That gentleman Ed Silverman, over at the shiny new Pharmalot, has a great piece up this morning -- on efforts to encourage NIH to fund research into the effects of conflicted drug and device clinical trials:
. . . .Dozens of researchers, clinicians, and ethicists sent a letter asking the NIH to fund research on medical ethics, conflicts of interest, and industry influence on prescribing behavior. Why? They note that stimulus funding has increased the NIH budget significantly, but the agency has "no mechanism for funding research on how commercial interests affect the choice of medical therapeutics. . . ."
[The letter-signing effort is being sponsored by pharmedout.org.] Do go read it all. This is an important moment -- a point of inflection -- where we may all change the [largely non-] system, for the betterment of patient outcomes. Here is a link to the full-text letter.
