Shackling Innovation the Regulation of Industry Supported Clinical Trials

Abstract

Over the past three decades, collaborative arrangements between academic biomedical researchers and private industry have grown dramatically, resulting in medical innovations that have benefited society greatly. However, a growing chorus of criticism directed at private companies that sponsor and conduct biomedical research casts doubt on the very ethos of science. Academics and anti-business activists have waged a campaign against industry-sponsored clinical trials that denies the fundamentally commercial nature of such research and hinders medical progress. These critics point to a small number of unfortunate and tragic cases in which financial conflicts of interest may have played a role in research-related injuries and deaths in order to unjustifiably condemn the profit motive in biomedical research as a whole.