By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Posted: Saturday, April 12, 2008

LETTER
Publication Date: April 12, 2008

This letter first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 12, 2008:

Dr. Kassirer persistently targets financial conflicts while ignoring the many other potential sources of lack of scientific objectivity. Some of these include professional advancement, careerism, ideological or political beliefs, personal (or family) experiences or even religion. Yet there seems to be no widespread call for disclosure of these and other fraught areas of conflict.

Conversely, one might ask if journals and readers should trust a publication on, say, environmental causation of breast cancer, submitted by a researcher whose career has been devoted to finding such a link -- or to a study funded by a foundation devoted to that same cause? No one, it seems, bothers to inquire.

Kassirer uses the withdrawal of the drug Rezulin as an example of supposed pharmaceutical corruption, but he ignores the fact that the drug was a major advance when first introduced. It was, appropriately, later succeeded by two safer drugs once they were approved.

This course of events actually demonstrated that the system worked as it was supposed to. And the expensive new drugs he decries improved on the old -- in fact, newer drugs have been shown to be more effective, in general, than older drugs -- saving money for the healthcare system in the long run.


Gilbert Ross, MD
Medical Director
American Council on Science and Health
New York

See also: ACSH's full report on Scrutinizing Industry-Funded Science by Ron Bailey.