WASHINGTON, DC - Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) today sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) regarding NIH-sponsored emergency medical research that is conducted without informed consent. The letter follows up on a June 2017 letter to the NIH.
The committee’s June letter detailed the account of a constituent who reached out to their member of Congress. The constituent lost his wife, who went into cardiac arrest.
NIH’s response to the committee raised several additional questions or points of clarification. The NIH also failed to address one of the committee’s questions.
“NIH’s response is appreciated, even though it was not presented in the usual format of providing corresponding answers to the reproduced questions as originally posed in the Committee’s letter," wrote Chairman Walden. “Thus, it does not appear that in its Sept. 14, 2017 response the NIH directly answered the question: What actions will be taken to improve communication with emergency medical service (EMS) providers and site investigators on this issue? Thus, I am following up to obtain NIH’s answer to this question."
In detailing other concerns in NIH’s response, Chairman Walden also wrote, “NIH did not address how it ensures that EMS responders are receiving proper training in interaction with patient representatives, or what documentation institutional review boards or principal investigators provide to NIH as evidence of proper training. Given what appears to be credible evidence of lack of training and a reasonable assumption of a breakdown, what action is NIH going to take to ensure the proper training and scripts reach EMS responders at ROC [Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium] study sites?"
