Conflicts of Interest – The Integrity of Medical Research

Is the pharmaceutical industry's product driven focus affecting the integrity of medical research and possibly the health of patients worldwide?

Is the pharmaceutical industry’s product driven focus affecting the integrity of medical research and possibly the health of patients worldwide?

Some medical doctors think so. This past week, according to an article published by Your Health Daily, about 700 scientists, advocates and policy makers recently gathered in San Francisco for a national conference on conflicts of interest.

According to a doctor that spoke at the conference, some researchers sited in pharmaceutical industry studies have only one relationship when it comes to those studies… a paycheck from the drug maker.

While some may say that the financial interests of drug companies are not such a big deal, others say that they are effecting the “integrity of medical research and potentially harming patient care,” according to a statement made in the article.

The bottom line is that pharmaceutical companies do not want researchers to publish data that is unfavorable to their company products. This results in only favorable data getting into medical journals which is then promoted via major news media sources.

This is the same “favored” data that then becomes the topic of your local news “medical minute”, not to mention the drug company advertising that follows during the commercial break.

For example, a recent review of reports related to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, found that 76 percent of the articles contained “doubtful or invalid statements,” according to the article.

Is the goal of the pharmaceutical industry to get new products to market as quickly as possible? And as a result, are our children perceived first and foremost as a target market?

Your Health Daily: Drug Industry Influence Hurting Research, Doctor Says

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