“When commercial interests dominate, they affect the research agenda. Since, for example, it is anticipated that there will be more profit in developing cancer medications than in ensuring a healthy environment, ‘vastly more resources are put into the cellular and genetic basis of cancer than into environmental factors.’”

“Special-interest groups, from the American Cancer Society to leading cancer-research institutions, routinely issue press releases touting the achievement of the week. The news media trumpet the latest advances and profile the victims who have managed to survive. But there is much less to the progress than meets the eye. To be sure, people with some types of cancer who once would have died now lead productive lives thanks to modern treatment. Yet the inescapable fact is that the death rate is unchanged: in 1950, the death rate from all cancers was 194 out of every 100,000 people. A half-century later, in 2001, it was 196 out of every 100,000 people. When assessed by the only yardstick that counts – the overall death rate from all cancers – progress has been nonexistent.”

“The worldwide use of Taxol (for cancers of the ovary, breast, and lung) generated between $1 and $2 billion a year for Bristol-Myers Squibb and tens of millions in annual royalties for Florida State University. The company spent very little on R & D in getting initial FDA approval to treat cancer of the ovary, although it has undoubtedly spent substantial sums since then for testing the drug for other cancers. But that takes no ingenuity, either. The story of Taxol is a prime example of taxpayer-supported research discovering a valuable and lucrative drug that was virtually given as a gift to a large drug company for marketing, commercial exploitation, and further development. The public pays again when it buys Taxol at the exorbitant price Bristol-Myers Squibb charges for a drug it neither discovered nor developed.”

“Young physicians, now heavily in debt at the beginning of their careers from educational loans, are particularly vulnerable to industry’s financial rewards, especially when they see their senior role models availing themselves freely of such largesse. Acceptance of lunches, dinners, and gifts from industry explains much about how idealistic medical students and house officers gradually become acculturated into accepting and later even demanding industry donations. There is a silent progression, from the innocence of accepting pens and pizza to a later winking nod that silently condones the gifts, and finally to a bland and unquestioning acceptance of pharmaceutical money by physicians as their careers advance.”