Probe Targets Government Scientists' Consulting
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01

Top legal and ethics officials in the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly allowed government scientists to engage in lucrative consulting deals with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies while ignoring the concerns of lower-level ethics officers, according to evidence presented at a House subcommittee hearing yesterday.

In one highlighted case, top HHS officials during the Clinton administration insisted that the director of the National Cancer Institute, Richard D. Klausner, be deemed eligible to receive a $40,000 award from the University of Pittsburgh even though the university is a major NCI grant recipient -- and despite the fact that the institute had just settled a lawsuit brought against it by a Pitt researcher, on terms favorable to the university.

At a minimum, the proximity of those events gave the appearance that Klausner was being rewarded by the university for helping to settle the suit, said ethics officers who told the subcommittee yesterday they were uncomfortable with the arrangement but were pushed by HHS general counsel to endorse it.

In a more recent case, a pair of scientists employed by the NCI and the Food and Drug Administration were twice approved to do outside consulting for a California technology company even though that company appears to be in competition with a Maryland firm that already had a formal arrangement with the government to use the same scientists' expertise.

This cartoon, BTW.