Industry Ties Seen as Distorting Medical Studies

[Guest guest]

Industry ties seen as distorting medical studies

March 31, 2003

 

 

Industry ties seen as distorting medical studies

 

Robert Lee Hotz, Los Angeles Times

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

 

 

 

New York -- The scramble for profit warps the way scientists and universities

conduct medical experiments, undermining the integrity of research, said Yale

University investigators who studied the impact of commercial funding on

science.

One-quarter of the biomedical researchers at universities had commercial ties

serious enough to raise the questions of financial conflicts, the analysts

found. In many cases, it was enough to bias their research.

Moreover, the universities expected to police the integrity and ethics of

faculty scientists have their own commercial research interests and financial

conflicts. At least two-thirds of the universities also were involved in

commercial ventures, holding equity shares in startup companies whose research

they were also expected to monitor. Twenty-seven universities had equity in 10

or more startup companies, the researchers said.

The result is slanted science.

Industry-sponsored research is 3.6 times more likely to produce results

favorable to the company that helped pay for it, the Yale researchers determined

in a university-funded study released Tuesday in the Journal of the American

Medical Association.

" Medical research is a matter of life and death, " said Yale University medical

analyst Justin Bekelman, who led the study team. " The guidance patients receive

from their doctors relies on valid scientific research. "

In all, the Yale researchers analyzed data from 37 previously published

peer-reviewed studies -- covering hundreds of research projects and thousands of

scientists -- on the extent, impact and management of financial conflicts.

They named no scientists or schools involved, nor revealed any companies.

Conducting the most extensive study of commercialism and science so far, they

did identify a troubling trend across the realm of biomedical research.

Their review covered the decades from 1980 to 2000, a period during which the

share of commercial funding grew to 62 percent of all U.S. spending on

biomedical research. Even as public spending on biomedical research doubled in

the last five years, the financial ties between academic scientists,

universities and industry became more common and more likely than ever to

influence research findings.

" Financial conflicts were even more prevalent among institutions than among

individuals, " said Yale research analyst Cary Gross. " How workable is oversight

and the policing of financial conflicts by institutions if they themselves have

conflicts? "

Every day brings a blizzard of new assertions: Roller coasters are safer than

bunk beds. Wine and walnuts improve your health. This vaccine is harmless.

That drug works better than a placebo or its competitor.

Who among the chorus of experts should the public believe? Who can be trusted?

" It is getting harder and harder to find someone who can conduct the research or

evaluate the research who does not have a financial interest in a particular

product or particular company or a particular outcome, " said biomedical ethicist

Mildred Cho at Stanford University.

This financial tangle is the consequence of a basic change in the way biomedical

research is conducted in the United States, several experts said.

Commercial funding, once anathema to ivory tower academics, has become the

lifeblood of biomedical research, fostered by federal laws and regulatory

changes since 1980 that give scientists and schools more freedom to profit from

work once considered in the public domain.

 

http://website.citizens.org/showdoc.cfm?id=63184

 

 

 

The complete " Whole Body " Health line consists of the " AIM GARDEN TRIO "

Ask About Health Professional Support Series: AIM Barleygreen

 

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/AIM.html

 

 

 

 

 

Free online calendar with sync to Outlook.