The director of the National Institutes of Health on Thursday defended the concept of industry-funded research, after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warned that the agency runs the risk of bias when it leans on private funding this way.
Warren asked NIH Director Francis Collins during a Thursday hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee why the agency still uses industry funding. She specifically bashed the Foundation for the NIH, which solicits donations from industries to fund research in their fields.
“The NIH comes up with a plan based on the science and the foundation gets donations to fund it,” Warren said. “But when you have your hand out for cash, it is sometimes possible these lines get blurred.”
Warren referred to a controversial study on the impact of moderate alcohol use on heart health. NIH decided to end the trial back in June after reports of the alcohol industry’s involvement.
“The alcohol industry [was] not only funding this study, but it was set up to deliver the results the industry wanted,” Warren said. Her comments were delivered a few days after she made a speech decrying corruption in Washington and proposed banning lawmakers from owning stocks.
But Collins countered that he can “cite some examples where this kind of partnership with industry has made science move faster than it otherwise would have.”
“What we need to be careful about, and which has I think caused us to stub our toe a couple of times, is a circumstance where the source of the funds have a vested interest in the outcome of the study,” Collins said.
He gave an example of a new type of cancer treatment called immunotherapy, which tries to stimulate the body’s immune system to fight off cancer cells.
“We stated a recent study on cancer immunotherapy … involving industry input trying to identify what are the biomarkers that indicate whether immunotherapy is going to work,” Collins said. “Everybody wants to know the answer to that. Nobody has a stake in what the answer is going to be, only that we need the answer.”
[Opinion: Elizabeth Warren doesn’t mind taking money from lobbyists (so long as they’re local)]
