Unhealthy Ethics

WE DON'T NORMALLY find ourselves in the position of arguing that ethics rules are too restrictive. Then again, we don't normally encounter ethics rules as overbroad, intrusive and unnecessarily punitive as those recently put in place by the National Institutes of Health. The NIH ethics rules needed to be tightened, especially in light of reports involving possible conflicts of interest by government researchers who also engaged in lucrative outside consulting work. But the new rules represent an ultimately self-defeating overreaction.

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