You may recall that shortly after last week’s release of the controversial Vytorin study results, the American Heart Association quickly released a statement saying the cholesterol med isn’t ‘unsafe’ and that patients and docs shouldn’t panic. The study found no statistical difference between Vytorin and Zocor, and that Vytorin didn’t reduce the amount of arterial plaque build-up in the carotid arteries. The AHA statement followed Steve Nissen’s suggestion that Vytorin become a drug of last resort as well as criticism over the poor handling of the long-delayed study by Merck and Schering-Plough.

The next day, however, Health Care Renewal pointed out that the AHA receives substantial funding from Merck and Schering-Plough, and that AHA president Dan Jones has been a Merck consultant (see this article). Now, The New York Times noticed this and wrote that the nearly $2 million annual contributions from the drugmakers includes $350,000 to sponsor a cholesterol page on the AHA web site.

Congress, meanwhile, is expected to widen its Vytorin probe to include the AHA and the American College of Cardiology, which also issued a supportive statement that was drafted, in part, by its preventive medicine chair, who has ties to both drugmakers.

Embarrassed by all the attention, both Jones and Rose Marie Robertson, the AHA’s chief science officer, tell the paper that the web site was being changed Wednesday night to make the sponsorship clearer, and greater transparency is a goal. “We actually have a policy,” Robertson says. “You’ve got to have two clicks before you get to any drug information.” Although the page is still problematic. As Forbes notes, the AHA cholesterol page takes you to another ‘patient advice’ page that integrates the same “two sources of cholesterol” tagline used to sell Vytorin. And this page offers a link to a Merck and Schering-Plough site.

For his part, Jones, who is also dean of the school of medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, tells the paper: “We certainly don’t want to ever give the impression that any content that’s put in any place by a pharmaceutical company is delivered or endorsed by the AHA. If there is a lack of clarity on that, I will work with our team to make it clear.” Really? Well, he could start by disclosing his consulting, which he didn’t discuss with the Times.