A National Institutes of Health researcher is under fire from companies that make blood-substitute products for failing to disclose a conflict of interest in a medical-journal article he wrote that was critical of the products, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The researcher, Charles Natanson, an anesthesiologist and a senior NIH investigator, was lead author of a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association that concluded blood substitutes were associated with a significant increased risk of death and heart attack, the paper continues.

Biopure and Northfield Laboratories are among several companies vying to develop the products for use by the military and for emergency surgery as alternatives to donor blood, which may be unavailable or unsafe, the paper writes, adding that controversy over safety has plagued the products and none have been approved by the FDA.

In the JAMA paper, Natanson noted he received a one-time $10,000 fee from a blood-substitute company, but didn’t disclose he was listed as a co-inventor on a pending patent for technology being developed at the NIH that could potentially make the products safer, the paper writes.

Zafiris Zafirelis, Biopure’s ceo, called the paper “seriously flawed” and tells the Journal that Natason “tried to substantiate claims of toxicity” without disclosing his interest in a pending patent “that addresses the issues his article trumpets.” Steven Gould, Northfield’s ceo, says the patent application “should have been disclosed,” according to the Journal.

Natanson said he didn’t report the patent info because he forgot his name was on the patent, and that he hadn’t been named on a patent application before. “I believe in full disclosure,” Natanson telsl the journal. “This was an error in judgment on my part and I take full responsibility.”

Here’s an irony: Two co-authors on the JAMA paper are Sidney Wolfe and Peter Lurie, both of Public Citizen, which is highly critical of conflicts of interest in medicine. Wolfe agrees the information should have been disclosed, but he defended the paper’s conclusions, the Journal writes.

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