Blood Money?

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Blood Money?

The Los Angeles Times' flawed masterpiece about corruption at NIH.

By Jack Shafer

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003, at 4:06 PM PT

 

 

 

Not many newspaper stories can boast that they were five years in the making,

and fewer still can claim that they were worth the wait. But David Willman's

meticulously researched 11,700-word feature, " Stealth Merger: Drug Companies and

Government Medical Research, " in the Sunday, Dec. 7, Los Angeles Times is that

brilliant exception.

 

 

The Times began chewing on a story in 1998 about the appalling—but perfectly

legal—financial ties between some National Institutes of Health scientists and

the pharmaceutical companies with which the NIH collaborates on experimental

drugs. Willman draws on countless interviews, thousands of pages of NIH

financial-disclosure reports, memos, e-mails, company reports, and SEC and FDA

filings, as well as state and federal legal actions to document how highly paid

NIH senior scientists have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and

stock options from drug companies in recent years. One researcher, Dr. Ronald N.

Germain, " has collected more than $1.4 million in company consulting fees in the

last 11 years, plus stock options, " the Times reports.

 

What's more, the freelancing that's perfectly legal today at NIH was unthinkable

two decades ago, and new financial disclosure rules make it almost impossible to

scrutinize the outside work done by NIH scientists. (See this Willman sidebar.)

The medical ethicists interviewed by the Times ask, quite logically: Are these

NIH scientists working for the NIH, whose mission is medical knowledge, or the

pharmaceutical companies, whose primary goal is profit? Can these double-dippers

be trusted not to design, execute, and interpret their studies to the benefit

their benefactors? Will they sell out their patients' safety to advance the drug

companies' interests?

 

Willman's brilliant muckrakings are sure to prompt the beheadings of an NIH

director or two. And the rhetorical pageantry of a congressional investigation

about conflict of interest at NIH can not be far away. Here's my " but " clause:

Willman undercuts his considerable accomplishment with an opening (and a

conclusion) that is as sensational as anything you'd read in an " if it bleeds,

it leads " tabloid. In staccato fashion, Willman describes the 1999 death of

" Subject No. 4 " at the NIH research clinic as if it's a contemporary version of

the Tuskegee Experiment. He writes:

 

The cause of [subject No. 4's] death was clear: a complication from an

experimental treatment for kidney inflammation using a drug made by a German

company, Schering AG.

 

Among the first to be notified was Dr. Stephen I. Katz, the senior NIH official

whose institute conducted the study.

 

Unbeknown to the participants, Katz also was a paid consultant to Schering AG.

 

Katz and his institute staff could have responded to the death by stopping the

study immediately. They also could have moved swiftly to warn doctors outside

the NIH who were prescribing the drug for similar disorders. Either step might

have threatened the market potential for Schering AG's drug. They did neither.

 

Willman doesn't come out and say that Dr. Katz killed Subject No. 4 or

deliberately put other kidney patients at dire risk because a drug manufacturer

gave him money. He doesn't have to. As newspaper attorneys advise reporters

every day, no plaintiff will ever defeat you in libel court if you make sure to

write your copy in such a way that the reader arrives at the damaging assessment

on his own instead of from your precise words.

 

Did Dr. Katz knowingly and deliberately place kidney patients in danger for

financial gain? The story doesn't say so explicitly, but the context of the

early paragraphs surely encourages readers to think in that direction. You have

to read 2,600 words beyond the lede before you're offered Katz's self-defense:

" Katz said that he did not know at the time that Schering AG was the maker of

the drug his institute was testing. " In another thousand words or so, Katz

elaborates that when he signed an official NIH " recusal, " vowing not to work on

any NIH project involving his benefactor Schering AG, he did so not knowing that

Berlex Laboratories, the maker of the experimental kidney drug, was owned by

Schering.

 

Now, Katz might be artfully covering his tracks with selective recollection, and

I might be cutting him too much slack, but there's not even an unsmoking gun

connecting the Schering money and Subject No. 4's tragic death. In fact, Willman

notes just 50 words from the story's end that an internal review absolved the

institute from responsibility for the death and that Katz is not mentioned in

the wrongful-death lawsuit against the government filed by Subject No. 4's

husband.

 

Reading and rereading the last thousand words of Willman's story, I get the

feeling that he wants us to believe that a compromised Katz and NIH did

something wrong—perhaps committed some sin of silence or scientific suppression

or cover-up—by not more vocally and aggressively publicizing the dangers of the

experimental drug. But because Willman doesn't actually express that sentiment,

choosing instead to furtively prod the reader in that direction with his

presentation, he taints his investigative tour de force. Readers expect much,

much more from stories that were five years in the making.

 

******

 

Conflicted? Interested? Send your e-mail to pressbox. (E-mail may be

quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.

 

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