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Federal officials are defending an unconscionable act. Between 2005 and 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported research on 1,316 premature newborns without requiring parents to be told their baby could die and the baby's oxygen monitor would not show their child's true oxygen level - a violation of their own ethics rules, reports Sharyl Attkisson at The Daily Signal. The experiment was carried out on premature infants at 22 sites. The purpose: to determine how much supplemental oxygen premies should receive. According to NIH, 28,000 premies are born each year out of 3.9 million births, with 14,000 -...

The white-marble Rayburn House Office Building, in Washington DC, looks like a giant courts building or a central bank, fully intimidating and imposing in its hulking stony blockiness. And the US Congress, of course, is an institution best known for its tedium, albeit a tedium that is regularly punctuated by fiery partisan combat. On a typical day, the Rayburn building--acronymed as RHOB--is a place where politicos and bureaucrats struggle for and against some special interest, yea or nay, on regulation or appropriation. And the biggest single activity in RHOB, or in any of the other five office edifices on Capitol...

The director of the U.S. government office that monitors scientific misconduct in biomedical research has resigned after 2 years out of frustration with the “remarkably dysfunctional” federal bureaucracy. David Wright, director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), writes in a scathing resignation letter obtained by ScienceInsider that the huge amount of time he spent trying to get things done made much of his time at ORI “the very worst job I have ever had.” ORI, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), monitors alleged research misconduct by researchers funded by the National Institutes of...

The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars studying male sex workers in Peru, including more than $400,000 to determine why gay men get syphilis in the South American country. “Syphilis remains an uncontrolled infectious disease globally, with high prevalence and incidence in certain high risk populations, affecting more than 20 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Peru,” according to the grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “The incidence of syphilis in MSM in Peru is about 9 cases per 100 person-years,” it said. “We are proposing a study to improve...

An elderly woman was left on the floor at a care home for up to ten minutes because a nurse was praying, an inquest heard. Alzheimer's sufferer Dorothy Griffiths, 87, was found sitting down after staff heard a bang and a carer went to the office for help to lift her. But agency nurse Abdul Bhutto, who was in charge, said they would have to wait. Carer Zoe Shaw told the Sheffield hearing: "It took between five and ten minutes because he was praying upstairs in the office on his prayer mat. A staff member told me we had to...

Dr. Dong-Pyou Han spiked a clinical test sample with healthy human blood to make it appear that the rabbit serum produced disease-fighting antibodies, officials said. The bogus findings helped Han’s team obtain $19 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, said James Bradac, who oversees the institutes’ AIDS research.

Obama — propelled by the Newtown school shootings — urged Congress in January to provide $10 million to finance fresh academic investigations into the impacts of firearms on the collective health of Americans. "NIH has been supporting research on violence and its implications for health for many years. The violence resulting from firearms was included" in past studies, The CDC this year asked the Institute of Medicine to convene a committee to identify the most pressing research questions on gun violence.

The Obama administration is shifting $100 million into research efforts aimed at curing HIV, President Obama announced Monday. A new initiative at the National Institutes of Health will be aimed at "advanc[ing] research toward an HIV cure," Obama said at a White House event marking World AIDS Day, which was Sunday. The initiative is aimed at developing "new therapies," he said. "The United States should be at the forefront of the discoveries how to put HIV in long-term remission without requiring lifelong therapies. Or, better yet, eliminate it completely."

(CNSNews.com) – The Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health has suspended its dog therapy program because of the government shutdown, according to John Burklow, spokesperson for NIH. Burklow said the dogs, which pay visits to patients in the hospital, including children with cancer, have to seen by veterinarians, and a “team” on staff made the decision to suspend program. “A vet needs to evaluate the dogs, and given that there is a 25 percent reduction in staff (furloughed), we focus our activities and staffing on the care of patients already at our hospital,” Burklow said.

(CNSNews.com) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is soliciting applications for federal grants worth up to $275,000 to research ways to provide elderly patients with “palliative care” – even in hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units. Palliative care is commonly understood to mean medical treatment that focuses on relieving symptoms, including pain, instead of trying to treat or cure the underlying disease. But researchers will not be studying the use of palliative care to relieve the suffering of dying patients. “Hospice and end-of-life settings are not included within the scope” of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), the grant...

