In his review of the Law Commission of Canada report entitled The Governance of Health Research Involving Human Subjects (Michael MacDonald et al), Patrick O'Neill writes: "The study gives short shrift to the problems associated with funding of research by private industry" (Bulletin, January 2001).

At the same time, MacDonald, the lead researcher, is reported to comment that "one of the striking conclusions of the study is the discrepancy between ideals expressed in policy and the actual arrangements for accountability and effectiveness of governance in this area."

I wonder whether the lead researcher should not apply his striking conclusion to his own study's discrepancy between ideal — academic research that subordinates itself to no vested interest — and practice — a study of the ethics of health research which pays no studied attention to the increasing control of health research by for-profit pharmaceutical corporations.

It is not as if this distortive influence on medical research is not well known, as the Nancy Olivieri case made clear. It is not even as if this for-profit financing of medical research by private pharmaceutical interests is not now recognized as a clear danger by the most eminent academic authorities.

In the very same issue of the Bulletin, for example, Harvard University's faculty of medicine is reported to be defending "the integrity of its medical science" against "entrepreneurial zeal (which) threatens to blur the lines between university research and product promotion." Harvard's ethical policy now prescribes unprecedentedly rigorous conflict-of-interest policies that prohibit researchers from financial involvement in their research.

One wonders why MacDonald gave such "short shrift" to perhaps the gravest problem facing the academy today — the financial control over scientific research by private corporations whose ruling interest is not advancement and dissemination of knowledge and learning, but maximization of the monetary wealth of their stockholders.

Could it be that the ideological conflation of these opposed values now structures even the professional work of Canadian ethical researchers? A striking conclusion indeed.

John McMurtry
Philosophy, University of Guelph