Ethical principles for project collaboration between academic professionals or institutions and the biomedical industry

Abstract

Ethics in biomedical research cannot be defined by etymology, and need a semantic definition based on national and contemporary values. In a Nordic cultural and historic context, key values are solidarity with one’s fellow man, equality, truth, justice, responsibility, freedom, and professionalism. In contemporary medical research, such ethics are further subgrouped into research ethics, researcher ethics, societal ethics, and distributive ethics. Lately, public and academic debates have addressed the necessary strengthening of the ethical concerns and interests of patients and society. Despite considerable progress, common ethical definitions and control systems still lack uniformity or indeed do not exist. Among the cooperative partners involved, the pharmaceutical industry have preserved an important role. The same is true for the overall judgments reflected by the European Forum for Good Clinical Practice, leading peer-reviewed journals, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics for developing nations, and the latest global initiative, the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity. To help both institutions and countries, it will be valuable to include the following information in academia–industry protocols before starting a project: international authorship names; fixed agendas and time schedules for project meetings; chairperson shifts, meeting reports, and project plan changes; future author memberships; equal blinding and data distribution from disciplinary groups; an equal plan for exchange of project manuscripts at the proofing stage; contractual descriptions of all procedures, disagreements, publishing rights, prevention, and controls for suspected dishonesty; and a detailed description of who is doing what in the working process.