Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18619

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: Electronic Source

Goozner M
ASCO Joins Protest Against NIH's New Conflict-of-Interest Rules
GoozNews 2010 Aug 24
http://web.archive.org/web/20101007172138/http://gooznews.com/node/3411

Full text:

Disclosure is enough, the nation’s leading organization of oncologists says.

The American Society of Clinical Oncologists last week joined university officials in protesting the National Institutes of Health’s new rules for managing the financial ties between federally-funded researchers and private firms. The group complained NIH’s definition for “managing” conflicts of interest overemphasized reduction or elimination of those financial ties.

Disclosure to university officials, colleagues and patients can deal with the situation, ASCO’s Aug. 19th letter said. Peer review also protects the integrity of the process, according to the group’s comments. “A conflict of interest is not evidence of wrongdoing,” ASCO said. The group also wants industry-supplied travel money exempted from the new conflict-of-interest rules.

Last week, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of American Universities made similar arguments in their brief against tighter standards for conflicts of interest.

I’ve been reading University of Minnesota bioethicist Carl Elliott’s new book on conflicts of interest in medicine. In “White Coat, Black Hat,” he writes that “studies suggest that, far from remedying the bias created by conflicts of interest, disclosure may actually make the bias worse.” As proof, he offered experiments conducted at Carnegie Mellon University showing that advisors became more brazen about touting strategies that advanced their own financial interests after disclosure.

It was as if the advisors had decided: All bets are off now. I’ve disclosed my conflicts so now I’m free to say whatever I like. The Carnegie Mellon group summed this finding up nicely when they said: Coming clean means playing dirty.