The federal government is spending more than $13 million on studies designed to determine how a variety of groups can learn to quit smoking.This month the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year study to Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I., to examine how exercise can get depressed smokers to stop. The first grant amounts to $581,991.The depressed are not the only ones to receive attention.The agency is currently funding cessation studies for American Indians ($2,899,954); Chinese and Vietnamese men ($424,875); postmenopausal women ($4,151,850); the homeless ($392,322); Korean youth ($94,580); Schizophrenics ($266,554); Brazilian smokers ($174,637); Latino HIV-positive smokers ($223,265); and...

U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt Eric T. Sheler/Wikimedia CommonsAdding value. NIH wants to know how genome sequencing could go beyond existing newborn screening tests. In a few years, all new parents may go home from the hospital with not just a bundle of joy, but with something else—the complete sequence of their baby’s DNA. A new research program funded at $25 million over 5 years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will explore the promise—and ethical challenges—of sequencing every newborn’s genome.The pilot projects build on decades-old state screening programs that take a drop of blood from nearly every newborn’s...

The federal government has spent $2.2 million studying why three quarters of lesbians are obese despite sequestration-mandated budget cuts that critics warned could “delay progress in medical breakthroughs.” . . . Thus far, the study has yielded one report, published in January, which found that gay and bisexual males had a “greater desire for toned muscles than completely and mostly heterosexual males.”

A Brazilian-born researcher who runs minority health programs at a public university in Alabama has convinced the U.S. government to give her $1.5 million to help women quit smoking in her native country. A noble cause indeed, but likely not on the high list of the American taxpayers funding the project. Nevertheless, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency, has given the Brazilian researcher, Isabel Scarinci, a five-year, $1.5 million grant to fund her international tobacco-control project. The goal is to better understand “women and their tobacco-related issues” in the South American country, especially in Scarinci’s...

Just how dangerous is it to your health to shack up with a Mexican hooker? That’s the question at the heart of a five-year, $3,029,663 study by researchers at the University of California San Diego funded by the National Institutes of Health. The five-year study is taking the first-ever look at the love lives – and sexually transmitted diseases – of 200 prostitutas mexicanas and their “non-commercial” male partners. Based on previous research, UCSD scientists have been able to determine conclusively that the “non-commercial male partners” of Mexican prostitutes are very likely to pick up and spread their partners’ sexually-transmitted...

In case you’re still shocked by the prosecutorial malfeasance in this country - most recently on display in Sanford, Florida – perhaps I can help. It is partially related to our dwindling interest in “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” Today we’re focusing on the “truth” part; apparently we’re to take it with a grain of salt from now on. Our Morton Salt Girl In order to continue we must concede to this basic truth: your government lies to you. Shocking, I know, butt true. They don’t lie with maliciousness, or at least they never use to; they just...

The National Institutes of Health is spending $253,800 of federal taxpayer money to study ways to educate Boston’s male prostitutes on safe-sex practices. According to a description of the federally funded project, a previous study of male sex workers in Boston found that “almost one third (31%) were HIV-infected, and most (84%) had a steady male or female partner, thus the risk for HIV-infection/transmission is not only to/from their sex work clients but also to/from their primary partners… Notably, every participant reported using a variety of drugs and/or alcohol in the context of sex work in the prior 12 months”...

A handheld, battery-powered detector will help officials identify counterfeit antimalarial drugs in a trial in Ghana. The trial will test how effective the device is at identifying suspect medicines. The CD-3 detector compares the look of medicines and packaging under different wavelengths of light to spot fakes © US FDAThe CD-3 counterfeit detection device(PDF) uses a variety of different wavelengths of light to visually compare tablets, capsules and their packaging with genuine reference samples. The different colourings and compounds in counterfeit formulations, and different inks and materials in their packaging, reflect or fluoresce differently to the real thing. Comparing them...

Despite sequester, feds spend over $1.5 million to study lesbian obesity Over the last two years, the National Institutes of Health have awarded Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston over $1.5 million to learn why nearly three-quarters of lesbians are overweight, Todd Starnes reported Tuesday. According to the NIH, gay males do not suffer from obesity as much as lesbians, and the government wants to know why, calling the disparity an issue of “high public-health significance." "It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight...

When George W. Bush was stumping as a "compassionate conservative" in the closing days of the 2000 presidential campaign, he went to Florida and repeated a campaign promise to double the funding for the National Institutes of Health. "I will lead a medical moon shot to reach far beyond what seems possible today and discover new cures for age-old afflictions," Bush said. After he won Florida by a famously narrow margin -- and thus was elected president despite losing the nationwide popular vote -- Bush basically made good on his funding promise. In fiscal 2000, the NIH spent $15.415 billion;...