The media reports that felony criminal charges have been filed against a researcher for the National Institutes of Health for "criminal conflicts of interest." The scientist had been a leading Alzheimer’s disease researcher at the NIH, but is charged with having negotiated a private secret deal with the Pfizer pharmaceutical company in connection with his government employment. It’s alleged Dr. Trey Sunderland received $285,000 in consulting fees and expenses by Pfizer while working for the NIH. Sunderland did not disclose the deal to his supervisors or seek approval for the arrangement. Government scientists are not allowed to take money for collaborations with private companies. Sunderland secretly provided hundreds of tubes of tissue samples from his government research as well as other information to the Pfizer pharmaceutical company who was interested in developing a drug for the problem. In an earlier investigation the NIH said it identified some forty four other government researchers who were paid by pharmaceutical companies for moonlighting activities to assist pharmaceutical companies while being paid for their government research work. I’ve posted an earlier report (Nov 23, 2006) about the scandal of conflicts of interests promoted by pharmaceutical companies in order to market their products. These include the corruption of peer review publications, giving financial benefits to researchers through payments and stock options and providing gifts of all kinds to physicians to encourage the prescription of their products. The NIH is supposed to be the ultimate in objective research in this country and it is frightening to see examples like this. I suspect there will be no sanction imposed against Pfizer as the pharmaceutical industry has a multimillion dollar lobbying program and is a favorite of the Bush administration.