[Pharm-policy] JAMA: Policies on Faculty Conflicts of Interest at US Universities

[James Love]

http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/current/abs/joc01590.html

Policies on Faculty Conflicts of Interest at US Universities

Mildred K. Cho, PhD; Ryo Shohara; Anna Schissel, MBioethics; Drummond
Rennie, MD

Context Despite federal regulations on faculty conflicts of interest in
federally funded research, academic-industry ties are common, and
evidence exists that financial considerations bias the research record.
Public scrutiny of these ties is increasing, especially in cases where
researchers have financial interests in the corporate sponsors of their
clinical research.

Objective To review policies on conflict of interest at major biomedical
research institutions in the United States.

Design Cross-sectional survey and content analysis study conducted from
August 1998 to February 2000.

Setting and Participants The 100 US institutions with the most funding
from the National Institutes of Health in 1998 were initially sampled;
policies from 89 institutions were available and included in the
analysis.

Main Outcome Measures Process for disclosure, review, and management of
conflicts of interest and specified management strategies or
limitations, according to the institutions' faculty/staff conflict of
interest policies.

Results Content of the conflict of interest policies varied widely
across institutions. Fifty-five percent of policies (n = 49) required
disclosures from all faculty while 45% (n = 40) required them only from
principal investigators or those conducting research. Nineteen percent
of policies (n = 17) specified limits on faculty financial interests in
corporate sponsors of research, 12% (n = 11) specified limits on
permissible delays in publication, and 4% (n = 4) prohibited student
involvement in work sponsored by a company in which the faculty mentor
had a financial interest.

Conclusions Most policies on conflict of interest in our sample of major
research institutions in the United States lack specificity about the
kinds of relationships with industry that are permitted or prohibited.
Wide variation in management of conflicts of interest among institutions
may cause unnecessary confusion among potential industrial partners or
competition among universities for corporate sponsorship that could
erode academic standards. It is in the long-term interest of
institutions to develop widely agreed-on, clear, specific, and credible
policies on conflicts of interest.

JAMA. 2000;284:2203-2208



Author Affiliations: Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics,
Stanford, Calif (Dr Cho); University of California, San Francisco,
Institute for Health Policy Studies (Mr Shohara and Dr Rennie); and New
York University School of Law, New York, NY (Ms Schissel). Dr Rennie is
also Deputy Editor, JAMA.

Corresponding Author and Reprints: Mildred K. Cho, PhD, Stanford
University Center for Biomedical Ethics, 701 Welch Rd, Suite 1105, Palo
Alto, CA 94304 (e-mail: micho@leland.stanford.edu).