Conflicts of interest (COI), real or potential, have become a weapon used to silence the manufacturing industry in various scientific debates and discussions. Other equally “interested” parties, labor unions, advocacy groups, and consultants to the other industry – the litigation industry – have used conflicts and ethical claims to silence the manufacturing industry and to engage in unfettered false scientific speech. The public, unwilling and untrained to look at evidence on the merits, is conditioned to accepting an allegation of COI as the end of the discussion on scientific issues.
Recently, journalist Shannon Brownlee criticized the FDA for its suggestion that the agency was having difficulty in finding experts who cleared the agency’s conflict-of-interest prohibitions. Brownlee explicitly contended that she could easily find “unbiased” scientists who could advise the agency on drug and device issues.
Shannon Brownlee, “Is There an Independent Unbiased Expert in the House” (Aug. 3, 2011).
Indeed, Brownlee sent FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg a list of allegedly neutral experts who could advise the agency. Brownlee gave everyone on her list a clean bill of ethical health, and has published the list on multiple occasions, both on the website Healthnewsreview.org, and a few years ago, in the British Medical Journal: Jeanne Lenzer & Shannon Brownlee, “Is there an (unbiased) doctor in the house?” 337 Brit. Med. J. 206 (2008).
Brownlee tells us that journalists from respectable print media, including the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, have requested the list, apparently to contact the “unbiased” experts to help investigate news stories about drugs and medical devices. What the gullible may not appreciate is that the list fallaciously is based upon only one exclusionary criterion: having consulted for the pharmaceutical industry. The list omits other important COI exclusionary criteria, such as having consulted for the litigation industry, or having taken erroneous, unwarranted, and ideologically driven positions on scientific issues.
What litigation industry? Brownlee may have missed the fact that plaintiffs’ lawyers represent a huge financial interest in obtaining compensation for others, with 40 percent of the proceeds going to themselves. This litigation industry thrives, even with Dickie Scruggs in prison, and Stanley Chesley in disrepute.
In today’s litigation environment, with aggregation of claims in federal multi-district cases, plaintiffs’ counsel stand to profit in the billions from scientific positions espoused by their expert witnesses.
Who are the litigation industry expert witnesses on Brownlee’s list? Here are some obvious candidates:
Peter R. Breggin, MD, psychiatrist, clinical psychopharmacologist, independent author and scientist; Founder and Director Emeritus, International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology
Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, Professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center; Director, PharmedOut.org
Curt Furberg, MD, PhD, Professor of Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Joseph Glenmullen, MD, Clinical instructor in psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Bruce Psaty, MD, PhD, Professor, Medicine & Epidemiology, University of Washington Cardiovascular Health Research Unit
Also on the list were well-known anti-industry zealots, who focus almost exclusively on the manufacturing industry, while ignoring or endorsing the excesses and unwarranted claims of the litigation industry:
Lisa Bero, PhD, Professor, University of California, San Francisco U.S.
Sheldon Krimsky, PhD, Tufts University & Council for Responsible Genetics
Sidney Wolfe, MD, Director, Health Research Group of Public Citizen.
Now some people may claim that the litigation industry consultants, and the anti-industry zealots, take their positions not to please their sponsors, or to pursue lucrative opportunity, but because they fervently believe the positions that they take. But then why not give the pharmaceutical industry consultants the same benefit of the doubt? Indeed, why not move beyond COI allegations to creating lists of scientists and physicians who have demonstrated proficiency in advancing evidence-based judgments that have withstood the test of time?
This anti-industry hypocrisy manifests not only in assertions of conflicts of interest, but also in calls for industry to disclose all underlying data from industry-funded or sponsored studies, while taking a protectionist stance on all other underlying data.
Let’s hope that in 2012, industry fights back, and evidence regains its primary role in resolving scientific disputes.
