In December 2008, psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, then at Emory University, was sanctioned for not disclosing more than $1 million from drug companies to promote their products in academic publications. His punishment: Emory barred him from receiving grants for 2 years. But those 2 years have come and gone, and in May, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Nemeroff, now at the University of Miami, a 5-year, $401,675-a-year grant to study posttraumatic stress disorder.
Shortly after the grant was announced, however, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), an activist for public disclosure of financial relationships in the biomedical fields, wrote a letter to the NIH questioning the decision. “Please explain how the NIH arrived at this decision to award Dr. Nemeroff despite past ethical problems,” Grassley wrote. “Although NIH has recently revamped its conflict of interest guidelines, this decision risks sending the wrong message to physicians seeking or performing federally funded research.” ...
