A new group adds its voice to the rage on the influence of drug money on research and medical practice, saying it should be more money to study the problem. In a letter sent today to the National Institutes of Director Francis Collins Health, 100 doctors, medical ethicists, and others call for funding:
The recent disclosure of items ghostwritten, physician payments, and use of the doctrine leaders to increase markets for FDA-regulated products indicate that ethical failures can soak biomedical research. ...
In your role as director of "the steward of medical and behavioral research for the Nation," we ask that you acknowledge the standard of research on the effects of conflicts of interests and commercial influence on medical decision making ...
between bench and bedside is a treacherous path with ethical dilemmas. NIH is the best place to launch and support a rigorous scientific investigation into the ethical state of research, the relations of the academic industry, and the effect of this relationship on human health. There are currently no identifiable mechanism through which NIH would fund this research.
The message we want more money for our research seems selfish, and it's not like anything NIH funding in this area already. (For example, NIH Grant supported university surveys financing industry.) But the doctor Georgetown University Adriane Fugh-Berman, who heads a group called Pharmed Out who led the letter says NIH tends to reject grant applications on topics such as ghostwriting and industry funding for medical education. "I think the NIH thought this not from their area, and the problem is that it is not within the domain of person," she said.
signatories of the letter shows that the diversity of voices and came to rule on the matter. The list includes psychiatrists, current and former editors of journals, ethicists (including Lisa Bero of the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the influence of drug money on research), for patients and consumer advocates, medical students, and Susan Wood, FDA official who left to meddle in science by the Bush administration. Pharmed Out is funded by a 04 legal settlement involving the marketing of a Pfizer drug.
The letter asking for a meeting face-to-face with Collins. Stay tuned.
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