Washington DC

Six months after interim ethics guidelines shook up the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), permanent rules have been announced.

The regulations came into effect on 30 August. They ban NIH researchers from consulting for biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies, but work with trade or professional societies is allowed.

NIH chief Elias Zerhouni said last week that he would evaluate the ban on consulting in a year's time. In 2003, the Los Angeles Times unmasked researchers who accepted large consulting fees from companies whose products were being studied.

Under the new rules, no one at the NIH is allowed to hold shares directly related to their research. But most of them can now own unrelated shares in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields. Senior staff — “anyone with final decision-making authority or next-to-final decision-making authority”, according to Zerhouni — will have to limit holdings in each company to $15,000, and to a total of $50,000 for healthcare funds.

Ezekiel Emanuel, the chair of an advocacy group for NIH researchers, is cautiously pleased with the new rules. “I think they are certainly much more sensible than before,” he says. But his group has no plans to disband: Emanuel says that many other policies still sap morale at the agency.

This week, Derek LeRoith resigned his job as chief of diabetes research at the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, in part because of poor morale and because of the onerous interim ethics rules. “The rules are tough,” he says. “They haven't loosened them as much as I thought they would.”