LYMEPOLICYWONK: Odd Couples—CDC, NIH, IDSA, others? “Hey, what are you yelling about? We’re playing a friendly game!”

Byldoadmin

Turns out that the NIH actually does a pretty bad job of managing conflicts-of-interest  and cronyism all around.  . .  NIH grantee, Charles Nemeroff, was investigated by the US Senate Finance Committee for conflicts-of-interest in connection with an antidepressant study he conducted while he was being paid  big$$$$ from GlaxoSmithKline (ring a bell, think Glaxo as in Lyme vaccines, Lymerix).  Seems that when he lost his job at Emory as a result of this fiasco an NIH employee, Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, helped his buddy land a new job at U of Miami and told him to go ahead and apply for more NIH grants.  The irony here is that Tom Insel is leading the charge on NIH conflict revamping efforts.  Surprise ending and spoiler alert, Tom Insel is now being investigated by the Senate Finance Committee—for what appears to be failure to act with any sense of propriety in the face of serious conflicts of interest by an NIH funded researcher.     NIH doesn’t seem to get this conflicts of interest thing, does it?  But wait!  There’s more….

 And more…

Turns out (WHO knew?) that the World Health Organization (WHO) is also under scrutiny for recommending the flu vaccine that GlaxoSmithKline promoted.  Small world.  Lots of people get confused about conflicts-of-interest when Glaxo $$$  is involved.  You may recall that  IDSA Lyme guidelines panel members had significant conflicts-of-interest with Glaxo.

I have begun to think of large medical societies and government  (the IDSA, the NIH, the CDC, WHO (who knew?)) as simply being marketing aggregators for pharmaceutical interests and stand up men for researchers with industry ties.  I realize that this is, really, hopelessly cynical, and I hope someone — please soon– wakes me up from this dream(?)  As I said before, I would love to be wrong on this.  I am so hoping that the IOM proves me wrong… for once.

You can contact Lorraine Johnson at lbjohnson@lymedisease.org.

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