Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14549

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: chapter

Lemmens T.
Conflict of Interest in Medical Research: Historical Developments
Emanuel EJ, Grady C, Crouch RA, Lie R, Miller F, Wendler D. The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics : Oxford University Press (US) 2008
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Medicine/Ethics/?view=usa&ci=9780195168655

Abstract:

The topic of conflict of interest in medical research has become one of the standard issues in any textbook on research ethics and, particularly in the past decade, has also become a core component of the medical and bioethics literature. More than half of the articles on this subject published in the medical literature since 1966 were published since 1999. The significant increase in the number of such publications is undoubtedly related to the growing role of financial interests in the biomedical research enterprise. Particularly, since the 1980s, following the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in the United States, which explicitly allowed the commercialization of federally funded research and promoted the patenting of biomedical inventions,t the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have taken on a more important role in biomedical research. Their influence has expanded through increased industry sponsorship of academic research and as a result of the growth in industry-organized research. The increase in the volume of conflict of interest commentaries, analyses, and policies is the most striking development, but there has also been noticeable shift in focus. Although the conflict of interest debate has historically focused on the conflicts faced by individual investigators, increasing attention is being paid to larger institutional and professional pressures that result from the commercialization of research and of academia. But the issue of conflict of interest is not new and is not exclusively associated with the context of commercialized research…