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Financial ties between pharma and WHO?

The World Health Organization (WHO) is accused of failing to report financial ties between pharmaceutical companies and three prominent influenza researchers. The scientists advised the organization on its guidelines instructing national governments to stockpile flu vaccines and medications in the face of a pandemic that never materialized. The accusation came in an article that appeared in BMJ on Friday (4^th June) and was written by a BMJ editor in concert with a writer at the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The piece claims that three WHO advisers — Frederick Hayden of the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan’s Arnold Monto, and Karl Nicholson of Leicester Royal Infirmary in the UK — received clinical trial funding and/or speaker’s fees from Hoffman-La Roche and/or GlaxoSmithKline, major producers of flu drugs or vaccines. The three all told the BMJ that they had reported the conflicts to the WHO.

An accompanying editorial, written by journal editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee, calls on the WHO to adopt stricter conflict of interest rules for its external advisers and to investigate this particular incident.

The BMJ articles appeared the same day another European group, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, took a swipe at the WHO for its handling of the H1N1 flu pandemic, saying that some of the organization’s advice lead to “distortion of priorities of public health services across Europe, waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about health risks faced by the European public at large.” (Watch a BMJ video detailing the story here.)

Wisc. profs. investigated for animal cruelty

A special prosecutor in Wisconsin will be looking into whether or not to formally charge scientists and officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with animal cruelty after they conducted or approved experiments in which several sheep died. The research, carried out at the school’s Diving Physiology laboratory, was designed to better understand decompression sickness — commonly called “the bends” — a potentially deadly condition sometimes suffered by scuba divers who ascend from the depths too quickly after breathing compressed air. Four sheep were killed in 2007 and 2008 when they were exposed to conditions meant to simulate deep-sea scuba diving. Killing animals via decompression is against Wisconsin state law. If the researchers and university officials are charged with the misdemeanor, they could face months of jail time. (Hat tip to the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Three neuroscientists nab Kavli Prizes

The Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters awarded eight scientists with its 2010 Kavli Prizes last week in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. The eight will share $3 million in prize money. Neuroscientists Thomas S