Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16873

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: Electronic Source

Goldstein J
In Medical Research, Who Should Define Conflict of Interest?
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2009 Nov 19
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/11/19/in-medical-research-who-should-define-conflict-of-interest/

Full text:

The NIH gives out more than $20 billion a year in research money, and the institutions that get it – universities and med schools, among others – are supposed to track potential conflicts of interest among their researchers and report back to the NIH. But who decides what constitutes a potential conflict of interest?

Some 90% of the institutions that get NIH money “rely solely on researchers’ discretion to determine which of their significant financial interests are related to their research and are therefore required to be reported,” according to a federal report out today.

The HHS inspector general, the author of the report, argues for a shift in policy. The NIH should require institutions it funds to “collect information on all significant financial interests held by researchers and not just those deemed by researchers to be reasonably affected by the research,” the report says.

Health Blog Question of the Day: Should doctors and other researchers decide what to disclose? Should institutions collect information on “all significant financial interests” held by researchers? Or would some other system work best?