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When you think of the torment and heartache of years in courts and
hearings, being "cleared" at the end is small compensation. Interests
powerful enough to persecute well-meaning people know that it really
doesn't matter who "wins". The persecution will have been effective in any
case.
Clauses in clinical research contracts, requiring researchers to keep
their mouths shut about negative findings unless they get permission from
the drug companies, are cynical insults to medical ethics. It is
elementary and obvious that such clauses violate the physician's
responsibility for the health of their patients. I shall henceforth teach
in all of my medical ethics classes, that it is unethical for physicians
to participate in clinical trials where such confidentially clauses apply.
The BMJ is known as a crusader for ethical medicine. I call on the
BMJ to lead a boycott of the confidentiality clause. Physicians must
refuse to sign contracts containing auch a clause, and must insist on
alternative wording which will allow them (without risking legal and/or
professional sanctions) to reveal negative findings to their patients, and
to publish them, when in their considered judgment such a revelation is
essential to the health of their patients and of the public at large.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
15 November 2001
Frank Leavitt
Chairman, Centre for Asian and International Bioethics,
Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
Boycott the confidentiality clause
When you think of the torment and heartache of years in courts and
hearings, being "cleared" at the end is small compensation. Interests
powerful enough to persecute well-meaning people know that it really
doesn't matter who "wins". The persecution will have been effective in any
case.
Clauses in clinical research contracts, requiring researchers to keep
their mouths shut about negative findings unless they get permission from
the drug companies, are cynical insults to medical ethics. It is
elementary and obvious that such clauses violate the physician's
responsibility for the health of their patients. I shall henceforth teach
in all of my medical ethics classes, that it is unethical for physicians
to participate in clinical trials where such confidentially clauses apply.
The BMJ is known as a crusader for ethical medicine. I call on the
BMJ to lead a boycott of the confidentiality clause. Physicians must
refuse to sign contracts containing auch a clause, and must insist on
alternative wording which will allow them (without risking legal and/or
professional sanctions) to reveal negative findings to their patients, and
to publish them, when in their considered judgment such a revelation is
essential to the health of their patients and of the public at large.
Competing interests: No competing interests