BACK of the BOOK
Heard in the Blogosphere
A Cure for ‘Conflict of Interest’ Mania
In The Wall Street Journal, researchers criticize the restrictions on research, education,
and practice that the conflict-of-interest movement has inspired, which they believe
undermine the relationships that drive innovation and, thus, slow medical progress.
“The result [of conflict-of-interest
culture] is a stifling of honest
discourse and potential discouragement of productive collaborations. More strikingly, some of
the young, talented physicianinvestigators I spoke with expressed worry about how any
industry relationship would affect
their careers.”
—Lisa Rosenbaum, MD,
cardiologist and senior correspondent for
The New England Journal of Medicine
“The case underlying the conflictof-interest movement is a mixture of moralistic bullying, opinion unsupported by empiric
evidence, speculation, simplistic,
and distorted interpretations
of complicated and nuanced
information, superficially and
incompletely framed anecdotes,
inappropriately extrapolated
or irrelevant psychological research results, and emotionally
laden human-interest stories.”
—Thomas Stossel, MD,
senior physician in hematology at
Brigham & Women’s Hospital
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ASH Clinical News
High Cost of Cancer Drugs is
Unsustainable
Clinical Trials Need Cancer
Patients
“On hearing that I was in a clinical trial, one
colleague actually told me that he would
rather take his chances with no treatment
than be used as ‘a lab rat.’ … I really like
to think of myself as the equivalent of a
test pilot like Chuck Yeager and the early
astronauts. Being a test pilot is a far more
romantic, daring and audacious notion than
being a lab rat. In the fight against cancer,
it’s also more accurate.”
—Stan Collender, a patient with a rare skin cancer,
in The New York Times
Why the Retracted Gay Marriage
Study Matters
“This retraction is an opportunity to step away
from the ‘one bad apple’ framing of scientific
misconduct and to seriously examine the features of research and training environments
that influence scientists’ behaviors. … In the absence of a reliable way to detect the bad apples
in a research community before they commit
serious misbehavior, it’s only a matter of time
before another case, and another after that.”
“We certainly need to consider the pharmaceutical companies’ position in deciding how
we’re going to pay for drugs. But, right now,
we’re paying for the drug whether it works
very well or whether it works just a tiny, little
bit. Ultimately, the industry is going to invest
in development of drugs because that’s how
they’re going to make a living.”
—Leonard B. Saltz, MD, on NPR’s
“All Things Considered”
Conquering Cancer: Personalized
Medicine is the Future
“Is this revolutionizing everything we know
about cancer, from prevention and diagnosis
to treatment and recurrence? I would say yes.
Testing the genetics of an individual patient
has opened up an entire new conversation
in oncology leading us to define within the
cancer what actually drives its development
and progression. … Are we closer to a cure
for cancer? I think it’s safe to say we’re closer
than ever before.”
—David Samadi, MD, discussing precision medicine
and genomic testing in The Huffington Post
—Janet D. Stemwedel, PhD, in Forbes. The highly
publicized study reporting that attitudes toward
same-sex marriage could be altered by face-to-face
conversations with people who have a stake in the
issue was recently retracted by its senior author, after
his co-author declined to furnish the raw data he
used to reach his conclusions.
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July 2015