The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "NIH" ...
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The Deadly Dust
Fox Five found that in the 1990s the National Institutes of Health was not having employees wear the required safety gear, exposing them to asbestos. Using a hidden camera, they were able to confirm that even now employees were still being exposed.
Tags: asbestos; health; safety; National Institutes of Health; NIH; federal employees; OSHA; hidden camera; inspections; regulations
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Suddenly Sick
In this series, The Seattle Times revealed their findings from an investigation into the medical world. Among other things, they found that: "Pharmaceutical firms have commandeered the process by which diseases are defined." They reported that the World Health Organization and the U.S. Institutes of Health, among others, receive money from drug companies to promote the agendas of those companies. They also found that "some diseases have been radically redefined without a strong basis in medical evidence."
Tags: medicine; doctors; physicians; medical industry; hospitals; health; pharmaceutical; WHO; NIH; National Institute of Health
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The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?
This series examines how payments from drug companies to scientists at the National Institutes of Health cause a conflict of interest that affects health care and policy recommendations. Even under the partial reforms announced by the presidentially appointed NIH director in 2004, some NIH scientists would still be able to take compensation such as stock options and consulting fees.
Tags: conflict of interest; moonlighting; prescription drugs; drug companies
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Stealth Merger: Drug Companies and Government Medical Research
This investigation is about how the National Institute of Health allows its scientists to take side jobs as consultants for drug companies. The articles show how this conflict of interest can affect their work, and how it can be detrimental to the health of America. Not only does the agency allow for the conflict of interest, but it allows top-paid employees to keep their consulting confidential.
Tags: pharmaceutical industry; drug companies; NIH; FDA
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How a cancer trial ended in betrayal
The Baltimore Sun's three-part series on BCX-34, an experimental cancer drug. It finds that "with billions at stake, research universities become partners in commerce--and medicine pays a price."
Tags: cancer; cancer trial; medicine; experimental drug; research; NIH; BCX-34
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The Thirty Years' War
The New Yorker reports on the progress of our war on cancer, which has lasted more than thirty years. The question is whether we've been fighting cancer the right way. "If you had demanded that the N.I.H. solve the problem of polio not through independent research, but by means of a centrally directed program... you would get the very best iron lungs in the world... but you wouldn't get the vaccine that eradicated polio," the New Yorker quotes a former National Cancer Institute director. New discoveries are often touted as miracles without ever causing significant drops in mortality rates. Though knowledge about cancer has been increasing, the American mythology of cancer is running into the realities of federally run programs.
Tags: cancer; Richard Nixon; Citizens Committee For The Conquest of Cancer; National Cancer Institute; National Institutes For Health; STI-571; cancer treatments
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The Body Hunters
"A Washington Post investigation into corporate drug experiments in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America reveals a booming, poorly regulated testing system that is dominated by private interests and that far too often betrays its promises to patients and consumers."
Tags: FOI; pharmaceutical companies; medical research; FDA (Food and Drug Administration); WHO epidemic data; developing nations' medical trials; ethics; NIH grant files; Office of Human Research Portections; new drug development; HIV tests; Trovan; Doctors Without Borders; private sector experiments; meningitis; database mapping project
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A People in Peril: Pimas on the front lines of an epidemic
The Arizona Republic reports a "three-day series examined the epidemic of diabetes in the Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix and how the effects of the disease had become substantially worse despite more than three decades of research into the problem..."
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The Virus and the Vaccine
The Atlantic Monthly investigates the claim that a simian monkey virus known as SV40 may cause mesothelioma, a rare but pernicious form of cancer. From 1955 to 1963, the polio vaccine was mass produced using monkey kidneys and thus was contaminated with SV40. According to the magazine's investigation, "the presence of SV40 in human tumors has been reported on in more than forty independent research papers" but federal health officials, who cite two studies to the contrary, believe the positive results were caused by laboratory contamination.
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Can the Gene Cowboy Ride Again?
Philadelphia Magazine reports how "Michael Blaese left the National Institutes of Health for a Newtown biotech firm promising practical treatments from still-theoretical "gene repair." He'll succeed, or it's cold fusion all over again...His former bosses at the NIH have allocated billions of dollars for genetic research in the past decade, only to face charges that their vision of a "gene medicine" able to cure every human illness is half-baked and quixotic. Even optimistic scientists still think it will be decades before patients realize major benefits from all these studies. Blaese believes he can make it happen sooner."
Tags: biotechnology; gene therapy; experimental science; unconventional medicine