Unbeknownst to patients partaking in NIH studies, 900 hundred current and former scientists at the National Institutes of Health legally collected millions in royalties for drugs and inventions they developed while working for the government, the Associated Press reported. The doctors did so legally because until recently, they were not required by NIH to disclose such information to patients. According to the AP, NIH even went so far as to block several scientists' attempts to disclose the royalty information. In May 2000, the government promised that all scientists' financial stakes would be disclosed to patients, but NIH took nearly five years to enact the policy and only did so after the Associated Press requested information about royalty payments and disclosure policies through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Hundreds, if not thousands, of patients may have participated in NIH studies without knowing the researchers' financial interests in the project. Read the Associated Press article, "Feds Failed to Disclose Financial Interest".