Posted
11:58 AM
by Gene
Speaking of Ka-CHINNNNNNNNNNNNNG!:It takes some 60 pages to list all the authors who presented studies at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in March, and another 30 pages to list all their financial conflicts. Many academic researchers serve on the speakers' bureau of one company or another, helping to educate other doctors. Others work as consultants, often a necessary step in bringing drugs to market. Still others work on company-funded clinical trials, the main way that medicines are studied for safety and efficacy.
All of these are lucrative gigs that can make or break a career in medical research. If a researcher wants to run a clinical trial on a Genentech cancer drug, it's unlikely to happen if the company doesn't want to pay. (The National Institutes of Health funds relatively few trials.) Speaking can help raise an expert's profile among his peers. Well, SOMEONE will benefit from all this logrolling -- LAWYERS.