Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17907

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

How Whistleblowing cost one doctor £550,000
BMJ 2002 May 25;
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/324/7348/1240

Abstract:

Koos Stiekema, who delayed a clinical trial by revealing his worries about it to three ethics committees, tells Tony Sheldon how he thinks whistleblowers should be protected

Dutch former medical researcher Dr Koos Stiekema is convinced of the “potentially disastrous” effects for doctors working in industry after a court’s decision to award huge damages against him for whistleblowing.

Dr Stiekema left the pharmaceutical company Organon after a dispute over the design of the PENTUA (pentasaccharide in unstable angina) study into the efficacy of a new anticoagulant, pentasaccharide. He then laid his serious concerns for the lives of the trial patients before the three independent medical ethics committees that were overseeing the study.

His actions led to a claim against him for a three month delay to the study, estimated at more than 900000 (£550000; $827000). Despite facing financial ruin, he maintains: “Doctors employed by the pharmaceutical industry are obliged to . . .