Shackling Innovation the Regulation of Industry-Supported Clinical Trials

Introduction
Collaborative arrangements between biomedical academic researchers and private industry have grown dramatically over the past three decades, resulting in medical innovations that have benefited society as a whole. However, a chorus of growing criticism directed at private companies that sponsor and conduct biomedical research casts doubt on the very ethos
of science. Some academics and anti-business activists have waged a campaign against industry-sponsored clinical trials. That criticism denies the fundamentally commercial nature of such research, and therefore hinders medical progress.
These critics point to a small number of unfortunate and tragic cases in which financial conflicts of interest may have played a role in research related injuries and deaths in order to unjustifiably condemn the profit motive in biomedical research as a whole. In response to claims that unchecked industry research has led-and will continue to lead-to disastrous outcomes, the Obama administration and the 111th Congress have promised stronger federal regulation and a far more aggressive role for the federal and state governments in the nation's biomedical economy.