NIH : Public Servant or Private Marketer?
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Date: 12/23/04
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Date: 22 Dec 2004 20:17:05 -0800
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nih22dec22,0,751965
7.story?coll=la-home-headlines
December 22, 2004 E-mail story Print
The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?
Doctors have long relied on the NIH to set medical standards. But with
its researchers accepting fees and stock from drug
companies, will that change? A continuing examination by The Times
shows an unabashed mingling of science and commerce.
By David Willman, Times Staff Writer
For 15 million Americans, it is a daily ritual: gulping down a pill to
reduce cholesterol.
They do it because their doctors tell them to. Their doctors, in turn,
rely on recommendations from the National Institutes of Health and its
scientists, such as Dr. H. Bryan Brewer Jr.
Brewer, as a leader at the NIH, was part of a team that gave the nation
new cholesterol guidelines that were expected to prompt millions more
people to take the daily
pill. He also has written favorably of a specific brand of cholesterol
medication, Crestor, which recently proved controversial.
What doctors were not told for years is this: While making
recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the
companies that sell the drugs. Government
and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about
$114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing
cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor.
Brewer was far from alone in taking industry's money: At least 530
government scientists at the NIH, the nation's preeminent agency for
medical research,
have taken fees, stock or stock options from biomedical companies in
the last five years, records show.
NIH Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni has told Congress that outside work
should be allowed if "the scientist is giving advice in an area ...
that is not part of his official duties."
Information gathered by a congressional committee, in addition to
company records and 15,000 pages of government documents
obtained by the Los Angeles Times under the Freedom of Information Act,
shows that NIH researchers have repeatedly crossed Zerhouni's line.
For example:
· Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III, a senior psychiatric researcher, took
$508,050 in fees and related income from Pfizer Inc. at the same time
that he collaborated with
Pfizer - in his government capacity - in studying patients with
Alzheimer's disease. Without declaring his affiliation with the
company, Sunderland endorsed the use of an
Alzheimer's drug marketed by Pfizer during a nationally televised
presentation at the NIH in 2003.
· Dr. Lance A. Liotta, a laboratory director at the National Cancer
Institute, was working in his official capacity with a company trying
to develop an ovarian cancer test. He then took $70,000 as a consultant
to the company's rival. Development of the cancer test stalled,
prompting a complaint from the company. The NIH backed Liotta.
· Dr. Harvey G. Klein, the NIH's top blood transfusion expert,
accepted $240,200 in fees and 76,000 stock options over the last five
years from companies developing blood-related products. During the same
period,
he wrote or spoke out about the usefulness of such products without
publicly declaring his company ties.
Announcing such ties is not required by the NIH. The agency has
encouraged outside consulting, and has allowed most of its scientists
to file confidential income disclosure forms.
Supported by the taxpayers at a cost this year of $28 billion, the NIH
oversees research with a mission to extend healthy life and to reduce
"the burdens of illness and disability." The laboratories and
offices of most NIH scientists are at the agency's woodsy, 300-acre
headquarters in Bethesda, Md., nine miles north of the White House.
The scientists at the NIH - seen by many outsiders as neutral
government experts - advise federal regulators and write hundreds of
articles for influential
medical journals. Some travel the world encouraging doctors to
prescribe a particular medication.
The flow of drug industry fees and stock options to NIH scientists was
disclosed in December 2003 in an article in The Times. The article also
explained the bureaucratic
means by which most of the payments had been kept secret from Congress,
the public and the nation's doctors.
Subsequent inquiries this year by Congress have shown that even
Zerhouni, the NIH's director, did not know the extent to which agency
scientists were being paid by industry.
When leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee felt the NIH
was not complying with a request to identify every drug industry
payment, the panel went directly to 20 companies. Those responses
revealed more than 130 consulting deals with industry that did not
appear to have the required NIH approval. One of them was the $508,050
relationship between Sunderland, the Alzheimer's researcher, and
Pfizer.
Other documents obtained this year by The Times, including programs of
industry meetings for physicians that featured NIH
scientists as speakers, reveal dozens more relationships not reported
as approved by the agency.
The companies, in marketing their products, have frequently cited the
NIH's reputation for high scientific standards. The cholesterol
guidelines, for example, have
been widely circulated by makers of anticholesterol drugs.
Dr. Curt D. Furberg, a former head of clinical trials at the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and now a professor at Wake Forest
University in North Carolina, explained how such
information reached physicians: "The [company] reps tell the doctors,
'You should follow these guidelines,' implying that you're not a good
doctor if you don't follow these guidelines."
Often NIH involvement is featured, while the government researchers'
links to the companies go unmentioned.
When Brewer, the cholesterol researcher, praised Crestor in a medical
journal in 2003, the article identified him as an NIH
scientist, not as a paid consultant to the manufacturer. In marketing
Crestor to doctors, the company cited Brewer's findings without
mentioning that he was on its payroll.
