NIH Censoring Expert to Prevent Criticism of Ethically Questionable NIH-Funded Study on Premature Infants

Agency Should Encourage Open, Evidence-Based Debates to Improve Safety of Studies, Public Citizen Says in LetterJune 13, 2013Contact: Sam Jewler [phone]; Angela Bradbery [phone]WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) should not censor one of its experts just because he might criticize ethical lapses in an increasingly high-profile study carried out on premature babies, Public Citizen wrote today in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.Dr. Charles Natanson, senior investigator and chief of the anesthesia section in the NIH Clinical Center’s Critical Care Medicine Department, was invited by Bloomberg BNA to co-present an educational webinar in July regarding the SUPPORT study, a NIH-funded experiment that Public Citizen recently exposed as having risked the lives of premature infants without proper parental consent. Natanson is one of the world’s leading experts on safely designing clinical trials testing treatments in critically ill patients that are usually adjusted across a wide range — for example, oxygen therapy — and measuring death as one of the primary endpoints, as was the case with this study.In response to the invitation request from Bloomberg BNA for Natanson to participate, NIH Public Affairs Specialist Renate Myles wrote, “We are declining participation in the webinar at this time due to a forthcoming public meeting announced by HHS on [institutional review board] process for trials randomiz...

Source: PharmaGossip - June 15, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs