At the third in a series of Congressional hearing on conflicts of interest at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIH Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni last week announced further changes to strengthen agency ethics policies. Speaking before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Dr. Zerhouni explained that the changes are rooted in four principles: enhancing the public trust, increasing transparency, recruiting and retaining the best scientific expertise while expediting the translation of research advances, and establishing effective monitoring and oversight mechanisms.

The announcement followed NIH's continued review of its ethics program and policies, as well as findings from an investigation by the subcommittee of more than 100 consulting or other arrangements between industry and NIH scientists that had not been reported to NIH ethics officials.

"I have reached the regrettable conclusion that drastic changes are needed," Dr. Zerhouni said. "In retrospect, there was not sufficient safeguard against the perception of conflict of interest."  Read more  

For the National Cancer Institute (NCI), June has been a month of great excitement and progress in cancer survivorship research. Cancer Survivors' Day and the release of the President's Cancer Panel report, Living Beyond Cancer: Finding a New Balance, kicked off the month. Mid-month, we awarded 17 new grants to study long-term cancer survivors and cohosted with the American Cancer Society (ACS) our second biennial conference, "Pathways to Health After Treatment." To conclude the month, we reported new survivor prevalence data in the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer and in last week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the core of all these activities lies a common premise: Cancer survivors are experiencing longer survival, thus attention to their quality of life is imperative.  Read more  

This NCI Cancer Bulletin is produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI, which was established in 1937, leads a national effort to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer. Through basic and clinical biomedical research and training, NCI conducts and supports research that will lead to a future in which we can prevent cancer before it starts, identify cancers that do develop at the earliest stage, eliminate cancers through innovative treatment interventions, and biologically control those cancers that we cannot eliminate so they become manageable, chronic diseases. For more information on cancer, call 1-800-4-CANCER or visit http://cancer.gov. NCI Cancer Bulletin staff can be reached at ncicancerbulletin@mail.nih.gov.