As leader of the NIH, Zerhouni has acknowledged that some past deals
have been improper. But he has also argued for allowing most agency
scientists to consult privately for industry. Close government-industry
cooperation, he says, can help
bring important products to market. He has also said that the
supplemental income from industry fees can help the NIH retain talented
scientists.
Others disagree. Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New
England Journal of Medicine, said in an interview that doctors
and patients counted on NIH scientists for "their critical, scientific,
dispassionate judgment."
"When they have financial ties to the companies that make the products
that they're supposed to be impartial about, we can't assume that,"
Angell said.
Dr. Philip R. Lee, who served Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill
Clinton as an assistant secretary of Health, said that
every NIH scientist should be prohibited from taking industry money.
"Damn it, if you work for NIH, you're not working for a drug company,
you're working for the public," Lee said. "When you have people who
have a split allegiance, undisclosed to the public, to me it is just
unthinkable."
'Should Have Mentioned It'
As chief of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's molecular
disease branch since 1976, Brewer is one of the nation's leading
experts on cholesterol.
With his rimmed glasses and shock of sandy hair, he has the bearing of
an accomplished scientist and the credentials to match. Born in Casper,
Wyo., he gained his medical degree from Stanford University and
received further training at Massachusetts General Hospital. Now 66,
Brewer has a manner that is both authoritative and plain-spoken.
But when Brewer wrote a medical journal article in 2003 helping to
introduce Crestor, he did not inform doctors about a potentially lethal
safety risk.
The product was about to be launched in the United States by
AstraZeneca, a British company that had put Brewer on a scientific
advisory board and paid him $31,000 from 2001 through 2003, according
to NIH records.
In the Aug. 21, 2003, American Journal of Cardiology, Brewer wrote that
Crestor "produced markedly greater reductions" in cholesterol levels
than three established competitor drugs tested
in clinical trials. That was true. But Brewer also concluded that
Crestor's "benefit-risk profile ... appears to be very favorable," and
that proved to be questionable.
Brewer assured doctors there was no basis for worry about a
muscle-wasting side effect called rhabdomyolysis, which can cause
kidney failure and death. (Another
anticholesterol drug, Baycol, was removed from the market in 2001 after
at least 31 deaths related to rhabdomyolysis were reported.)
Brewer wrote: "No cases of rhabdomyolysis occurred in patients
receiving [Crestor] at 10 to 40" milligrams.
But eight cases of rhabdomyolysis were reported during clinical trials
of Crestor. One of the case reports cited a patient who took the drug
in 10-milligram doses, according to records filed with the Food and
Drug Administration and reviewed by The Times under the Freedom of
Information Act.
Sales representatives for AstraZeneca have routinely provided copies of
Brewer's journal article about Crestor to doctors nationwide, a company
spokeswoman confirmed last week.
The FDA received 78 reports of rhabdomyolysis among patients taking
Crestor during its first year on the market, FDA records show. Two of
those patients died.
In contrast to Brewer's opinion in August 2003, an editorial two months
later in the Lancet, the prominent British medical journal, said:
"Physicians must tell their patients the truth about [Crestor] -
that,
compared with its competitors, [Crestor] has an inferior evidence base
supporting its safe use."
In March of this year, a U.S. consumer group, Public Citizen, called
for banning Crestor based upon several cases of kidney failure or
muscle damage. AstraZeneca defended its drug as safe and effective in
print and television ads this fall, adding that FDA management agreed.
But on Nov. 18, senior FDA epidemiologist Dr. David J. Graham told a
Senate committee that the safety of Crestor needed reassessment.
After Dr. Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen questioned Brewer's ties to
AstraZeneca and his depiction of Crestor's safety, Brewer sought to
explain himself in a July 9 memo to NIH Director Zerhouni.
Brewer told Zerhouni that he had not mentioned seven of the
rhabdomyolysis cases because those patients had received doses of
Crestor higher than the approved level. As for the patient who took the
drug at 10
milligrams, "it was not possible to definitively conclude" that Crestor
had caused her rhabdomyolysis, Brewer wrote. Other medical experts said
reviewers should report such a serious event regardless of possible
cause.
"Baycol had already been pulled for exactly that same side effect and
it was a matter of great concern," said Angell, the former
editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "If he knew about it, he
should have mentioned it."
Zerhouni sought to distance his agency from the controversy in a
written response to Wolfe, suggesting that the NIH had no
responsibility for omissions in Brewer's article about Crestor. Brewer
had produced it in his "private capacity" as a
consultant to AstraZeneca, Zerhouni wrote. That the article identified
Brewer as an NIH employee and directed reprint requests to the NIH was
"most unfortunate," Zerhouni added, acknowledging that it "gives the
reader the impression that it was done in his Government capacity."
