What These Medical Journals Don’t Reveal: Top Doctors’ Ties to Industry

For example, the American Association for Cancer Research has warned authors that they face a three-year ban if they are found to have omitted a potential conflict. But the group’s policy on conflicts of interest contains no mention of such a penalty, and it said no author had ever been barred. Dr. Baselga’s failure to disclose his industry relationships extended to the association’s journal, Cancer Discovery, for which he serves as one of two editors in chief. The association said it is investigating Dr. Baselga’s actions.

Most authors do seem to disclose their ties to corporate interests. About two-thirds of the authors on the Kisqali study, for example, reported relationships with companies, including Novartis. But the researchers who did not included Dr. Arteaga, Dr. Burris and Dr. Denise A. Yardley, a senior investigator who works with Dr. Burris at Sarah Cannon.

The Tennessee-based research center received more than $105,000 in fees for consulting, speaking and other services on Dr. Yardley’s behalf in the three-year period in which she declared no conflicts.

The Sarah Cannon institute said it switched over a year ago to a “universal disclosure” practice promoted by ASCO, the cancer group that Dr. Burris will lead. That requires doctors to disclose all payments, including those made to their institutions.

“We believe we adhere to the highest ethical standards in the industry by not allowing personal compensation to be paid to our leadership physicians,” the center said.

ASCO said it would post corrections to Dr. Burris’s disclosures in The Journal of Clinical Oncology for the past four years. The group said that in the fall of 2017 — as Dr. Burris was seeking a leadership role in the organization — it began working with him to disclose all his company relationships, including indirect payments. Dr. Burris will become president in June 2019.

“Disclosure systems and processes in medicine are not perfect yet, and neither are ASCO’s,” the group said in an email.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/health/medical-journals-conflicts-of-interest.html?partner=rss&emc=rss