Te Puawai
Industry Influence In Health Care & Research:
Does It Matter?
Reprinted with the kind permission of the Auckland Women’s Health Council Newsletter
On 24th November 2014 a ground-breaking
Cochrane symposium took place at the
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the
University of Auckland. The symposium was
free and was open to the public. The topic
was the influence of industry on research
agendas’ methods and healthcare.
has used and continues to use all of them.
They include the research question itself, the
population enrolled in the research, the
research methods used, how the research is
conducted and how it is published. Selective
reporting of the studies’ results is rife, and
negative results are usually buried.
Seven speakers, including Professor Lisa
Bero, a world renowned expert on
pharmaceutical industry inter-action and
influence in medical research, described the
impact of the pharmaceutical industry in their
various fields.
There is however growing interest and
investment in changing the system. A Drug
Industry Document Archive (DIDA) has been
established. (3) It contains internal corporate
documents
from
large
pharmaceutical
companies including Merck, Parke-Davis,
Wyeth, and Pfize ȸ