Zerhouni's letter added: "Dr. Brewer has been counseled about these
requirements." A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, Emily Denney, said that
Brewer had remained a consultant to the company until April of this
year.
AstraZeneca was not the only client of Brewer's who made use of his NIH
title. Agency rules have long instructed employees not to use their NIH
affiliations for outside consulting work. Nonetheless, Lipid Sciences
Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif., listed
Brewer by his title on the company website - and displayed video
clips of Brewer that showed the entrance to his federal workplace, the
NIH Clinical Center.
In the clips, Brewer appeared in his white lab coat, telling viewers,
"Currently, there are a number of excellent new drugs that have come
out." In late November,
after The Times submitted questions to Brewer about his role with the
company, Lipid Sciences removed the video clips and all references to
Brewer from the website.
The company, which is developing a product that would remove
cholesterol from human cells, paid Brewer $83,000 from 2002 through
2003. As of September 2003, his consulting contract with Lipid Sciences
was to pay him $125,000 annually plus stock
options, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. The company reported in March that Brewer, who until
recently served on its board of directors and scientific advisory
board, held 411,927 stock options.
Brewer also has taken consulting fees from Pfizer, the maker of
Lipitor, the nation's biggest-selling cholesterol pill. From 2001 to
2003, Pfizer paid Brewer fees totaling
$55,500, according to NIH records. Brewer has been among the many
agency employees whose annual financial reports were kept confidential
by the NIH.
Brewer's other duties have included serving with the agency-sponsored
National Cholesterol Education Program, which issued aggressive
guidelines for reducing
cholesterol in 2001, and revised them in July of this year to call for
even wider use of cholesterol drugs.
Eight of the nine authors of the guidelines, including Brewer, had
financial ties with companies that marketed cholesterol drugs - but
their connections were not mentioned in their report,
published in July by the medical journal Circulation. Following
criticism from consumer advocates, the NIH posted on its website a
listing of the authors' financial ties.
Dr. David L. Brown, chief of cardiology at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook, said the interpretations of data in the
cholesterol recommendations should not
be trusted because the NIH panel was "in the pocket of the drug
companies."
Brown was among 22 physicians who wrote to Zerhouni in September,
questioning the 2001 guidelines and the revisions this year. NIH
officials said they stood behind the recommendations.
Brewer, whose annual government salary is $187,305, referred questions
submitted by The Times to an NIH spokeswoman, Diane
Striar, who said Brewer's paid consulting arrangements for four drug
companies had been approved in advance.
As of this month, Brewer "no longer serves on any advisory boards of
pharmaceutical companies," Striar said, adding that the agency would
not comment further. Brewer, after accepting consulting payments from
companies for several months this year, had stopped doing so by this
fall, records show.
Meanwhile, anticholesterol pills are the biggest-selling category of
prescription drugs in America, with sales last year of $14.7 billion.
Under the current guidelines, the number of Americans taking the
medications may more than double, to 35 million, according to NIH
estimates.
Winning Over Its Critics
The pharmaceutical bonanza that has swept the country in the last
decade has created one of the most influential lobbies in Washington. A
total of 3.5 billion prescriptions - medicating about 129 million
Americans - were filled last year.
Drug industry revenue in the U.S. tops $231 billion annually. The drug
companies donated $41 million to candidates for federal offices in the
last four years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
"The pharmaceutical industry has never been more powerful than now,"
said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles). "The companies have made
investments in the people who have
power in Washington. And they've gotten a very good return on those
investments."
In the last 12 years, the companies have secured passage of legislation
that fast-tracked FDA approvals of new drugs and transformed the agency
into a more compliant partner of industry.
And when congressional critics surface, the industry has a way of
winning them over: This year's top two recruits had recently launched a
congressional investigation of conflicts of interest at the NIH.
Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), as chairman of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee, had cited "secret consulting fees and stock options
from drug companies" to NIH scientists as a reason for requesting that
the agency produce
documentation of all the payments. Tauzin, who did not seek reelection,
was hired this month to be the president of the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America, the group that represents the nation's
largest drug companies.
Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.), who led three hearings this year on
NIH conflicts of interest, had criticized the agency for allowing its
scientists to use "a swivel chair" to make government decisions while
taking drug company fees. In July,
Greenwood announced that he would give up his position as chairman of
the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations
and retire from Congress to become president of the Biotechnology
Industry Organization - a group that urged policymakers this year not
to prohibit NIH scientists from paid consulting deals.
In the face of such industry influence, leading the NIH has become more
complicated. Zerhouni, the agency's director, is an expert in magnetic
resonance imaging. He also knows the value
of moonlighting: While serving as executive vice dean of the Medical
School at Johns Hopkins University, he cofounded a Maryland company
that developed and marketed devices to enhance the usefulness of MRI
scans.
