CONFLICT OF INTEREST - Medawar's Social Audit funded by legally aided drug injury litigation

CONFLICT OF INTEREST IS NOT JUST ABOUT ADVISING PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES




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(Social Audit's) work has been funded mainly by sale of publications, also through consultancy work in legally aided drug injury litigation. We have undertaken generic research for solicitors acting for plaintiffs in a number of major cases, including those involving Opren/Oraflex (benoxaprofen); Factor VIII and other blood products contaminated by HIV; and dependence-related problems with benzodiazepine tranquillizers. What claim to a special independence do lawyers or individuals working for or as single issue pressure groups have, exactly? Their raison d'etre is to seek out controversy and conflict that has the potential directly to sustain and reward them. Why should their potential conflict of interest be treated more leniently than a clinician, such as myself, who has an interest in pharmacology and is sometimes paid to give advice to companies about their products? The lesson is two-fold. First, we have to insist that all conflicts of interest are declared when individuals make market-sensitive statements. Furthermore, the interests need to be comprehensive. The more comprehensive we are, the less it will seem that some have many and others have none. Furthermore, the grotesque cultural relativism that makes my conflict of interest a vice and yours a virtue must wither and disappear