Ethics-Governance: Article: eMJA: Research integrity and pharmaceutical industry sponsorship

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eMJA: Research integrity and pharmaceutical industry sponsorship Over the past 20 years, politicians, hospital administrators and university deans have encouraged academic researchers to increase their participation in projects sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, and the industry’s share of biomedical research has increased dramatically in that time (from 32% to 62% in the United States).1 Increasingly, the wisdom of this development has been challenged. It would be even better if testing drugs in patients was a public enterprise . . . The research agenda predominantly serves the interests of industry rather than those of patients. Surveys have shown that manipulation of clinical trials — whereby, if the results are published at all, the control treatment is disadvantaged by design, analysis, or interpretation2-5 — is common. Even when the results for the active and control therapies are no different, industry-sponsored trials come to a positive conclusion in favour of the sponsor’s drug five times more often than do not-for-profit-sponsored trials.4 This sponsor bias can have serious consequences. A meta-analysis supported by Merck concluded that there was no increased risk of arterial thrombosis with the company’s cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitor, rofecoxib.6 However, another meta-analysis, not sponsored by industry, showed an increased risk, which was apparent in publications available to the authors of the industry-sponsored meta-analysis 4 years before the drug was withdrawn because of thromboses.7 Such down-playing of harms in published papers has often required the collaboration, or acquiescence, of academic clinical researchers. Full Article: http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/182_11_060605/got10184_fm.html


2006 Ethics-Governance.com