Report shows strong IRB ties to drug firms

One critic of academia-industry relationships says the study shows foxes are guarding the chicken coop.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Sept. 22/29, 2003.

Almost half of the medical school faculty who staff institutional review boards overseeing the safety of human subjects involved in clinical research also serve as consultants to biomedical industry companies, according to a report published last month in Academic Medicine.

The report has helped reheat the debate about whether this potential conflict of interest is a bad thing or just a reflection of modern scientific reality.

Of the 2,989 faculty IRB members surveyed, 47% had recently served as industry consultants. The researchers cited a 1997 study they conducted showing that these potential conflicts had led to investigators delaying the publishing of their research to allow for patent applications or to slow dissemination of undesired results.

Nevertheless, the study's lead author, Eric G. Campbell, PhD, assistant professor in medicine at the Institute for Health Policy and the Dept. of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said a main goal when structuring IRBs is to get people who know what they're doing. In today's research environment, many of these people have connections to industries that may benefit from the research being conducted.

"I think the study points to the natural tension that exists with faculty members on IRBs," he said. "You want people who are knowledgeable about research, ... industry and how industry works. But with those benefits come potential drawbacks: People who have relations with industry form a potential conflict of interest."