A Psychiatric Conflict of Interest

Two scientists are raising concerns about an article in a medical journal that described experimental treatments for depression because an author did not disclose his significant financial ties to three therapies that he mentioned favorably. Dr. Charles G. Jennings, executive editor of the Nature Research Journals, which includes Nature Neuroscience, where the article appeared, said they had not required disclosure of the potential conflicts, but were considering changing its policy in light of the criticism.

The ties between pharmaceutical companies and researchers have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.

Specifically, the lead author of the article, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, mentioned roughly two dozen potential new therapies, saying that some had shown disappointing results and that others were promising. One treatment he describes favorably is a patch that delivers lithium through the skin, a method that he says would improve patients' ability to tolerate the medicine. He did not disclose that he held the patent on that patch.

Dr. Nemeroff also did not disclose that he was a significant shareholder in Corcept Therapeutics, a company in Menlo Park, Calif., that is trying to develop mifepristone, a drug now approved to induce abortions, into a treatment for psychotic depression. In the article, he wrote that there had been "impressive studies" with mifepristone, indicating that it "is very effective in the treatment of psychotic depression."

Nothing personal. It's only money. and doesn't everybody do it?

feh