An article by Duff Wilson in The New York Times discussed a study released this past Monday from Columbia University, which revealed that 25/32 consultants of medical device companies in 2007 did not disclose their payment within their articles published the following year in medical journals Medical Industry Ties Often Undisclosed in Journals, by Duff Wilson.
This was a cross-sectional study, which is, according to Babbie, “…observations or a sample, or cross section, of a populations or phenomenon that are made at one point in time” (Babbie pg. 110) of orthopedic device companies and the financial disclosures of their consultants within medical journal articles (Wilson). They studied a total of 32 medical doctors and doctoral researchers who published one or more journal articles in 2008 and were paid a minimum of $1 million in 2007, and found that the majority of doctors did not divulge their financial connections with the companies (Wilson).
Medical device companies examined in this study were: Zimmer, DePuy Orthopaedics, Stryker, Biomet and Smith & Nephew (Wilson).
“… $114 million went to 41 doctors, the study said, of whom 32 wrote or were co-authors on orthopedic journal articles the next year…. It said 51 of them, or 54 percent, did not mention the financial relationship with a company. It showed that 25 of the 32 authors did not disclose some or all of the time” (Wilson).
Similar to my last post, I find this behavior to be highly unethical for all 3 parties. It is unethical for the medical device companies to pay consultants and doctors such outrageous amounts to review their devices, it is unethical for the doctors to accept that money and allow it to alter their views while writing the articles, but not disclose their financial relations with the company to the readers, and it is unethical for the journals to not be more aware of this issue and require that all writers disclose their financial relationships with companies, if any. The research and reports are simply unethical because money clouds judgement. One of the profesors from Columbia who wrote this study shares a similar view:
“Professor Rothman called for stricter disclosure policies, including precise amounts of consulting payments. He said journal readers needed the information to consider the potential for bias” (Wilson).
I think that it would be interesting to conduct a longitudinal study, which is, according to Babbie, “A study design involving data collected at different points in time,” (Babbie, pg. 110) on this topic to see if this is a new development or if it has been going on for years. If it has been going on, it would also be interesting to see how it has changed over time, especially in the amounts of money given to consultants and the level of transparency.
No comments:
Post a Comment