Does financial interest and lack of transparency usually lead to more honest science and policy?
The National Institute of Health (NIH), seeks to “to exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science” while also having a financial interest in the approval of new drugs and medical devices.
Transparency
NIH scientists have received $8.9m in royalty payments. “An NIH spokesperson said that the NIH had no plans to put information about payments to its researchers on its website and that the BMJ would have to make a request via the Freedom of Information Act to find out royalty payments to individual researchers.”
However, not only do NIH scientists receive compensation for drugs that make it to the market, they have failed to disclose their conflict of interest to human subjects in their test trials. “Patients who took part in clinical trials at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had no idea that scientists at the institutes received $8.9m (£4.8m; €6.8m) in royalty payments and might benefit financially for the use of their discoveries by pharmaceutical companies and device makers, reports from Associated Press allege. This information was not made public until the press agency obtained the information after filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act.”(1)
Sources
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC545012/
