conflict of interest
sb admin | June 26, 2007By Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, Deputy Director, Public Citizenâs Health Research Group
Dr. Lurie is a contributor to Public Citizenâs drug newsletter, available at www.worstpills.org. He will present testimony on state doctor gift disclosure laws before the Senate Special Committee on Aging on Wednesday, June 27, 2007. This article originally appeared in the May 2007 issue of Public Citizenâs Health Letter.
The life of a doctor must be tough. To judge by most of their offices, doctors are unable to afford pens, mugs, refrigerator magnets, or pads of paper. Even lunch is beyond their reach, it…
sb admin | June 15, 2007By David Michaels
The National Football League, like many trade associations, has been disputing the long-term risks associated with employment in that industry. Weâve written about the leagueâs Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, supposedly independent but in fact dominated by individuals who work for NFL teams or the league itself. The Concussion Commission has been accused of downplaying the long term risks of football-induced brain injury. (Also see this post about one star running back's fight with the NFL for work-related disability payments.)
Now Alan Schwarz, who has been…
sb admin | May 30, 2007By David Michaels
Chris Cillizza of WashingtonPost.com's The Fix blog reports that former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) is "growing more and more serious about a run for president" - in fact, he's chosen a "campaign manager in waiting."
Tom Collamore, a former vice president of public affairs at Altria, has been leading the behind-the scenes organization efforts for a Thompson presidential candidacy and will be intimately involved when (not if) the former senator decides to announce a bid.
Altria is the parent company of Philip Morris (PM), which was behind many of the tobacco…
sb admin | May 28, 2007By David Michaels
The Chinese government has apparently recognized the importance of integrity in drug regulation. According to AP:
China's top drug regulator was sentenced to death on charges of corruption and negligence, state media said Tuesday, the latest development stemming from growing alarm over the country's poor food-safety record.
Zheng Xiaoyu was convicted and sentenced "on charges of taking bribes and dereliction of duty" at the Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, the Xinhua News Agency said in a brief dispatch. No other details were given.
Zheng was fired…
sb admin | May 22, 2007The public (that's you) have until May 24 to comments on EPA's list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board panel on asbestos. David Michaels has weighed in on this issue  and is submitting his comments today to EPA. Another organization providing input is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Writing on behalf of NRDC, senior scientist Jennifer Sass writes: Â
On the whole, industry-employed scientists and scientists working for industry-supported research institutions tend to downplay the effects of toxic chemicals. ...Here, many, if not most of the industry nominees…
sb admin | May 17, 2007By David Michaels
Product Defense is a lucrative business. The scientists who own and operate these firms make sizable profits helping polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products stymie public health and environmental regulators. The companies, and the scientists, sell not just their scientific expertise, but their knowledge of and access to regulatory agencies. Hire me, they say, because I can get the results you want. I used to work at EPA, or OSHA, or FDA -- I know how they operate, and besides, the folks at the agency will always answer my phone calls. This is mercenary science.…
sb admin | May 1, 2007By David Michaels
Earlier this month, the National Institute of Healthâs National Toxicology Program fired the contractor that had been running its Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) after environmental health advocates drew attention to the companyâs chemical industry ties. (Go here to see previous posts.)
Now, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel draws attention to another NIH contractor with potential conflicts of interest â and once again highlights the lack of appropriate disclosure policies for NIH contractors. At issue is the contractor that prepares the NTPâs…
sb admin | April 17, 2007By David Michaels
The controversy continues over NIHâs review of Bisphenol A (BPA), and the agencyâs firing of Sciences International. Members of the NIHâs BPA Expert Panel have joined the discussion, through comments to the Pump Handle, assuring the public that their work was not not influenced by any potential conflicts.
In addition, todayâs Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both have articles with additional details on the conflicts of interest that triggered the firing, along with comments on the process to date. There is also an interview with a panel member defending the quality of…
sb admin | April 16, 2007By Dick ClappÂ
Opponents in the debate over conflict of interest in cancer research are duking it out, and the current forum for their fight is the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The article that touched off this particular scuffle was âSecret Ties to Industry and Conflicting Interests in Cancer Research,â by Hardell L, et al. (Am J Ind Med 2007;50:227-233), which details a number of examples of researchers working for industries and not disclosing their ties. The most widely publicized revelations (see this Guardian story) were about Sir Richard Doll, one of the icons of 20th…
sb admin | April 15, 2007By David Michaels
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has fired Sciences International. Last month, Marla Cone wrote in the Los Angeles Times about allegations that the consulting firm, hired by the NTP to run the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), had significant conflict of interest. The allegation was that Sciences International also worked for manufacturers of Bisphenol A, or BPA, a controversial endocrine-disrupting chemical that CECHR was evaluating. (Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen of the Natural Resources Defense Council have post on the BPA…
sb admin | March 26, 2007A few weeks ago, we detailed some of the concerns about the review of the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) coordinated by the contractor Sciences International for the National Toxicology Programâs (NTP) Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR). The story broke shortly before an expert panel on BPA was scheduled to meet, when Environmental Working Group reported that Sciences International has worked closely with tobacco and chemical companies â including Dow Chemical, a BPA manufacturer. We noted that these were evidently previous clients of Sciences International, which…
sb admin | March 9, 2007By Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen
As described in earlier posts (here and here), the NIHâs National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has contracted the work of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) out to the consulting company Sciences International. This issue received public attention just as CERHRâs scheduled review of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) was taking place.
