Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2499

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

Ashcroft RE.
Conflicts of interest
BMJ 2002 Dec 17; 325:(7377):1375
http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/325/7377/1375

Abstract:

The BMJ’s position on competing interests is admirable and deserves to be widely imitated. Most readers may not know that this issue has also created controversy outside biomedical research. A recent London Review of Books article by leading US bioethicist Carl Elliott calls his US colleagues to account for the widespread practice of receiving funds for research, speaking fees, consultancy payments and the like from pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry sources, both as personal payments and as investment in bioethics centres and university departments, without declaring this interest in their publications. Given that much bioethical research has an “advocacy” element, involving not only ethical analysis but also persuasion that a certain position or policy is to be preferred, this is somewhat less alarming than in science, where there is a claim to objective truth. However, since much bioethical argument turns on the giving of neutral and dispassionate assessments of moral options, there is cause for concern. Elliott was responding to a position statement on conflict of interest commissioned, but not adopted, by two major US bioethics associations, and subsequently published in the leading US bioethics journal – where the taskforce members refused to declare their own interests. Bioethicists – like other academics – need funds to support their work. Sometimes it is appropriate to seek industrial sponsorship. But there is a crying need for clarity about when this is and is not appropriate, and for acceptance of the need to declare interests when publishing.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor United Kingdom bioethicists relationship between medical profession and industry conflict-of-interest declaration of interests ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: LINKS BETWEEN HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND INDUSTRY SPONSORSHIP: HEALTH FACILITIES AND INSTITUTIONS SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH