Two of the government’s premier infectious disease researchers are collecting royalties on an AIDS (news - web sites) treatment they’re testing on patients using taxpayer money. But patients weren’t told on their consent forms about the financial connection. Drs. Anthony Fauci and H. Clifford Lane, who helped invent the experimental interleukin-2 treatment being tested around the globe, even tried to alert patients about their royalties but were rebuffed by their own agency. They’re hardly alone. More than 900 current and former scientists at the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) legally collected $8.9 million in such royalties last year for drugs and inventions they discovered while working for the government, according to information obtained by The Associated Press. But until last week, none was required to tell patients about their royalties despite the government’s promise in May 2000 that all scientists’ financial stakes would be disclosed to patients. That’s because NIH didn’t get around to enacting a policy requiring the disclosure until after AP requested the royalty payments and disclosure policies under the Freedom of Information Act in December. The policy was formally distributed last week. The nearly five-year delay means hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients in NIH experiments made decisions to participate in experiments that often carry risks without full knowledge about the researchers’ financial interests.
