NIH Scientists Broke Rules, Panel Says

In another highlighted arrangement, Alan Moshell of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases was retained as an expert witness in several private product-liability lawsuits involving the drug Accutane at a rate of $600 per hour -- and did so without required agency permission -- Greenwood said. Those arrangements were described by Health and Human Services general counsel Alex M. Azar II as particularly worrisome as Moshell allegedly testified in those trials to the inadequacy of the government's own warning label on the drug.

Moshell did not respond to calls and an e-mail late yesterday.

The subcommittee also provided new details regarding an alleged conflict of interest outlined in a May hearing, in which cancer researcher Liotta and an FDA scientist became paid consultants for a California biotechnology company that is in competition with a Bethesda company with which the two scientists and the Cancer Institute were already collaborating.

Liotta testified last month that by March of this year he had suspended the California arrangement, pending a fresh ethics review by agency officials who initially approved the deal but later expressed regret at having done so.

Yesterday, Greenwood flashed on a giant screen copies of several canceled checks from the company -- Biospect Inc. of South San Francisco, recently renamed Predicant Biosciences -- made out to Liotta. The latest check, for $3,125, was dated May 1.

Greenwood also showed evidence supplied by the company that it had paid Liotta a total of $70,000, significantly more than the approximately $49,000 that Liotta reported to ethics officials.

A cancer institute spokesman said yesterday that Liotta had an appointment and would not be able to respond to media queries.

Zerhouni has already imposed new tiers of ethics review for all proposed outside consulting arrangements by NIH employees and greater public disclosure of approved arrangements. Yesterday, he proposed additional restrictions, including some that could be accomplished internally and others that may require new legislation.

Among them: a ban on ownership of drug company or biotech stocks by some key employees, and restricted stock ownership for all other employees; no membership on corporate boards; creation of a centralized registry of all outside arrangements and a public list of the awards that employees may receive; and prohibition of all paid consulting or speaking engagements at institutions that receive NIH funding.