"NIH, NIMH Aids Another Corrupt Doctor" (2010)

Ren

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For general info...

This is a somewhat dated article that I happened upon when looking for info on NIH's grant-review process, includng bias/corruption. Insel (see below) has been written about recently on PR for his advocated break with DSM.

I. "NIH, NIMH Aids Another Corrupt Doctor" (2010)
II. CDC: "Childhood Adversity as a Risk Factor for Adult CFS" (2011)


I. "NIH, NIMH Aids Another Corrupt Doctor" (12 June 2010).
From The Office of Medical and Scientific Justice * (Anyone familiar with this source??)

"A yearlong effort by the National Institutes of Health to toughen its policies against financial conflicts of interest was led by an administrator [Thomas Insel] who quietly helped one of the most prominent transgressors [Charles B. Nemeroff] get hired by the University of Miami after a decade of undisclosed corporate payments led to his departure from Emory University..."

"The administrator, Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, also encouraged the researcher, Charles B. Nemeroff, to apply for new NIH grants, even though Emory had agreed on its own to restrict Dr. Nemeroff from NIH grant eligibility for two years. The NIH also allowed Dr. Nemeroff uninterrupted eligibility to serve on NIH advisory panels that help decide who receives NIH grant money..."

"The actions by Dr. Insel, during a period of heavy Congressional pressure on the NIH to institute reforms, raise new questions about the NIH’s stated commitment to attacking the problem of financial conflicts of interest in taxpayer-financed medical research..."

"Dr. Insel has declined months of requests from The Chronicle for an interview to discuss the matter, including his relationship with Dr. Nemeroff. The NIH’s director, Francis S. Collins, was not available for comment... Dr. Nemeroff also declined to be interviewed..."

"Dr. Nemeroff is one of several high-profile doctors found to have given speeches or written articles in medical journals extolling drugs or products made by companies that had paid them money or stock benefits that they did not report to their universities..."

"In the case of Dr. Nemeroff, a pattern of accepting undisclosed corporate payments goes back at least a decade. In 2003, the journal Nature toughened its policies for author disclosures after Dr. Nemeroff used an article in Nature Neuroscience to praise treatments for depression in which he had an unreported financial interest. In 2004, Emory issued a report citing him for multiple "serious" violations of its conflict-of-interest policies for protecting patients.

He quit as editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in 2006 after he was reported to have endorsed an implantable device for treating depression without disclosing payments from its manufacturer. And he finally left Emory last year [2009], after U.S. Senate investigators found he received $2.8-million from GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2007 and failed to disclose at least $1.2-million of it..."

"A year later, Dr. Nemeroff assumed his new position, professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, at the University of Miami. His new supervisor, Dr. Goldschmidt, said he was pleased to hear from Dr. Insel that Dr. Nemeroff not only could begin applying for NIH grants as soon as he arrived in Coral Gables, but that he could also continue to serve on the NIH’s expert panels that help decide on which grant applications win federal financing..."

"It was the latest benefit for both sides [Insel + Nemeroff] to a relationship that Dr. Nemeroff had cultivated for at least 16 years..."

"Dr. Nemeroff began offering help to the now-director of the NIMH [Insel] in 1994, when Dr. Insel was facing the nonrenewal of his research job at the NIH, Mr. Carroll said, bringing him to Emory to serve as a professor of psychiatry and director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. Dr. Nemeroff also led a lobbying effort that helped ensure Dr. Insel’s appointment in 2002 as NIMH director, Mr. Carroll said.

Mr. Carroll, who supervised Dr. Nemeroff for six years at Duke, describes the career assistance for Dr. Insel as part of a strategy in which Dr. Nemeroff would "put people in debt to him, and then call in the chips later..."

"The NIH’s regulatory review process, led by Dr. Insel and Sally J. Rockey [an entomologist??!**], the NIH’s acting deputy director for extramural research..."

*http://www.omsj.org/corruption/nih-nimh-aids-another-corrupt-doctor
**http://womeninscience.nih.gov/pdf/NIH_WomenInScience_Sec1.pdf



II. CDC: "Childhood Adversity as a Risk Factor for Adult CFS" (2011)*

Note - Nemeroff is a co-author in two (2008) references.

*http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/news/features/childhood_adversity.html
 

WillowJ

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Something smells fishy. Thanks for posting, @Ren .

By the way, the entomologist is probably at NIH to study insect vectors, like ticks and mosquitoes.
 

Ren

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Fishy is a good word.

And I should add again that I'm not familiar with the above (post 1) source (The Office of Medical and Scientific Justice) and so can't say anything about its credibility or bias. (But if anyone else knows, please of course say!)

Good point with regard to vectors, but I'm not sure if or to what degree it fits with Rockey. And just again for general info (and my own attempted understanding of the bureaucratic web)...


Rockey's brief bio (post 1 source) said she studed insect reproduction/development but never became a researcher, as she had originally planned. She became a manager ("science administrator") very early, and worked 19 yrs with the US Dept of Agriculture before moving to NIH. And regarding her role at NIH:

"Dr. Sally J. Rockey is the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, serving as the principal scientific leader and advisor to the NIH Director [currently Francis S. Collins?] on the agency's extramural research program. Rockey heads the Office of Extramural Research (OER), which focuses on grants, contracts and cooperative agreements, supporting biomedical researchers and organizations beyond the NIH campus..."

http://www.fic.nih.gov/News/GlobalH...ges/sally-rockey-nih-extramural-research.aspx


And a bit more about OER:
"Extramural grants account for approximately 83 percent of NIH's $30 billion budget. These are awarded to investigators throughout the U.S. and abroad. Approximately 10 percent of the NIH budget supports NIH intramural investigators, NIH staff who conduct research."

"OER Mission: Provides the corporate framework for NIH research administration, ensuring scientific integrity, public accountability, and effective stewardship of the NIH extramural research portfolio."

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/intro2oer.htm


But this may of course be crossing over into the threads where grants are discussed...
 

Iquitos

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Re: http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/news/features/childhood_adversity.html
cited above, the names of Bill Reeves and Dr. Unger are on a couple of those papers. This was Reeves and gang using money from the Viral and Rickettsial Division to send research money to Emory University to come up with "mind-body" papers published in psychiatric journals instead of doing viral research. It was part of the propaganda campaign to divert attention from the biomedical proofs in ME/CFS.
 
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