Thoughts on the politicization of science through commercialization

Social Research, Winter, 2006 by M. Norton Wise

From the perspective of the traditional values of science, which rest on the free exchange of information, patenting could disrupt scientific progress through refusal to share information, materials, and instruments; monopolistic licensing practices; and the inhibition of downstream research. Anecdotal examples abound and recent statistical studies appear to confirm the inhibition effect (Sampat, forthcoming). If correct, it implies that the university, by expanding its patenting of research results, would be undermining its own mission to promote research and the acquisition of new knowledge, contrary to the intention of Bayh-Dole. Equally worrisome is that research for profit may well not be research in the public interest, so that commercialization of research may skew its direction away from what would most benefit society.

A more direct and pressing worry is that commercialization actively subverts the public interest by distorting research results. Because reports of this kind are so numerous, one example may serve for the genre. Over the last several years a controversy has blossomed over "aspirin resistance," the claim that many who take aspirin as an anti clotting agent to reduce the risk of existing or potential heart ailments may be resistant to the drug, are at increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, and should perhaps be taking other anti-clotting drugs. An article by David Armstrong in the Wall Street Journal in April 2006 brought the issue to widespread public attention under the title, "Aspirin Dispute is Fueled by Funds of Industry Rivals." Researchers raising the aspirin resistance alarm have largely been funded by Accumetrics, who make the most widely used test for resistance, and by Schering-Plough and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which market alternative drugs. Best known is Plavix, sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis. With $5.9 billion in sales in 2005, it lags behind only the anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor. On the other side, some of the leading researchers protesting aspirin resistance have been funded by Bayer, the big aspirin maker (Armstrong, 2006).

Since the majority of the research involved has been carried out at universities, one may wonder whose interests they and their scientists represent. An instructive example is that of Dr. Daniel Simon, who was associate professor at the Harvard Medical School. Simon published an article in the trade journal Physician's Weekly in 2005 reporting that perhaps 30 percent of the 25 million people taking aspirin for heart problems were aspirin resistant. The article did not disclose that Simon had research funding from Accumetrics and Schering-Plough nor that he was a consultant and paid speaker for Schering-Plough. Instead, Physician's Weekly, which knew of the connection, said that their policy is not to disclose such potential conflicts of interest but to use the connection for things like securing advertisements to be placed next to the article from the sponsoring companies. There must be some comedy in this circle of interests, from manufacturer to researcher to publisher to manufacturer and back to researcher again, for rather than leading to professional censure it has led Dr. Simon to new studies of aspirin resistance funded by the same companies and to a new position at Case Western Reserve University. As for Physician's Weekly, their cynicism seems to be evenhanded. Dr. Charles Hennekins of the University of Miami School of Medicine, who had done basic research in the 1980s on the benefits of taking aspirin daily, objected in the journal in 2004 to the resistance scare, saying that "this undocumented phenomenon may have the negative consequence of reduced aspirin use." His connection to Bayer was not disclosed (Armstrong, 2006).