Policing Yourself

The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, Daniel Levinson, says that 90 percent of universities rely on researchers to determine whether the money they receive from drug and device makers is relevant to their government-funded work. The report, which the New York Times says is expected to be made public today, adds that even when conflicts are noted, university administrators do nothing to try to minimize that conflict of interest. "This report clearly raises the question of whether these institutions are capable of managing these conflicts themselves," says Institute for Health Policy at Harvard Medical School's Eric Campbell to the Times.