withdrawal of popular prescription medicines from the market, or on new studies suggesting unpublicized risks. The Los Angeles Times, after looking at thousands of pages of documents obtained from the National Institutes of Health through FOIA requests, provided another perspective. It reported that at least 530 government scientists at the medical research agency have taken fees, stock or stock options from biomedical companies in the last five years. One senior NIH researcher received over a half million dollars from Pfizer while studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with the company. He subsequently endorsed the use of an Alzheimer’s drug marketed by Pfizer without indicating his financial ties.