Zerhouni Proposes Major Changes to NIH Ethics Program

Extract

In testimony in before the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee in late June, National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D., outlined “drastic changes” to the ethics program at NIH.

The changes are the result of an ongoing internal and external review of ethics policies at the agency, which were prompted in part by the subcommittee's own inquiry into outside activities and consulting arrangements held by top NIH officials. (See News, June 2, Vol. 96, No. 11, p. 819.)

“Today I am announcing that NIH, working with the [Health and Human Services] Office of the Secretary, will seek a major reform of the agency's ethics program by requesting restrictive rules and by seeking to increase the public availability of information related to outside activities with industry,” Zerhouni said in his prepared statement. He presented a framework for these changes in terms of four principles of the NIH ethics program.

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