Charges of money ties in AIDS drug probe

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INTERACTIVE

AIDS around the globe
Interactive map: Where do the 33 million HIV-infected live?

Widespread problems
IOM’s review of NIH’s study in Uganda of the AIDS drug nevirapine has international implications.

The study was relied on by the Bush administration to back its decision in 2002 to send hundreds of millions of dollars worth of nevirapine to Africa to help stop the spread of AIDS from mothers to babies. AP reported in December the study violated federal patient protection rules and suffered widespread problems with paperwork and compliance.

NIH officials acknowledge the problems but say they remain confident in the study’s overall conclusion, that nevirapine can be taken safely in single doses. NIH asked IOM last fall to independently investigate its conduct in that study.

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South Africa is deciding whether to end nevirapine’s use for pregnant mothers.

Medical officials defend use of AIDS drug

At least four IOM panel members get their money directly from NIH’s infectious disease institute, whose conduct is at the center of the IOM investigation. Two others get their funding from NIH’s Fogarty International Center, which helps fund research worldwide on issues from AIDS to mental health.

Dr. Mark Kline, an IOM panel member and pediatric AIDS expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said he receives between $250,000 and $300,000 a year from the NIH. He said he went into the study “as objectively as possible and in an open-minded manner and tried to judge on the basis of the evidence.”

Kline said the NIH money accounts for 5 percent or less of his overall program. “It had never crossed my mind that there would be implications for my funding,” he said.

Other IOM panel members with NIH funding:

—Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an AIDS expert at Columbia University, received just over $2 million from NIH’s infectious disease division last year, NIH said.

—Stephen W. Lagakos, director of Harvard University’s Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research, which received $242,700 from NIH in the past year, NIH said.

—J. Richard Landis, a University of Pennsylvania biostatistics expert who received $136,229 in funding from NIH’s infectious disease division last year, NIH said.

—Dr. Charles van der Horst of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who helped oversee a multimillion-dollar NIH study on the side effects of AIDS medicines. Last year, his project got more than $120,000 in NIH funding, the agency said.

—George W. Rutherford of the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who receives funding through NIH’s Fogarty Center. NIH and IOM confirmed Rutherford was awarded a five-year grant in 2001 for AIDS training and research. Rutherford said he received $243,308 in the past year.

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