Commercial conflict of interest and medical publication: What should the practising physician do about it.

ABSTRACT

I read with interest the comment by Mark Wilson, which deals with possible conflict of interest (CoI) affecting publications in academic medical journals. This comment has specifically targeted the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Drazen on the “Vioxx scandal” which broke 15 years ago. Wilson’s comment seems to be in response to a blog by Natarajan on CoI in medical publications. In the blog Natarajan writes of commercial CoI biasing publication of clinical trials and cites, among other examples, a publication in the NEJM on trials of voriconazole.