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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2630

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

McMasters KM.
Disclosure of authors' conflicts of interest - A follow-up (1st of 4 letters)
New England Journal of Medicine 2000 Jul 13; 343:(2):146
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/343/2/146


Abstract:

In the February 24th issue, 19 cases were identified in which authors of Drug Therapy articles were in violation of the Journal ‘s conflict-of-interest policy for review articles and editorials. According to this policy, “authors of such articles will not have any financial interest in a company (or its competitor) that makes a product discussed in the article.” Although no wrongdoing was implied, one cannot look at this matter without thinking that, in some small way, the authors have been discredited. There are several problems with the Journal ‘s analysis of these cases. First, only the Drug Therapy articles have been reviewed for violation of the conflict-of-interest policy. However, the policy applies equally to other types of review articles and editorials. Why was the policy not enforced for these articles as well? The Journal has focused on pharmaceutical companies, but clearly, review articles and editorials related to biotechnology, diagnostic tests, medical devices, new procedures, and so forth should be examined in the same light.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor United States conflict-of-interest ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: MEDICAL JOURNAL EDITORSHIP SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909