Big pharmaceutical companies play for big profits and play to win. They push the edge of professional ethics and legal compliance. And they misappropriate, misuse and compromise the good names, work, and cache of some the country's finest medical schools and their faculty researchers. I'm sure there are still many people for whom these reported practices are still surprising. But then, why wouldn't they be? With the FDA--all the regulation--professional, medical school, and medical research ethics, with the potential for public outrage, how could they not be surprised?
How surprising to me, in Spring 2001, when taking a graduate ed course on higher ed policy with Derek Bok (former president of Harvard), that one of our classes was devoted largely to readings on this very issue. And Professor Bok, like many higher education leaders, viewed this as something that had to change. Of course, it wasn't just medical schools, but any area of university research and any professors working in those areas that could benefit a range of corporate businesses. Corporations can be generous to those schools, departments and faculty. But Big Pharma appears the most aggressive player on this field. As a result, many believe, the integrity of those research institutions and faculty is compromised. Yet neither the higher ed community nor the government regulators and examiners have stopped it.
In the current edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), an article by the Editor in Chief and Executive Deputy Editor calls for reform in this area, raising the visibility and affirming the continuing threat of this problem. But will the medical profession or the government do any more now than they have in the past? Don't hold your breath.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/299/15/1833
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