News release: POGO has sent a letter to Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), urging him to implement an idea he recently said he supported: a public database listing any financial arrangements, such as payment for consulting, between NIH grantees and outside organizations…Dr. Collins explained his views on such a database in a September interview with the New England Journal of Medicine..POGO would like to see such a database included in the NIH’s forthcoming update to rules on conflicts of interest. In the early 2000s, a Los Angeles Times reporter uncovered a series of potential conflicts of interest raising questions about public health decisions at the agency. One example involved an NIH scientist who conducted a clinical trial on an experimental drug to treat kidney inflammation — it was later discovered that in the decade preceding the trial, the company that manufactured the drug had paid the scientist at least $170,000 in consulting fees.”