Just when you thought nobody could be worse than the National Institutes of Health at managing financial conflicts of interest among trial investigators... The Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services released a linkurl:report;http://www.oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-05-07-00730.pdf today that indicates a pretty severe lack of oversight over at the Food and Drug Administration. The report found that only one percent of the almost 27,000 clinical investigators contracted by the agency in 2007 disclosed a financial interest. In 42% of clinical trials, the FDA never even received the financial disclosure forms from participating investigators that the agency mandates. The FDA not only failed to address these shortcomings, in 20% of the trials where investigators did report a financial conflict, the FDA took no action. In 31% of trials where researchers did submit financial conflict documentation, FDA reviewers didn't even indicate that they read the forms. If this isn't enough to make...
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