[Pharm-policy] Balitomore Sun: Medical research: Academic institutions face huge conflicts of interest as they pursue business ties.

[love@cptech.org]

http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/bal-ed.patients02jul02.story?coll=bal%2Dopinion%2Dheadlines

Of profits and patients
Medical research: Academic institutions face huge conflicts of interest
as they pursue business ties. 
  
 
Originally published July 2, 2001

MEDICAL research is the cozy bed that academia and profit-driven
business all too often share. The implications for research integrity,
scientific advances and patient welfare are staggering and complex. 
In a three-part series last week, The Sun highlighted the ethical
dilemmas and legal pitfalls that mark this rapidly developing
medical-financial landscape. 

Criminal fraud, suppressed medical findings, high-stake financial
conflicts of interest, skewed studies and patient deception are among
the troubling results of this tightening entwinement. 

But the money poured into academic medical institutions by private
corporations also promotes and sustains otherwise unaffordable research
and testing. 

Government funding and institutional resources still dwarf private
sector financing. But corporate contracts are increasingly important to
academic institutions competing for taxpayer monies and the brightest
researchers. 

Institutions like Johns Hopkins University are trying to manage ethical
problems through internal review panels and requirements for full
disclosure of researchers' financial ties. But there are unexplained
lapses and unsettling contradictions. Academic institutions are racing
to file for medical patents, tying their financial health to the success
of these drugs and devices. But what does that mean for the health of
their patients? 

For human subjects in academic drug tests, there is an ineffective
patchwork of government protections in need of reform. That has been the
cry for years, most recently by the president's National Bioethics
Advisory Commission. 

With the increase in corporate-sponsored research, universities cashing
in on patents and academics paid as drug company consultants, the
traditional medical and scientific independence of institutions is at
ever greater risk. And so is the public trust on which those
institutions depend.