Two women have testified that they witnessed instances of sexual harassment and failure of compliance with safety codes within the AIDs division of the National Institute of Health (NIH). Their testimony is being used in a lawsuit by Dr. Fishbein, against the NIH, who is being fired after having raised questions last year about safety and compliance within the division.

NYT reports,
A boss sends a red bra to a woman who was once his subordinate but who had a falling out with him. Government e-mail messages are used to distribute profanity and a picture of a partly nude woman. An order that patients in a medical experiment be better protected takes two years to complete.

Two women, both senior officers at the agency, testified that the workplace was so uncomfortable and intimidating that some employees were afraid to speak up against frequent dismissal of concerns about patient safety.

The NIH spends hundreds of millions of dollars conducting AIDs experiments around the globe. NIH managers have acknowlegded that there are problems within the division and there is an investigation of the harassment allegations. The AP mentioned that part of the lack of compliance was pressure from pharmaceutical research companies to "find a cure."
Always looking at the dollars and cents of it, I suppose. Just at the cost of possible danger to a sample population and women being intimidated by asshole higher-ups in the workplace.