He was trained as a physician in his native Algeria. With a gently
accented English and a propensity to say that he agrees with members of
Congress even when they pose
pointed questions, Zerhouni, 53, has projected affability while
addressing the NIH's conflicts of interest.
When he was appointed by President Bush in March 2002, Zerhouni
inherited an agency whose scientists were avidly pursuing private
consulting.
Although historically separate from industry, the NIH by the late 1980s
was allowing some limited outside arrangements. In November 1995, the
consulting gate was swung wide open by then-Director Harold E.
Varmus in an internal memo, which was first made public in December
2003 by The Times.
The Varmus memo "immediately" lifted all limits on outside income,
reversed the prohibition against taking stock or stock options, and
freed the top leaders - the directors of the research institutes and
centers - to start making personal deals with companies.
At the same time, arcane rules wielded by NIH administrators were
allowing more and more of the deals to remain confidential.
Following The Times' report, Zerhouni was summoned to Capitol Hill on
Jan. 22 by the Senate appropriations subcommittee for health issues.
Zerhouni initially told the panel that the NIH had "not identified any
situations where outside activities resulted in undue influence" on
official decisions. The subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter
(R-Pa.), warned Zerhouni that far-reaching, internal investigations
would be needed to ensure that conflicts of interest did not exist.
Zerhouni said he would impose tighter controls. Henceforth, he said,
the consulting deals of all NIH employees would be subjected to
"independent peer review" by a newly created ethics committee.
He also said he was appointing a blue-ribbon committee to "completely
review" the NIH's policies on conflicts of interest. But Zerhouni added
that "instead of having a complete one-size-fits-all rule, I think
the rules should be different" depending on the employee's rank or
authority to oversee research grants.
Zerhouni's position sought to keep the agency's many influential
laboratory or branch chiefs, such as Brewer, Sunderland, Liotta and
Klein, eligible for outside consulting.
Two months later, Zerhouni's blue-ribbon panel recommended what he
wanted. It called for barring the institute directors and their top
administrators from outside consulting - while allowing 5,000 or more
staff scientists, including all the
laboratory and branch chiefs - to take payments from industry. The
panel also recommended, and Zerhouni said he supported, an agencywide
ban on taking stock or stock options from biomedical companies.
Most NIH scientists should be allowed to consult, Zerhouni said,
because such arrangements helped "translate" discoveries from NIH labs
into products that could help patients.
"You can have a policy that says, 'All right, all prohibited.' But how
does that help the public, in terms of translating the discoveries in
our laboratories into real things?" Zerhouni told reporters.
For years, the agency has had procedures for formal collaborations with
industry - but they prohibit NIH scientists from taking the
companies' money. The formal agreements have resulted in at least 1,300
collaborations with biomedical companies over the last 20 years, agency
records show.
On the other hand, the public record is bereft of products "translated"
from NIH labs to patients through private consulting contracts. No such
evidence was presented during days of testimony this year before the
NIH blue-ribbon panel or congressional subcommittees.
By midyear, the failure of the NIH to produce a full accounting of its
ties to industry had spurred bipartisan criticism in the House. On May
12, the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep.
Joe Barton (R-Texas), warned Zerhouni
to lift the agency's secrecy and to relinquish all records documenting
drug industry payments to NIH scientists.
The panel's senior Democrat, Rep. Peter Deutsch of Florida, told
Zerhouni at the same hearing: "I would urge you in the strongest
possible terms to end the
practice today of NIH researchers taking anything of value from a drug
or a biotech company."
Zerhouni endorsed some additional restrictions, including ceilings on
compensation that employees could accept from industry and the amount
of time they could devote to outside activities. While
NIH employees could still accept fees to sit on companies' scientific
advisory boards, they would be barred from serving on boards of
directors.
But a July report by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics concluded
that the NIH was beset by a "permissive culture." The office found that
40% of the 155 outside payments to NIH employees it sampled randomly
had not been approved in advance or accounted for within the agency.
Zerhouni proposed another compromise: a one-year "moratorium" on
industry consulting. Details of the moratorium have not been completed.
Last month, nearly 200 NIH researchers said in a letter to Zerhouni
that a permanent ban would make the scientific staff - who are paid
between $130,000 and $200,000 a year by the government -
"second-class citizens in the biomedical community."
Dr. Raynard S. Kington, a deputy NIH director, said Tuesday that the
agency had "moved actually quite fast" to carry out tougher
restrictions. Yet he acknowledged that unless new rules were put into
effect, perhaps in the new year, the scientists were free to continue
collecting stock options and consulting fees from drug companies.
"Fundamentally," Kington said, "we are operating under the same rules."
Times researcher Janet Lundblad in Los Angeles contributed to this
report.
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