MEDICAL RESEARCH JUNKYARD

THE NEW TREND IN CORRUPT SCIENCE

By Nicholas Regush

The other day I was watching the Lou Dobbs show on CNN when he introduced the film "Austin Powers." He made a special point of informing his viewers that CNN's parent company, AOL Time Warner, had launched it (via New Line Cinema). He apparently felt it was important to divulge this fact.

The same day I was reading through the various medical journals that I normally review and discovered that there is now a greater effort being made to inform the reader about potential conflict-of-interest.

For example, in the current edition of the journal, Circulation, there is a report on a study that investigated the value of a drug called "omapatrilat," which may be of value for certain heart failure patients. At the end of the report, I learned that three of the study's authors are consultants for Bristol-Myers Squibb, which funded the research.

The example from TV represents a phenomenon that is on the increase as giant media corporations form and control the flow of content. I expect that before long news anchors, such as Dobbs, will be mentioning their bosses more frequently as News hypes Entertainment to the point where it will often be difficult to tell the difference.

So I raise this question: Does it really matter in this context if they tell us there is a link between what they are promoting and their parent companies? I mean, who cares? Once this becomes a more routine way to describe content on news shows, what does it matter what they tell us? The news product will have become so diluted, even an apology wouldn't help matters.

I fear this is rapidly also becoming the case in medicine. Once every second or third medical article will have a note at the bottom telling us that the authors are shills for the company, will this make us feel better about the integrity of the report? I doubt it.

In the past, the ties were kept secret. But has medicine gained much in merely acknowledging that the authors of reports consult with the company? In fact, as this practice of  "consulting" becomes more widespread, and as it becomes routine and acceptable to believe that ties to a pharmaceutical company make no difference at all in the final report, then medicine will have found yet another way to make what is really another form of corruption appear to be the gold standard.

Doctors who conduct research and think that they cannot be influenced by drug companies with which they have financial arrangements live in la-la land. Unfortunately, we'll be hearing from a lot more of them when it becomes very clear to everyone in medicine that financial ties are fine, as long as you mention them.