NIH Workers Angered by New Ethics Rules

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NIH Workers Angered by New Ethics Rules

 

Restrictions on Outside Income Meet With Derision at Meeting

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 3, 2005; Page A25

 

National Institutes of Health Director Elias A. Zerhouni stood before hundreds

of NIH employees yesterday to explain why it had become necessary for him to

impose, in his words, " drastic " restrictions on stock ownership and other forms

of outside income, which take effect today for all agency employees.

 

" What I'm asking you to do is hold your fire until you hear the details, " he

told the crowd assembled in an auditorium on the agency's Bethesda campus.

 

They held.

 

And when he was done, they let him have it.

 

One after another, scientists, doctors and other agency staffers stepped up to

the microphones and raged against the new rules, made public Tuesday. By the

time it was over, 90 minutes later, nary a positive word had been uttered about

the new policy and there was more vented spleen around than a busy medical

center like the NIH might normally see in a year.

 

The goal, as Zerhouni repeatedly explained, was to save the venerable agency's

reputation, which had become badly sullied after 14 months of embarrassing

revelations about conflicts of interest among NIH scientists.

 

" This issue was standing between the prestigious history of the NIH and its

future, " Zerhouni told the restive crowd.

 

But the solution, many argued yesterday, was unjustifiably extreme, punishing

virtually all of the agency's 18,000 employees for the bad actions of a few.

 

" Even my secretary is going to have to sell her stock. How much sense does that

make? " fumed Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the agency's department of clinical

bioethics.

 

The event, which NIH officials dubbed a " town hall meeting " for employees,

marked an extraordinary climax to a convoluted tale of science, politics and

money that had grown increasingly unmanageable in recent months. After trying to

" stand up for his troops, " Zerhouni said, he was " shot in the back " with the

discovery, made by congressional investigators, that more than 100 NIH employees

had not disclosed various relationships they had with pharmaceutical and biotech

companies, in violation of government ethics rules.

 

From that point, Zerhouni said, he knew he had no choice but to put draconian

measures in place -- measures he acknowledged were sure to have ripple effects

on NIH's ability to recruit and retain talent for years to come but that he

hoped would ultimately strengthen the institution.

 

A few attendees expressed a modicum of sympathy for Zerhouni, who was under

intense congressional and Bush administration pressure to explain why the agency

was still deserving of its $28 billion budget. But the meeting was repeatedly

punctuated by cheers and applause as questioners expressed their ire at the

specifics of the new rules.

 

Most irritating, apparently, is the rule that will require thousands of

employees -- and their spouses and dependents -- to divest themselves of all

stock holdings in drug, biotech and other medically oriented companies. Even

lower-ranking employees with no influence on grants or policies will be limited

to individual holdings of $15,000.

 

All are required to make those divestitures within 90 days, at a time, as one

speaker put it, that much of that industry " is at the bottom of a cycle. "

 

" This is going to make it difficult to participate in an ownership society, "

quipped David Levens, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute, to a

burst of applause -- a not-so-subtle reference to President Bush's recent

exhortations to revamp Social Security in ways that would get Americans more

involved in the stock market, not less.

 

But seemingly less significant rule changes also drew jeers. One rule, for

example, will place the vast majority of scientific and public service awards

off-limits to employees. Explaining what they could still legally accept, NIH

Ethics Office Director Holli Beckerman Jaffe said employees " may accept the

'honor' associated with an award " -- but not the cash.

 

The audience was hardly appeased when Jaffe added that they could also accept

" plaques and trophies of little intrinsic value " and that Nobel Prizes will

still be allowed.

 

Several attendees wanted to know why, if the goal is to restore public trust in

the federal scientific enterprise, the rules are to be applied solely to NIH.

 

" Does this apply to the Department of Energy? To the Department of Agriculture?

To the Defense Department? " asked Elaine Jaffe, a pathologist who is chief of

blood diseases at the National Cancer Institute, to cheers and applause.

 

" If we really want to reassure the public, " Emanuel added, " why don't we apply

these to everyone who gets an NIH grant? "

 

Again applause.

 

Another attendee noted that NIH employees are subject to periodic outside

evaluations and reviews by nongovernmental scientists who are not subject to the

same ethics restrictions -- a bizarre situation, the employee said, in which

people with real conflicts of interest will be sitting in judgment of those with

none.

 

Moreover, the NIH calls upon hundreds of outside scientists from academia and

industry to judge grant proposals every year -- people who have far more power

over purse strings than most employees but who will not be covered by the new

rules.

 

That speaker was among several who refused to identify themselves to reporters

because of fears of punishment by superiors at the Department of Health and

Human Services. One told a reporter that employees were being " muzzled. " Another

said " there have been retributions. " Neither would elaborate.

 

Still others complained that the stock restrictions will apply not only to

themselves but to their spouses, as well.

 

" How can the U.S. government in 2005 " define spouses as dependents? asked Abner

Notkins, chief of experimental medicine in the National Institute of Dental and

Craniofacial Research. " Spouses are independent people. " He added that his wife

has already contacted the American Civil Liberties Union to discuss the issue.

 

 

 

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

 

 

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