IOM Urged to Recommend Conflict-Free Zone for Medicine

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IOM Urged to Recommend Conflict-Free Zone for Medicine

The Institute of Medicine panel developing rules for managing conflicts of

interest in medicine will be told this week that there need to be strong

boundaries between researchers who conduct industry-funded research and any

body

that helps determine how medicine gets practiced. “The system for reviewing

the body of evidence in a field; deriving best practices through systematic

reviews; writing clinical practice guidelines; conducting and evaluating

comparative research; and, vitally important, evaluating evidence for

regulatory

purposes should be entirely free from conflicts of interest,†Merrill

Goozner,

director of the Integrity in Science Project at the Center for Science in the

Public Interest, will tell the 17-member panel on March 13. The Conflict of

Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice panel is charged with

designing policies to manage conflicts of interest “without damaging

constructive collaboration with industry.â€

With an estimated 70 percent of clinical trials now funded by industry, it

is inevitable that numerous physician-researchers will have ties to industry,

Goozner will note. But it is crucial to find unconflicted scientists to

evaluate that evidence since there is a demonstrated correlation between the

outcomes of research and the funding source of the researchers. CSPI will also

call for the nation’s 700,000 physicians to wean themselves from dependence

on

industry support for their continuing medical education, and to stop taking

gifts from industry salespersons, a near ubiquitous practice that clearly

influences prescribing patterns.

Goozner will compare medical evaluators on guideline writing committees and

regulatory advisory panels to financial journalists, who are strictly

prohibited from having any financial relationship with the companies they

cover, and

the Federal Reserve Board, whose officials and staff are strictly prohibited

from having financial relationships with the banks and financial

institutions they regulate. “Why should medicine be held to a lower standard

than

either of those professions?†Goozner will ask. “Where there is total

financial

independence, there can be no questions about objectivity.†CSPI also called

on the IOM to tighten its own conflict of interest policies. Numerous

scientists with financial ties to industry serve on its advisory panels without

disclosing those ties since the agency only considers ongoing financial

arrangements as a conflict of interest, not those that took place in the recent

past.

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