Conflict-of-interest issues to be discussed at Stanford by Johns Hopkins president

STANFORD, Calif. – When the National Institutes of Health unveiled strict conflict-of-interest rules for its employees last February, cries of both protest and support could be heard well beyond its headquarters in Bethesda, Md. Although the NIH ultimately softened its rules, the debate over conflict of interest has only grown louder - and leaders in science and academia now must find their way through an increasingly difficult set of challenges.

On Sept. 30, William Brody, MD, PhD, president of The Johns Hopkins University, will come to Stanford University School of Medicine to address some of these issues. His talk, part of the school's Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, Lecture series, is titled, "No conflict, no interest: The role of the university and the faculty in innovation for patient care." It will begin at 4 p.m. at the James H. Clark Center auditorium.

"Conflict of interest is a battle between maintaining our pristine ‘trusted agent' status for society and the pressures to move discovery from the bench to the marketplace," Brody wrote in a March issue of his column for the Hopkins medical school magazine Change. "This issue … will not stop at the gates of the NIH."

Brody argued in that article that conflict of interest begins the day a scientist has an idea. "It is probably impossible to erect a firewall between the scientist and the supposed source of conflict," he wrote. "I know of few surgeons who would use a device invented by someone else if that colleague, even for reasons of conflict of interest, did not use that device herself. As a venture capitalist once told me, ‘No conflict, no interest.'"

Brody was invited to Stanford by Thomas Krummel, MD, professor and chair of surgery; Tom Fogarty, MD, professor of surgery; and Paul Yock, MD, professor of medicine and of bioengineering and chair of the Biodesign Innovation Program. This is a homecoming of sorts for Brody, who received his MD and PhD at Stanford. He also served as professor of both radiology and electrical engineering here before becoming president of Johns Hopkins in 1996.

The lecture, which is sponsored by the school's Department of Surgery, is free and open to the public.