Further Calls for Increased Oversight on Medical Research & Physician Conflitcs of Interest

Kreislauf des Geldes ("The Circulation of Money"), Aachen, Karl-Henning Seemann (1977)

The Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law & Policy has continued to focus on the implications of research funding in patients’ decisions to participate in clinical research, as well as the effects such funding can have on researcher behavior and research results.  In January 2009, the Center recommended that all financial relationships between industry and physicians be publicly disclosed by industry.  And just this month, the Center released its most recent White Paper, “Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Trial Recruitment & Enrollment: A Call for Increased Oversight.”

Similarly, in a November 17 letter to Francis Collins, 100 researchers, academics, and public policy analysts asked the NIH to “fund studies on medical ethics, conflicts of interest in medicine and research, and prescribing behavior” in order to determine the effects of industry-academic relationships on human health.  The letter implores the director of NIH to focus on “the research gap on the effect of conflicts of interest and commercial influence on medical decisionmaking” and to establish a mechanism for funding relevant research.

One of the primary concerns in the researchers’ letter is an issue also identified in a November OIG report, “How Grantees Manage Financial Conflicts of Interest in Research Funded by the National Institutes of Health,” which found that a majority of academic researchers’ conflicts of interest are unreported.   The report flags the potential for extensive conflicts between faculty members and their government-financed research.  In response, the US Senate Finance Committee recently sent letters to several universities requesting such information.  Just yesterday, Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, reacting to national concern about physicians’ and researchers’ financial conflicts of interest, began posting external professional and industry relationships for approximately 2000 faculty members — including service on boards of directors, consulting and related activities, ownership or investment interests, royalties and inventor shares, and additional activities such as lectures and participation in scientific advisory boards and professional societies.

Further research is obviously necessary to determine how financial relationships influence — as the authors of the letter to NIH call it — “the beliefs and behaviors of researchers and clinicians, and the effects of industry-academic relationships on the generation and dissemination of medical knowledge.”  In the meantime, increased oversight of physician-industry relationships by the federal government to evaluate and oversee investigator or institutional conflicts of interest, both for research within and without academic medical centers, is necessary.