Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1705

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: Journal Article

Elliott C.
Should journals publish industry-funded bioethics articles?
The Lancet 2005 Jul 6; 366:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673605667943/fulltext

Abstract:

DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)66794-3
In a Viewpoint, Carl Elliot states that bioethics has a growing credibility problem because of its financial links to pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. He argues that medical and bioethics journals should not publish editorial pieces on bioethics or health policy if the author has a financial interest in the topic he/she is writing about. “Of course, such a policy would not solve all the problems of industry funding… But the symbolic effect would be very powerful indeed.”

Notes:

Summary of the Lancet article from- http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=27155
Bioethics Journals Should Not Publish Industry-Funded Articles
09 Jul 2005

Industry-funded bioethics articles should not be published by journals, according to a Viewpoint published online yesterday (Thursday July 7, 2005) by The Lancet.

As the influence of bioethics has grown, so has the willingness of bioethicists to seek out funding from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The results of this industryfunded work are now making their way into peer-reviewed academic journals.

Some of the authors of such articles have disclosed their industry ties, but readers are left to wonder if an industry-funded bioethicist is a bioethicist that they can trust.

Carl Elliott (University of Minnesota, USA) argues that full disclosure is unlikely to solve the problem of conflict of interest. Most bioethics journals do not even ask authors to disclose their funding sources. Nor have disclosure policies eliminated the problem of bias.

It has been seen that clinicians who accept gifts and honoraria from industry are more likely to prescribe drugs from that particular industry, even when they do not themselves believe they have been influenced.

Dr Elliott states: “Disclosure policies raise a red flag and should be retained, but they do nothing to eliminate the real problem of industry funding, which is not secrecy but influencepeddling… If bioethics scholarship is to retain any measure of independence and credibility, it will need to take much stronger measures.”