James F. Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), announced on April 4 that he will resign because of new conflict-of-interest regulations recently implemented at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Battey, who also heads the NIH Task Force on Stem Cell Research, stated that he would leave his position because the new NIH regulations would require him to relinquish management of a family trust fund.
The conflict of interest rules, which went into effect Feb. 3, place limits on financial holdings in biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies. Employees who file public or confidential financial disclosure forms are prohibited from holding stock in biomedical firms; all other employees are subject to a $15,000 cap on investments.
The rules also restrict the outside activities in which employees can be involved, and are more stringent for institute directors because of their senior status.
Battey is the first institute director to announce plans to step down in the wake of the conflict-of-interest rules. NIH also has seen the departure of several top-tier scientists in the few months following implementation of the regulations. Battey declined to comment how other institute directors might respond to the regulations, but predicted that the rules will be a problem for intramural scientists.
Battey came to NIH in 1983 as a senior staff fellow. He was appointed director of intramural research at NIDCD in 1995, and was tapped to head the institute in 1998. As head of the stem cell task force, Battey often was in the position of defending President Bush's controversial policy restricting federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells.
Battey reportedly is exploring employment opportunities in California and Maryland. He is considered a strong candidate for president of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, created under the state's recently enacted stem cell research ballot initiative.