posted on February 6, 2002 01:20:01 AM new
--This week's readings, both in the mainstream media and in science
journals has been a veritable festival of conflict of interest news! We all
knew that the Bush administration was on the take and that conflict of
interest was not only a White House way of life but the real religion
underlying all the "Good Christian" hype. Now we discover that a large
number of folks in the media received money from Enron, too! Jeez, I
mean how many piggies can you fit at one trough? And where the hell is
Farmer Brown?
----Anyway, the same day I read that discouraging tidbit, I ran across an
article in the Jan. 11 issue of Science magazine about the ongoing
problem of conflict of interest in the realm of college research. Seems
that a growing number of universities are not only accepting vast chunks
of cash from corporations, they are allowing their research facilities to
become free corporate research labs. The university professors
conducting the research (or should I say directing the work of armies of
underpaid, overworked grad students) are given mucho incentives to do
the corporate bidding (there's gold in them thar patents!). Corporations
not only fund part of the research now, they tell researchers how to
conduct the research and encourage them to do anything they have to
get the results the corporations are looking for. So, instead of having to
fund laboratories themselves, spending millions to build the facilities, the
corporations get their facilities free -- at the expense of the taxpayer and
students paying ridiculous tuition rates.
----Instead of paying $50,000 per head for their own professional
researchers, the corporations get the services of grad students for free --
the grad students, on the other hand, generally either don't get paid at all
or make under $10 per hour. When the government showers grants on
colleges for research, guess who they are really showering money on?
The cause of science? Harhar. More likely the cause of Pfizer, Genetech
or some other company, who will take this taxpayer cash and turn it into
"medical breakthroughs" that only the wealthies and/or best insured
Americans can afford.
----But even all these freebies aren't enough for the corporate hogs.
They want results fast, so they can rush off to market with a
newly-developed product and scoop up profits won with minimal
overhead. Whenever you hear a drug company whining about how their
prices are high because of the cost of research, you'll know they are
lying through their teeth. The actual percentage of their budgets spent
out of pocket (their own pocket, that is) on research is far, far less than
they would have the public believe.
----Of course, this rush to market gets pretty damn dangerous when it
comes to medical research, where, right now, the financial stakes are the
highest. In the past few years, two participants in research trials died,
one from the effects of a highly experimental treatment (University of
Pennsylvania), the other from the researchers cutting corners in their
screening process (Johns Hopkins).
----In 1999, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services moved
to create regulations that would prevent conflict of interest in research at
universities. However, neither the universities or the medical industry
want to give up their mutual cash cow. Instead, the Association of
Medical Colleges is fighting this move, and wants to institute its own
regulations, which of course, call for colleges "police themselves." Yeah,
right. That should work about as well as asking a drunk to guard a liquor
store! An increasingly high percentage of college administrators are
former corporate CEOs, so conflict of interest is now build right in!
