Stronger sanctions needed against companies that suppress data
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《英国医生杂志》
"Suppression of science is not an anomaly but is typical of, and produced by, the current economic, political, and social situation, and that is—money talks. It is the system; it is not just a few bad apples," Dr David Egilman, a professor of medicine at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, told a conference this week.
Although money was important, there were also other forces at work, he said. "It is broader than money, it's ideology and power. Ideology is a much larger bias than money—much harder to ferret out and think through," he added.
His words found a ready audience among those attending the one day conference Conflicted $cience: Corporate and Political Influence on Science-based Policymaking, held in Washington, DC, this week. It was sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a US consumer advocacy organisation for health and nutrition.
Dr Egilman said ethical companies could not compete with the unethical ones because "the penalties for getting caught never approach the cost advantages of increased profit, and there rarely are criminal penalties."
He believes that part of the reform package must be to press criminal charges against industry leaders who suppress data that results in death. "And even if they get off, a trial or two will really clean the act up."
Dr Arnold Relman, emeritus editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lamented that the dominant role that academic research institutions played in conducting clinical trials, as recently as the 1970s, had "largely been coopted by the pharmaceutical industry."
"The rhetoric from the academy claims that their collaboration with the industry really serves the public interest because it favours the rapid transfer of basic science into the marketplace. But they do not acknowledge that scientific collaboration does not have to include financial arrangements that compromise the integrity and independence ," he said
Keynote speaker Brian Baird, a Democratic Congressman from Washington state, criticised the Bush administration and Republican leadership in Congress, charging that they are conducting a "full assault on scientific integrity that is a danger not only to the enterprise of science, but ultimately to the value of inquiry, debate, and decision making that underlie the democratic process."
Mr Baird, who was first elected in 1999, is also a licensed clinical psychologist and former academic researcher. He chastised the scientific community as well, saying that its response had been "pathetic, self serving, and by and large craven."
Far too often researchers using government appropriations do not stop to think that it is someone else's hard earned money. Too often that research is "esoteric, largely unmeasurable, with no clear benefits to society, yet concludes with the obligatory sentence, `further research is necessary.'" He challenged the audience to seriously examine their own actions.
"The scientific community has been politically asleep for too long," he said. He urged them to defend the integrity of the scientific process and also to get involved in politics at the grassroots level.
Although critics of "cheque-book science" were well represented at the conference, fewer participants offered detailed remedies.
One common theme at the conference was the need for greater transparency of information in everything from the financial interests of investigators and funding sources, to a registry of all clinical trials, to comparative rather than placebo controlled trials, to publication of negative data.(Bob Roehr)
Although money was important, there were also other forces at work, he said. "It is broader than money, it's ideology and power. Ideology is a much larger bias than money—much harder to ferret out and think through," he added.
His words found a ready audience among those attending the one day conference Conflicted $cience: Corporate and Political Influence on Science-based Policymaking, held in Washington, DC, this week. It was sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a US consumer advocacy organisation for health and nutrition.
Dr Egilman said ethical companies could not compete with the unethical ones because "the penalties for getting caught never approach the cost advantages of increased profit, and there rarely are criminal penalties."
He believes that part of the reform package must be to press criminal charges against industry leaders who suppress data that results in death. "And even if they get off, a trial or two will really clean the act up."
Dr Arnold Relman, emeritus editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lamented that the dominant role that academic research institutions played in conducting clinical trials, as recently as the 1970s, had "largely been coopted by the pharmaceutical industry."
"The rhetoric from the academy claims that their collaboration with the industry really serves the public interest because it favours the rapid transfer of basic science into the marketplace. But they do not acknowledge that scientific collaboration does not have to include financial arrangements that compromise the integrity and independence ," he said
Keynote speaker Brian Baird, a Democratic Congressman from Washington state, criticised the Bush administration and Republican leadership in Congress, charging that they are conducting a "full assault on scientific integrity that is a danger not only to the enterprise of science, but ultimately to the value of inquiry, debate, and decision making that underlie the democratic process."
Mr Baird, who was first elected in 1999, is also a licensed clinical psychologist and former academic researcher. He chastised the scientific community as well, saying that its response had been "pathetic, self serving, and by and large craven."
Far too often researchers using government appropriations do not stop to think that it is someone else's hard earned money. Too often that research is "esoteric, largely unmeasurable, with no clear benefits to society, yet concludes with the obligatory sentence, `further research is necessary.'" He challenged the audience to seriously examine their own actions.
"The scientific community has been politically asleep for too long," he said. He urged them to defend the integrity of the scientific process and also to get involved in politics at the grassroots level.
Although critics of "cheque-book science" were well represented at the conference, fewer participants offered detailed remedies.
One common theme at the conference was the need for greater transparency of information in everything from the financial interests of investigators and funding sources, to a registry of all clinical trials, to comparative rather than placebo controlled trials, to publication of negative data.(Bob Roehr)