Conflicts of Interest in Human Subjects Research

摘要

Conflict of interest in biomedical research first came to public notice in the 1980s via a number of cases of scientific misconduct in which perpetrators had financial interests in the outcome of their research. The cases, highly publicized, were summarized in the 1990 report of the House Committee on Government Operations entitled "Are Scientific Misconduct and Conflicts of Interest Hazardous to Our Health?" and spurred the issuance of federal regulations in 1995. The linkage of misconduct with financial self-interest was unfortunate, because it seemed to fix in the public mind the belief that any financial interest of investigators in their research is inevitably problematic. It is noteworthy that during this period concern centered mainly on individual faculty interests and their threat to scientific integrity, and the communal threat to public health posed by falsified scientific information. At the time, the academic community made thoughtful attempts to address these concerns, as reflected in several notable reports.