… [I protest the] feigned or real naiveté on the part of [medical] professionals who claim they are above being influenced [by industry money and gifts]. Physicians owe their patients much more than naiveté. The degree to which policy rather than personal ethics is necessary to bring an end to obvious marketing schemes is a reproach to my profession.

… Almost two-thirds [of medical school department chairs] have a personal relationship with industry as consultant, board member, paid speaker or the like. It is not unusual to see papers in major medical journals where authors disclose relationships with many, many industrial organizations.

Is anyone reassured by all this disclosing? I am not. To the contrary, I look askance at the discloser and at the substance that is being put forth. I am not surprised when paper after paper documents that when the study of a drug or device is industry supported, the result is far more likely to be positive than when the study of the same drug or device is government supported.

… My queasiness peaks when I know that the “CEO” of a large state-supported academic health center is also on the board of a certain major pharmaceutical benefits manager — which just happens to be the pharmaceutical benefits manager for that state’s employee health plan.

… Very seldom, anymore, are the trials necessary for licensing drugs or devices carried out by the manufacturer. There is an industry devoted to providing that service, the Contract Research Organizations (CROs). I have long railed against this relationship as I consider it inherently conflictual. Science is the exercise of disproving any hypothesis. The CRO is contracted in the hopes it will prove the hypothesis that a particular drug or device is an important contribution. There is no joy in Mudville when the study is negative (see the discussion above about industry-supported vs. government-supported science of this nature). CROs can be very lucrative. Many academic health centers have their own CRO, and many others wish they did. Furthermore, many an “academic physician” is employed for “translational research,” which is a euphemism for recruiting patients into trials run by CROs…

Norton Hadler, ABC News.