© 2003 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

Many of the policies and procedures for the ethi-cal oversight of research were put in place in anera when public funding was much more promi-nent than it is now. Over the last 2 decades there have been major changes, with increasing pressure on universi-ties, teaching hospitals and individual researchers to seek industry sponsorship for research, and the pharmaceutical industry has become the single largest direct funder of medical research in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.1 At its best, academic participation in the development of drugs leads to effective and safe new ther-apies. However, conflicts of interest are inevitable at times, because the goals of industry and of academia differ.2 These conflicts put pressure on researchers to stretch — occasionally to the point of breaking — fundamental prin-ciples of ethical and scientific behaviour, and they may re-sult in corporate research agendas, rather than the broade