News feature: A few good scientists
Researchers who have no financial entanglements with companies are a rare breed. Given that, asks Meredith Wadman, is the push to police conflicts of interest realistic?
News Feature: Revolt in Bethesda
Lynn Gerber was an idealist when she first arrived at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a college student in the summer of 1962. Gerber wanted to work in “the world’s most exciting laboratory” where future Nobel Laureate Marshall Nirenberg was doing ground-breaking research on protein synthesis. Today Gerber is chief of rehabilitation medicine at the NIH Clinical Center, where researchers from the agency’s 27 institutes conduct trials. Gerber says that overall, her 32-year career at the NIH has been exciting and rewarding, thanks to a supportive environment. But what was once a collegial atmosphere has been tarnished by new policies that have left the agency’s staff, including Gerber, disheartened. “I’ve lived through every administration since [President] Carter,” she says. “But fundamentally, I have not experienced so much change as now.” From 1998 to 2003, the NIH adjusted to growing pains that accompanied a massive expansion, which effectively doubled its annual budget. In May 2002 it also gained a new director, Elias Zerhouni, filling a post that had remained vacant for more than two years. Zerhouni had made a name for himself at Johns Hopkins University, where his work on advanced imaging techniques led to 157 peer-reviewed publications and eight patents. But at the time of his appointment, few basic researchers knew of or trusted him (Nat. Med. 8, 311; 2002). Zerhouni’s tenure has, perhaps by chance, coincided with one of the most turbulent times in the agency’s history. The NIH has been under near-constant fire from the media and the government, with allegations ranging from financial improprieties to sexual misconduct. Scientists there have also been under much tighter control of the administration. “After the arrival of Dr. Zerhouni three years ago, there was a lot more apparent distrust for the judgment of scientists,” says Hynda Kleinman, chief of cell biology at the National Institute of Dental and Cranofacial Research. “Everything from travel to meetings to being on editorial boards was questioned.” Demoralized by the soured environment, some senior researchers such as Kleinman are deserting the NIH after long careers there. “The atmosphere is punitive, very restrictive now and a lot of our time has been spent talking about the changes instead of science,” says Derek LeRoith, who was chief of diabetes at the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases. After 26 years at the institute, LeRoith in September begins work at the New York–based Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “The bureaucracy has become overwhelming,” LeRoith says, “and the atmosphere has just gone very negative.”
Reversal of fortune
Rules about accepting outside income, including pharmaceutical and biotech stock for consulting work, were relaxed in 1995 under the NIH’s then-director Harold Varmus, in part to increase recruitment of high-level scientists. The revision came under fire last year thanks to a few dozen instances in which scientists apparently didn’t disclose potential conflicts of interest. Both Varmus and current NIH director Elias Zerhouni said last year that only senior staff, such as individual NIH institute directors, should be banned from receiving outside income.