University Diaries » “It harms patients to have biased and corrupted research published. It harms patients to have unaccountable special interests permeate medical research. It harms patients when poor publication practices become business as usual. Yet harm has been done. And that fact creates a basic moral obligation.”

Stanford University’s Eugene Carragee gets it said with beautiful concision.

And with authority: He’s the editor of The Spine Journal, and, as Paul Thacker notes, Carragee has devoted an entire issue of his journal to the appalling ongoing story of Infuse. (This New York Times article, which appeared minutes ago, provides background.)

Paul wonders if this particular revelation of the ghostwriting, conflicts of interest and undisclosed payments behind the promotion and use of a destructive medical device might be “a critical turning point, when we see physicians finally break free from [the] corrupt influence of industry and begin to put patients first and money second.”

UD‘s primary interest is in the ways universities collude – through passivity or cynicism or ineptitude – in the activities of conflicted professors on their faculties.

And it’s not merely collusion. Often these people – easily identified by the 800 or so articles they claim on their cvs to have written (many of these publications are ghost- or guest-written) – are among the highest-profile, most celebrated faculty on campus.

Among the highest-paid, too. Keep that in mind when you read this, from the NYT article:

The median amount of Medtronic money received over time by researchers involved in some studies ranged from $12 million to $16 million, with most of that going to a few individuals…

“A consistent number of people involved with these studies got extraordinary sums,” [Carragee] said.

The surgical operation at play here is known as cash infusion.

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adam Says:
June 28th, 2011 at 5:20PM

Um, let me think. Isn’t there someone at Stanford who was tagged not long ago with biased research, unaccountable special interests and poor publication practices? Has a company that paid him well? Had trouble locating the boundary between commerce and academia? He is a journal editor too, right? He used to be a department chairman in the medical school? Maybe he could learn some things from Dr. Carragee.

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