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Three doctors affiliated with the National Institutes of Health have taken a public stand against tactics employed by pharmaco Eli Lilly to market its anti-sepsis drug Xigris. The doctors say Lilly has engaged in a no-holds-barred battle to win market share for Xigris, which with revenues of $200 million a year has fallen far short of sales projections. In an article for the New England Journal of Medicine, the …

In the sixties, physicians were confident enough to predict the end of infectious disease control issues. Today, in 2006, scientists and physicians know how wrong they were, said Dr. Antony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, who spoke at the Mid-Atlantic Bio conference this week. Public officials face more challenges than ever, including the possibility of a bird flu …

> Chutes & Ladders: Dr. Thomas Cesario, the dean of UC Irvine Medical School steps down as the investigation into the school's transplant program continues. Article

> Should healthcare workers get first dibs on vaccine in the event of a …

In an interview with Health Affairs NIH head and former Johns Hopkins professor Elias Zerhouni argues that medicine needs to advance from a curative care model to a model that stresses the preclinical phase. The current care model, which relies on "seventeen, eighteen, nineteen people per patient per encounter," is simply unsustainable. Medicine, he argues, must advance to become "pre-emptive", treating diseases far earlier than they are today. Rather revealingly, Zerhouni …

The Womens Health Initiative was a massive study started in 1991 that enrolled over 161,000 women to study low-fat diets, hormone replacement therapy and other health issues. Several of the findings, such as those suggesting that hormone therapy had adverse side effects and that low-fat diets don't do much to reduce heart disease and cancer, are now being challenged. The Wall Street Journal has an in-depth article looking at the initiative. It suggests that some of the …

According to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, the US does not have the production capacity to make enough flu vaccine to guard against a pandemic. Leavitt, together with the CDC's Dr. Julie Gerberding, the NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci and the WHO's Dr. Michael Ryan, appeared on NBC's Meet the Press to discuss the influenza threat. Leavitt cautioned that it will be at least three years before the US has the ability to protect its entire population.

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The National Institutes of Health will no longer allow its employees to do outside consulting work with pharmaceutical companies. The NIH announced the new policy on Thursday at a press conference led by director Elias Zerhouni. The agency did not go as far as some critics might have preferred. Scientists will still be able to own up $15,000 worth of stock in any given drug company and will be able to receive compensation from pharmaceutical companies for teaching continued medical …

The focus on doubtful academic research practices continues at The Wall Street Journal, where allegations of impropriety surround a $23 million NIH grant for the study of children's illnesses. The paper examines a lawsuit against Cornell Medical School filed by patient advocate Kyriakie Sarafoglou, who charges the university diverted taxpayer funds intended for research to other programs, including those at affiliate New York Presbyterian Hospital. Observers see a general trend …

The National Institutes of Health announced that 44 government scientists who work for the agency have violated conflict of interest rules that bar them from working too closely with drug companies and medical device manufacturers. NIH began the review several months ago on the request of Congress after evidence emerged of a pattern of improper conduct involving government scientists over the past few years. The Los Angeles Times ran a series of stories earlier this year exposing …

> The former head of the British Medical Journal says medical journals are "too close to drug companies." Story

> After an ambitious expansion in the mid-1990s, Sutter Health has gone on to become a major player. But things haven't worked out quite the way managers had hoped. …