[e-drug] BMJ: Faculty ties with industry

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E-drug: BMJ: Faculty ties with industry
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BMJ  2003;327:414 (23 August)

News extra
Many US faculty members on institutional review boards have ties with industry
New York Janice Hopkins Tanne

[Copied as fair use]

A study of US medical schools' faculty members serving on 
institutional review boards found that industry funding is common. 
About half of review board members are faculty members and about half 
of these have industry ties (Academic Medicine 2003;78:1-6)

The boards aim to protect patients in clinical research studies by 
reviewing the protocols before a study begins, approving changes in 
an ongoing study, and responding to reports of adverse events.

"Industry funding is part of the modern scientific enterprise. It's a 
fact of life. Universities should manage [the relationships] to guard 
against risks and realise benefits. We don't know the effect. We 
don't know whether it's bad," lead author Dr Eric Campbell told the 
BMJ.  He said that research expertise is valuable for participants on 
review boards.

Dr Campbell is assistant professor in medicine (health policy) at 
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. 
He and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard 
Medical School did a postal survey of a random sample of faculty 
members and reported results from the 66.5% who responded-4694 
faculty members at the 121 four-year medical schools in the United 
States (excluding Puerto Rico). The researchers found that "about 
half (47%) of all faculty institution review board members had served 
as consultants to industry in the three years before our study."

Members of these boards were similar to other medical school faculty 
members, except for race and ethnicity. Under-represented 
minorities-non-Hispanic African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native 
Americans-were 3.2 times more likely than white faculty members to 
serve on a review board. Most US medical schools allow faculty 
members to consult for industry one day a week..

"In recent years, numerous reports have criticised institutional 
review boards for failing to adequately protect human subjects," the 
authors write, noting that the US Department of Health and Human 
Services said many review boards lack research expertise (New England 
Journal of Medicine 2002;346:1405-8).

Industry ties and service on a review board may mean that researchers 
can sabotage studies by other investigators or "kidnap" pools of 
patients with rare disorders to serve their own research interests. 
Industry ties may limit researchers' access to data gathered in 
multicentre studies, may require delayed publication, or may restrict 
information because of trade secrets, the authors say.

Dr Donna Shalala, former federal secretary of health and human 
services, and Dr Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England 
Journal of Medicine, wrote in that journal a few years ago that 
conflicts of interest may have undermined integrity (2000;342:1516-8 
and 2000;343:808-10;). Another study published in the same journal 
found that insufficient attention was paid to issues of race and 
ethnicity in HIV studies (2002;346:1373-82).

Race is a sensitive issue in the United States, where from 1932 to 
1972 doctors in the Tuskegee study did not treat African-American men 
who had syphilis, even after antibiotics became available.

Access Essential Drugs Monitor #32 at http://www.who.int/medicines/mon/mon32.shtml

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