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Smoke and mirrors

Turn on the smoke and bring in the mirrors

It must have made for a bummer of a Friday happy hour. On
Friday, September 24th, an e-mail was sent out to all National
Institutes of Health (NIH) employees announcing a proposed
moratorium that would ban as many as 5,000 NIH scientists from
accepting any consulting money from drug companies for at least a
year.

Impressive! It seems like NIH administrators are getting tough on
the unseemly cash-cow cahoots between researchers and the
companies that develop drugs that are studied by those researchers.
But let’s take a peek between the lines for a reality check.

Moving at the speed of bureaucracy

In the e-Alert “Back to the Island” (12/29/03), I told you about a
five-year investigation into the inner workings of the NIH by
David Willman, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Los
Angeles Times. Mr. Willman’s painstaking reporting revealed that
more than $2.5 million of drug company consulting fees had been
paid to top NIH officials and scientists who oversee the clinical
trials of drugs.

Uh oh. Not great news if you’re an NIH honcho.

In his investigation, Mr. Willman found a 1998 legal opinion that
provides a loophole by which more than 90 percent of NIH
officials are allowed to keep their consulting income confidential.
A pretty sweet deal until Congress got wind of it.

This past June, NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., told a
Congressional committee that he had finally seen the light! His
conclusion: The NIH ethics rules and procedures needed “drastic
changes.”

So here’s the timeline:

* December 2003: The LA Times drops the bomb and reveals all
* June 2004: Dr. Zerhouni confirms that the situation needs drastic
changes
* September 2004: NIH proposes a moratorium on drug company
consulting fees

Things aren’t moving along too swiftly, are they? Well, this is,
after all, a huge bureaucracy. It’s easier for an ocean liner to make
a u-turn than it is for a “national institute” to revise a key policy.
Especially a beloved policy that’s responsible for millions of
dollars in perks.

That was then

But things are moving along now, right?

Well sort of. Notice that the moratorium is a “proposed”
moratorium. Which means that before it can go into effect, it
requires the approval of Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of the
Department of Health and Human Services, AND the approval of
the Office of Government Ethics (OGE). So now we’ve got
THREE different bureaucracies involved. That ought to speed
things up!

But here’s the best part: Information about the proposed
moratorium went out to NIH employees and the press on 9/24. And
when was the proposal delivered to Secretary Thompson and the
OGE? According to The Scientist magazine, as of 9/24, “NIH had
not submitted the proposal, officials said, and no date for doing so
had been established.”

These guys are something, aren’t they?

In his 9/24 e-mail, Dr. Zerhouni stated, “We have identified
vulnerabilities in our system that give us pause.” The key word
here: “pause.” Those vulnerabilities didn’t make them stop. Nope.
They’re pausing.

Eye of the beholder

Any amusement we may get from this bureaucracy’s double-speak
and snail-like pace disappears quickly when you consider the
important work of the NIH. Last year, the NIH annual budget was
nearly $28 billion. And many millions of that are devoted to vital
research that includes complementary and alternative medicine.

Given that, I’m not sure which makes me angrier: the fact that NIH
officials and scientists are so comfortable in accepting huge
“consulting” fees from drug companies, or the fact that this
proposed moratorium seems to be giving drug companies plenty of
notice that they need to make sure consulting fees are spread
liberally before any sort of ban actually takes effect.

According to The Scientist, Dr. Zerhouni told Congress last June
that in retrospect, “there was not a sufficient safeguard against the
perception of conflict of interest.” Once again, when we read
carefully, we can see that the concern was not over a conflict of
interest, but the PERCEPTION of a conflict of interest.

It’s almost as if Dr. Zerhouni were trying to tell us something.

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and another thing

If you’ve got a passion for kiwifruit, your heart may love you for
it.

Kiwifruit is packed with nutrients, including plenty of vitamins C
and E and polyphenols; the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory
plant compounds that have been shown to provide cardiovascular
benefits. So researchers at the University of Oslo designed a test to
evaluate the effect of kiwifruit on heart health.

During a 28-day trial, cholesterol, platelet activity and triglyceride
levels were measured in healthy volunteers who ate two or three
kiwifruits each day. Subjects who ate kiwifruit didn’t have any
changes in cholesterol levels, but platelet aggregation was reduced
by nearly 20 percent, and triglyceride levels were lowered by 15
percent, compared to a group that didn’t eat kiwifruits.

And an added bonus: A UK research institute recently reported that
a daily intake of kiwifruit may provide protection from cancer-
causing DNA damage, while also stimulating DNA repair.

Most of us who live outside of New Zealand probably don’t eat 15
to 20 kiwifruits each week. But it seems that adding this nutrient-
dense item to a diet that already includes plenty of fruits and
vegetables may provide a welcome boost to heart health benefits.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute

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Sources:
“Zerhouni Proposes 1-Year Moratorium After Finding
‘Vulnerabilities in System'” Ted Agres, The Scientist, 9/27/04,
biomedcentral.com
“NIH Proposes Moratorium on Collaborations” The Associated
Press, 9/24/04, ap.org
“NIH Needs ‘Drastic Changes'” Ted Agres, The Scientist, 6/23/04,
biomedical.com
“Stealth Merger: Drug Companies and Government Medical
Research” David Willman, The Los Angeles Times, 12/7/03,
latimes.com
“Effects of Kiwi Fruit Consumption on Platelet Aggregation and
Plasma Lipids in Healthy Human Volunteers” Platelets, Vol. 15,
No. 5, August 2004, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
“Kiwis Make for Healthier Arteries” NutraIngredients.com, 9/8/04,
nutraingredients.com

 

 

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