Meredith Wadman,WashingtonSenior staff at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should be banned frommost kinds of external consultancy work,according to the organization’s formerdirector Harold Varmus.

The suggestion, which would reverserules that Varmus himself put in place in 1995, was made on 12 March to a blue-ribbon panel set up to examine conflict-of-interest policy at the institutes.The panel was established after the Los Angeles Times suggested lastDecember that some top NIH staffmade biased decisions after receivingconsultancy fees from drugs firms (see Nature 426, 741; 2003).

Varmus advised that senior stafftake the same “vow of chastity” that hehas taken in his current position aspresident of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.“Institute directors should probably not be consulting for any companies,”says Varmus. “And certainly not forcompanies that might be candidates for grants from the NIH.” He alsoincluded institute deputy directors,scientific directors and clinical directorsin the constrained group.

Varmus acknowledged that hisrecommendations would severely limitthe outside activities of the most seniorofficials. But he said other staff, includingmost researchers, should be exempt inorder to allow the NIH to recruit andretain the best scientists. The situationshould automatically be reviewed ifa researcher’s outside earnings reachedthe same levels as his or her salary,he suggested.

Varmus loosened the rules in 1995,allowing institute directors to acceptconsulting payments frompharmaceutical firms, and removing a$25,000 cap on outside earnings for allNIH employees. He also allowedemployees to accept outside offers ofstock and stock options, a payment seenas particularly prone to tempt scientiststo bias results in favour of the companiesemploying them. Varmus believes timeshave now changed. “The interfacebetween academia and industry hasincreased,” he says.

The panel, which is chaired byNorman Augustine, chairman ofengineering firm Lockheed Martin basedin Bethesda, Maryland, and Bruce Alberts,president of the National Academy ofSciences, is due to report in May. ■

deaths in 2000, second only to tobacco.Regulating the food industry is the best

way to tackle the problem, say public-healthexperts and nutrition scientists. They recom-mend banning soft drinks and fast foods inschools and food advertising directed at chil-dren. They also want compulsory labelling ofthe calorie content of restaurant menus.

“The campaign says nothing about whatthe government or the food industry coulddo to help people to eat less and move more,”says Marion Nestle, chair of the Departmentof Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Healthat New York University.

The other component of Thompson’splan — changes to NIH obesity research —has been welcomed by obesity experts.Underthe scheme, put together by a cross-agencytask force set up by NIH director Elias Zerhouni, the institutes will focus on behav-ioural and environmental approaches tomodifying lifestyle. It will also support clini-cal trials of diet strategies (see page 252).

Increased focus on research to preventobesity is essential, says Kelly Brownell, direc-tor of Yale University’s Center for Eating andWeight Disorders. He points out that the NIHhas been criticized for focusing too much on the genetics,pharmacology and treatmentof obesity. Research in these areas will con-tinue under the plan, which could be fundedby a $40-million increase for obesity includedin the 2005 NIH budget request.

But many scientists worry that markingobesity as a research problem risks ‘medicaliz-ing’the issue and reinforcing public belief thatit is a disease requiring treatment. ■

➧ http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/kidsrestfood.pdf➧ http://obesityresearch.nih.gov

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Health experts find obesitymeasures too lightweight

Varmus advises ‘vowof chastity’ over NIHstaff consultancies

Fat chance: critics say NIH director Tommy Thompson’s anti-obesity campaign is misdirected.

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Declan ButlerResearchers have slammed the US govern-ment’s plans to combat the country’s obesityepidemic.Experts say the focus on changes inpersonal choices is flawed, and ignores therole of government and the food industry inshaping people’s decisions.

The strategy, announced on 9 March byTommy Thompson, head of the Departmentof Health and Human Services, combines anationwide education and advertising cam-paign with a revamp of obesity research acrossthe National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A public-awareness campaign, dubbed‘small steps’, will try to educate Americans byhighlighting healthier lifestyle options, suchas walking up stairs instead of taking a lift.Thompson also wants voluntary measures toencourage restaurants to put calorie infor-mation on menus and to improve the accuracyof calorie counts on food labels.

Obesity experts say that education is fine,but they are angry that the government hasnot addressed what they believe to be themain cause of obesity — the easy availabilityof cheap, calorie-rich foods. For example, astudy released last month by the Center forScience in the Public Interest, a Washington-based group that campaigns on nutritionissues, showed that the main courses of chil-dren’s meals in US chain restaurants typicallycontain 700–900 calories, more than half thetotal recommended daily amount.

And according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta,Georgia, around 64% of US citizens are over-weight or obese (A. H. Mokdad et al. J. Am.Med. Assoc. 291, 1238–1245; 2004), with obesity accounting for 400,000 preventable

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