We submitted comments to CERHR detailing concerns about the content and the process of the BPA review. Our concerns include:
The NIEHS NTP Center for the Evaluation of Risks…
sb admin | March 9, 2007By David Michaels
Since my post on privatizing federal science, I have learned more about Sciences International and owe them an apology. I said in my post, âSciences International is not a hack company; it employs some very respected scientists who do excellent work.â But that was buried in the post.
Since writing the post, I have been assured that Sciences International no longer works for chemical manufacturers involved in producing bisphenol A (BPA). I noted in the post that the previous head of Sciences International, who had been involved in work for the tobacco industry, has left…
sb admin | March 9, 2007One of the great things about the blogosphere is that even when several bloggers are writing about the same story, theyâre covering different angles. Here are a couple of examples of posts that complement our posts from the past week:
As a complement to Revereâs post on the FDAâs cefquinome decision, check out The Olive Ridley Crawl for a list of five reasons the approval is unnecessary and Mike the Mad Biologist to learn why cefepime-resistant salmonella is only the tip of an infection iceberg.
As a complement to David Michaelsâs post on antioxidants and cancer, learn how antioxidants might…
sb admin | March 7, 2007by Liz BorkowskiÂ
On Sunday, Marla Cone of the LA Times wrote about a federal health center contracting out the work of assessing potentially dangerous chemicals to a company with chemical-industry ties (see David Michaelsâs post for reasons to be wary of this particular contractor). Her story in todayâs paper shows that shining a light on such shady ties can sometimes have an effect.
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group drew issue to this attention on February 28th, when it released the results of an investigation that found the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction…
sb admin | March 4, 2007By David Michaels
Marla Cone, in the Los Angeles Times, reports on a complaint raised by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that the National Toxicology Programâs Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) is being run not by federal scientists but by a consulting firm that also works for manufacturers of chemicals CECHR is charged with evaluating.
EWGâs charges are true, but not surprising if youâve ever worked in a federal agency. The number of government activities that are actually performed by contractors is enormous and growing rapidly. CERHR, whose mission is…
sb admin | January 24, 2007by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
The University of California Regents (their Board of Trustees) is facing a thorny issue: should researchers in the University of California system be banned from taking research support from the tobacco industry? Two conflicting imperatives, one, unfettered freedom to pursue research wherever it leads; the other, the need for some constraints. Not anything goes, even in the hallowed halls of higher learning. Let me be clear. I think the chief executives of tobacco companies are aiding and abetting, if not committing, homicide, by promoting an…
sb admin | January 16, 2007By Sheldon Krimsky
ExxonMobil has already come under scrutiny for funding global warming deniers, but the company has also funded research that raises concerns about conflict of interest in litigation research. The company began funding litigation research after being hit with punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill, and then cited that research in an appeal that ultimately reduced those damages by $2 billion.
A brief history of the case is as follows:Â On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker left the terminal in Valdez, Alaska heading south through Prince William Sound…
sb admin | January 12, 2007If you've got a long weekend coming up, what better way to spend it than by reading the best science blog posts? Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock has links to the 50 posts chosen for the Science Blogging Anthology.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere ...
Cervantes at Stayin' Alive and Janet D. Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science respond to the report on bias in industry-financed beverage studies.
Eesha Pandit at RH Reality Check reports on UNICEF's "The State of the World's Children 2007," which found that bringing an end to gender discrimination would benefit women and children…
sb admin | January 3, 2007by Dick ClappÂ
The latest issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine contains a commentary from Ken Mundt, a consultant with ENVIRON International Corporation, on âCancer incidence among semiconductor and electronic storage device workers,â an IBM-funded study by Bender et al appearing in the same issue. Mundt says that âthe study offers some reassurance that at this stage of follow-up no noteworthy increases in cancer risk are seen among employees in the semiconductor production and storage device sectorsâ (though he notes that additional follow-up should be considered). I believe he…