NeuroNews

The Money and Ethics of Clinical Drug Trials

  

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Because we are involved with and promote dozens of clinical drug trials at MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute each year, we felt it was important to state our position on these endeavors. 

Clinical trials sponsored by the device and pharmaceutical industries can be “an extra source of income” in a climate where regulation is more and more the order of the day.  If you listen to the radio or read the newspaper you will notice many ads recruiting patients for clinical drug trials. There is big money in these drug studies - and there is nothing wrong with that.  It requires a great deal of money to safely bring a new drug to market.  Recruiting patients and staffing the medical personnel to run these trials are just one of the many expenses. 

We at MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute became involved with clinical trials over fifteen years ago.  The physicians involved in patient selection and clinical trial acceptance don’t benefit from patient enrollment in the trials.  Our purpose is to make cutting edge therapies, which were not yet approved (but look promising) available to our patients.  All the compensation for these trials is in turn donated to a not-for-profit foundation doing basic research in the areas of interest to MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute, like Multiple Sclerosis, Sleep Disorders, Headache and Memory Loss.   Thus, the ethical conflict of what ethicists call the “dual agency problem” (no person can serve two masters) is avoided, since enrollment of patients in clinical trials does not enhance the enrolling provider’s income.

Since those early days, clinical trials have become big business.  Entire companies have been formed just for the purpose of carrying out clinical trials.  Hospitals, always eager for another profit center, have jumped into the business.  We at MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute, though, do things the way we did all those years ago.  By directing all income from clinical trials into research, we help advance the knowledge and science of neurological diseases in ways that help our patients as well as the entire neurological community.

Maybe we’re just old fashioned, but we feel that just as important as avoiding the dual agency problem, we do it this way because it’s the right thing for our patients.

Vernon Rowe, MD

Founder, MidAmerica Neuroscience Institue