This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
NIH may ban consulting work
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The National Institutes of Health is said to be considering banning its scientists from doing any consulting work with pharmaceutical companies for a year, the AP reported.
The wire service said the ban is “a surprise move as the agency struggles to prevent conflicts of interest.”
The moratorium was supposed to have been officially announced last week, the AP report said, but it would not go into effect until signed by Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services.
In an interview with the AP, Raynard Kington, the deputy director of the NIH, said the NIH needs time to revamp policies on when its scientists can have relationships with industry and how much oversight NIH needs to provide on those relationships.
The moratorium is said to include between 60 and 100 consulting arrangements that NIH ethics officers have already approved for scientists, AP reported.
Recently, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education issued a new set of guidelines that stringently define conflicts of interest for physicians who speak at a medical convention or have influence over the content of presentations. For more on that, click here.