Missing the Mission | The Danger of Silence When It Comes to Corporate Funding of Research
This one’s a no-brainer: If you’re a biomedical researcher as well as a high-priced consultant to Acme Pharmaceuticals, and your studies result in a huge increase in the use of the very medicines that Acme manufactures, you disclose your financial relationship with the company so that other scientists can judge for themselves whether the consulting arrangement influenced your work and your results. According to Sunday’s New York Times, though, a handful of influential investigators silently lined their pockets while their studies "helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder … and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children."
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.
By failing to report income, the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and a colleague in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, may have violated federal and university research rules designed to police potential conflicts of interest, according to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Some of their research is financed by government grants.
The scientists’ lukewarm defense of their actions?
In an e-mailed statement, Dr. Biederman said, “My interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study,” and he said he took conflict-of-interest policies “very seriously.” Drs. Wilens and [Harvard colleague Dr. Thomas] Spencer said in e-mailed statements that they thought they had complied with conflict-of-interest rules.
Mental illness, especially in children, needs a lot more study, and diagnoses and treatments will veer back and forth as the process of science slowly directs the path of research toward consensus. That’s just the way it works. And with NIH funding failing to keep up with rising expenses, researchers will have to rely, at least in part, on corporate funding. But even the lowest of ethical standards require disclosure of funding sources. We need to know as firmly as possible that the medications we’re being given have been vetted fully and are the product of our most complete knowledge, not of the successful efforts of Big Pharma — much of whose admirable work has vastly improved human health — to buy off science. | 501(c)
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