Over the past decade, scientists working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have earned an estimated $400 million in royalties from third-party companies for medical treatments and innovations they’ve helped produce. The NIH often provides grants to these same companies and produces research on their products. Despite that, the agency has resisted disclosing how much its scientists are getting paid and by whom.
A bill moving its way through Congress would change that.
On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed the Royalty Transparency Act of 2024 by a 12–0 vote.
The legislation would require that royalties received by federal government employees be included in their financial disclosures and that those disclosures be made available online for the general public to view.
“This is just basic 101 of conflict of interest. We’re letting the billions of dollars that change hands over at NIH and between NIH and Big Pharma to be completely unscrutinized,” says Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), the author of the legislation. “This is probably the first reform bill that actually has a chance to correct some of the things that are rotten in the system.”
The NIH’s lack of transparency about the royalties paid to its scientists has been a source of controversy for decades.
Hellbound and Down 