But a few years later, I helped to write a Senate report on ghostwriting in biomedicine and realized how common and damaging to public health this practice is. After we released the report, I met for coffee with the NIH congressional affairs person and demanded that Collins do something about ghostwriting. Ghostwriting was unethical and dangerous for public health, I pointed out. While Collins didn’t realize this, he had put his name on a paper that had been ghostwritten for him by an NIEHS employee who was not given credit for her work.
Collins needed to act.
Shortly after, I left my job in Congress to work at the Project on Government Oversight. When I uncovered the court documents showing ghostwriting that involved NIH-funded scientists, I wrote a letter to Collins detailing what I had found in the documents.
I then called the NIH congressional affairs employee and reminded him of our talk over coffee and what I knew about the Science paper with Collins’ name on it. If Collins ignored my letter, if he ignored this problem with ghostwriting, I was going public about that paper in Science and how it had been ghostwritten by a low-ranking woman at the NIEHS.
When Collins wrote me back, I kept my end of the agreement and remained silent.