NIH Under Scrutiny for Studies on Premature Babies

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said a study on treatments for the babies did not meet requirements for informed consent.

Were the parents of premature babies properly informed of the risks associated with a study on oxygen treatment funded by Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health? A health watchdog group said the parents were not properly informed and is calling for a halt to all similar studies funded by NIH, according to a report from Public News Service.  "Those risks included, depending upon which group the children were in, the possibility of blindness, the possibility of brain injury and the possibility even of death from insufficient oxygen," Dr. Michael Carome, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, told Public News Service. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the study violated requirements for informed …

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Sean R. Sedam

1:26 pm on Thursday, April 25, 2013

Theresa: We've added a clarification that these are NIH-funded studies at issue. Thanks for the links and the perspective.   more ›

Montgomery, NIH Near ‘Superbug’ Agreement

Pact would require notification of the public.

  After a fatal “superbug” swept through the National Institutes of Health earlier this year unbeknownst to the public, state and county officials are on the verge of an agreement that will require NIH to report outbreaks of similar hospital-acquired infections, according to Montgomery County's health officer. Last fall, a drug-resistant strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae spread throughout NIH’s research hospital, infecting 18 people. Twelve of those cases were fatal; seven attributed to Klebsiella. Federal and state guidelines did not require NIH to report the outbreak, and NIH officials said they chose not to alert the public earlier because healthy people outside the hospital were at little to no risk, The Washington Post reported. …

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Activists: Retire Chimpanzees From Rockville Lab

Online petition says ‘the Rockville 15’ should go to a sanctuary, not to a Louisiana lab.

  The Humane Society and other animal rights activists are calling for 15 young chimpanzees used for research by the National Institutes of Health and housed at a Rockville laboratory to be sent to an animal sanctuary rather than back to the Louisiana research center that owns them. The Humane Society of the United States issued a statement on Tuesday calling the transfer of the chimpanzees from BIOQUAL, Inc. in Rockville to the New Iberia Research Center “disappointing.” Since 1986, the Rockville lab has housed chimpanzees used as research subjects by NIH, the journal Nature reported. Now, with the use of chimpanzees for research waning and the scientists who conducted such research retiring, NIH no longer needs the chimps, Nature …

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Viewfinder: Sunday Night at the Movies

Moviegoers enjoyed "Toy Story 3" and raised money for the National Institutes of Health Children's Charities at the 15th Annual Comcast Film Festival at the Universities at Shady Grove.

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