Item #27: IOM Report Writers Received NIH Grant Funding

Six of the nine members on the panel were NIH grant recipients, with yearly grants ranging from $120,000 to almost $2 million.

Farber points out that six of the nine IOM members were NIH grantees. The innuendo is therefore they covered up for the NIH.

This is an astounding implied accusation that the magazine should not have permitted without evidence. In effect, Farber impugns the reputation of the six IOM members without offering any evidence that their findings were incorrect or that the implied bias was in any way real. It would be hard to find nine distinguished US scientists in the field of HIV research who do not receive NIH grants, given the role of the NIH as a funding agency. Furthermore, does Farber wish to suggest that the three non-NIH funded IOM members colluded in this suggested cover-up?

Two-thirds of the members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel investigating an NIH-funded study of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine among pregnant women in Uganda receive grant money – ranging from $120,000 to $2 million annually – from NIH (specifically NIAID and the Division of AIDS, DAIDS), according to agency documents and interviews conducted by the Associated Press (March 16, 2005). A biographical sketch dated 2003 indicates that the chair of the committee, Stephen Lagakos, was also a member of the following NIH-funded groups:

• Steering Committee of the ACTG (AIDS Clinical Trials Group) Statistical and Data Management Center.
• NIAID HIV Vaccine Trials Data and Safety Monitoring Board
• NIH AIDS Study Section

Financial conflicts of interest are not only rife in medical science, but they have a verifiable impact on the results of these scientists, although normally it is money from pharmaceutical companies that is the problem. For example, a 1995 study stated that “publications that are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies are almost always likely to be positive in the favor of the companies...Some investigators are known [by drug companies] to consciously or inadvertently promote certain products, and these associations can have positive or negative impact in future funding for their trials” (Gulati SC et al. Cost-effectiveness analysis: sleeping with an enemy or a friend? J Clin Oncol. 1995 Sep; 13(9): 2152-4). Another study of a particular class of drugs concluded that “Authors who supported the use of calcium-channel antagonists were significantly more likely than neutral or critical authors to have financial relationships with manufacturers” (Stelfox HT et al. Conflict of interest in the debate over calcium-channel antagonists. N Engl J Med. 1998 Jan 8; 338(2): 101-6). Yet another stated “Significantly more articles with drug company support (98%; 39 of 40) than without drug company support (79%; 89 of 112) had outcomes favoring the drug of interest” (Cho MK et al. The quality of drug studies published in symposium proceedings. Ann Intern Med. 1996; 124: 485-9).

The papers noted above refer to drug company funding, but money is money, and it is unlikely that scientists are going to embarrass an organization, whether private or governmental, like the NIH, which pays for a good portion of their salary, their staff and their laboratory facilities.