Attack of the Pharmascolds
SHAYWITZ, DAVID A. & STOSSEL, THOMAS P.
Attack of the Pharmascolds The self-righteous foes of industry-funded medical research. BY DAVID A. SHAYWITZ & THOMAS P. STOSSEL Can bad companies fund good research? That’s the...
...We neither smoke nor encourage others to do so...
...If reporters took the care to evaluate the evidence, they might be surprised to learn that scientists—even academic researchers not receiving industry funding—have feet of clay...
...We have no qualifi cations to judge whether spiral CT is a good medical value—and we have no fi nancial interests in spiral CT...
...But the Cornell scientists promoting it are also trained professionals who have (confl ict of interest disclosure infractions aside) successfully run the gauntlet of peer review...
...That’s the question raised by recent reports of a promising new test for lung cancer, which turns out to have been developed with funding from a leading tobacco company...
...But we do know this: If ongoing research shows that spiral CT prevents death from lung cancer, the fi nding will deserve celebration...
...These are the questions serious scientists ask when they review any research, regardless of who paid for it...
...Regardless of the merits of the technology or study design...
...Critics of the sponsored research (the pharmascolds) are described glowingly, while investigators with industry funding are routinely maligned...
...Careful reporters might also discover that corporate sponsorship of research has proved highly benefi cial for medical innovation...
...anti-tobacco activists worry, probably incorrectly, that any advance in lung cancer management might be misinterpreted to encourage smoking...
...The research in question was conducted by an investigator at Cornell Medical College who proposed that an imaging technique called spiral CT (computed tomography) can detect lung cancers early enough for surgeons to remove them, thereby preventing the tumor spread that kills affected patients...
...sinners” story line than in challenging it, and their expos?s tend to conform to a highly stylized, moralistic plot...
...In an astonishing example of antiindustry bias, the Times cited a medical journal editor declaring that she “would never publish a paper dealing with lung cancer from a person who had taken money from a tobacco company...
...Not even a cure for cancer...
...They can be as ambitious as CEOs and as covetous as hedge fund managers (if not more so...
...Have other researchers duplicated their results...
...Prior to the publication of this research in the New England Journal of Medicine, conventional wisdom held that preventing lung cancer deaths by early detection was impossible, a conclusion informed by a succession of failed attempts using older screening methods...
...The reporter covering the spiral CT story, for example, described the critics of the project’s funding as “prominent cancer researchers and journal editors...
...The attempt to discredit the CT researchers taps into refl exive beliefs that money and the profit motive determine the outcome of research...
...The top Cornell administrator who approved the tobacco payments is also a distinguished physician-scientist...
...This is a sad commentary on what passes for “objectivity” among many of medicine’s selfappointed moral guardians...
...This premise—that research supported by industry is inevitably corrupt, while academic research funded by the government is intrinsically pure —has been repeated so often by an impassioned cadre of medical journal editors and self-righteous academics (let’s call them the pharmascolds) that it has assumed the patina of fact...
...Perhaps not surprisingly, journalists seem more interested in advancing a facile “saints vs...
...And, since tobacco companies are presumably evil incarnate, nothing they support can possibly be worthwhile...
...Instead of accusing researchers of taking “blood money” from corporations, we should be asking whether the Cornell fi ndings hold up: Is the study methodologically sound...
...Industry-sponsored research enabled the introduction of cholesterollowering statin drugs, for example, contributing to spectacular declines in deaths due to heart attacks and strokes...
...Has it been subjected to a peer review process...
...These forces of diagnostic nihilism got a boost from the New York Times, which splashed on its March 26 front page the news that the spiral CT researchers are “tainted” by confl icts of interest...
...The investigators received fi nancing from a charitable foundation supported by the Liggett Group, a cigarette maker, and they allegedly failed to disclose patent applications concerning the spiral CT technology...
...Thomas P. Stossel is American Cancer Society professor of medicine at Harvard and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute...
...We don’t forgive the tobacco industry’s historical resistance to acknowledging smoking’s health risks...
...Reporters have learned that they can generate a buzz by identifying corporate sponsorship of academic research and eliciting outraged soundbites from the pharma scolds, who are always ready to castigate the sinner in their midst while extolling their own implied virtue...
...Fueling this pessimism is the fact that, since smoking is the major cause of lung cancer, David A. Shaywitz, an endocrinologist, is a management consultant in New Jersey...
...Journalists should keep their eye on the ball and focus on the quality of the science rather than the character of its sponsors—and demand that pharmascolds do the same...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 33
