It's not the principle of the thing, it's the price we're haggling about?

Inside Higher Ed:

The dispute and negotiations over a proposed gift to rename the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health have largely focused — at least in public — on the ethics of naming a college for a corporation. But e-mail records obtained by The Des Moines Register suggest that the size of the proposed gift may also have been a factor. Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield offered $15 million to have the college named for the company, an idea that faculty members first objected to but have since agreed to reconsider. One e-mail quoted by the newspaper, from the college’s dean, noted that other schools of public health had been named (for individuals) based on gifts of $25 million to $50 million, much more than Wellmark was proposing. “The deans I consulted all indicated that an offer of $15 million would be embarrassingly small and significantly undervalue our college,” wrote the Iowa dean, Jim Merchant.

Study: Fertility clinics overuse pricey method

MSNBC.com : AP

ATLANTA - Fertility clinics are overusing a laboratory technique and costing infertile couples and some insurers hundreds of extra dollars, a new study suggests.

At issue is a procedure that injects a single sperm into an egg. The method is considered the best option for couples in which the man has defective sperm or extremely low sperm counts.

But many clinics are using it for other infertile couples, even though it often doesn’t work as well as the standard lab dish method, according to a study in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. ...

“This paper is particularly troubling because we’ve got a major shift in practice that isn’t evidence driven. The paper suggests it may be driven by money,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics...

The study’s lead author, Dr. Tarun Jain of the University of Illinois at Chicago, said more research is needed and he couldn’t be certain money explains the findings. But the study does indicate routine use of the technique does not benefit many couples, he added. ...

The research team reviewed a decade of results that hundreds of fertility clinics reported to the federal government. In 2004, about 58 percent of treatment attempts included sperm injection — up from 11 percent in 1995.

But the proportion of couples who have trouble conceiving because of the man’s sperm has stayed constant, at around 34 percent. This suggests that the sperm-injection technique is being urged on many couples who do not need it and might be better off with traditional lab dish, or in vitro, fertilization, Caplan said. ...

Sperm injection does not increase overall success rates for healthy births. The researchers found that among infertility treatment attempts with successful egg retrievals in 2004, about 31 percent of those involving sperm injection resulted in a live birth. The percentage was higher — 33 percent — for those that did not use the sperm injection.

Perhaps nature is better than doctors at selecting the right sperm to produce a healthy baby, Jain said. ...

They also noted that sperm-injection rates were higher in three states — Illinois, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — that mandate coverage of the technique than in states without such a requirement. ...

Art Caplan has been all over stories like this for decades, correctly pointing out that assisted reproduction is the (largely unregulated) Wild West of contemporary medical practice.

Take Your Dough and Shove It...

The Chronicle:

The University of Iowa’s College of Public Health has lost a $15-million gift after the donor, the Wellmark Foundation, withdrew its offer when faculty members rejected a plan to name the college for Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, The Des Moines Register reported on Monday. University trustees and other officials joined the faculty in criticizing the proposal as a likely conflict of interest, as well as a possible threat to research. John Forsyth, the chief executive of Wellmark, which is Iowa’s largest private insurance company, said the gift would remain withdrawn until the university’s criticism was replaced with “unwavering support.”

Maybe the Michael Moore School of Public Health? Would that be unwavering enough?

Minnesota Medical School to Study Gifts From Industry

The Chronicle:

The University of Minnesota Medical School has asked an internal panel to examine payments some university physicians have received from pharmaceutical companies, and consider whether the money creates conflicts of interest or influences patient-care decisions, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

The decision follows a report by the research group Public Citizen, which was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in March, that showed doctors across Minnesota, including some at the medical school, had collected more than $30-million from drug companies between 2002 and 2004 in consulting fees and other payments. More than a year earlier, medical educators writing in The Journal had urged academic medical centers to crack down on gifts — even token ones — from pharmaceutical companies. A Columbia University-based research group started a project this year to encourage more teaching hospitals to put such bans in place.

U. of Iowa College Rejects $15-Million Plan to Name Itself After Insurer

The Chronicle:

Faculty members at the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health have voted to reject a plan under which Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield would donate $15-million and the college would rename itself after the company.

Occupational-Health Research for Hire?

The Chronicle:: —Lila Guterman

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports the story of William W. Clark, a medical researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who has served as an expert witness for industries in lawsuits, after working as a consultant for them and receiving research funds from them. In his research, Mr. Clark has found no hearing loss caused by employment as a miner, a railroad worker, or a firefighter.

It’s not unusual for academics to serve as paid expert witnesses in lawsuits brought against industries. This is particularly so in the field of occupational health, where many scientists feel that business interests drive research agendas and may muddy the ethical norms of academe.

Conflicting interests within Universities

From The New York Times:

With Congressional hearings on the student loan scandal scheduled for next week, lawmakers are looking around for ways to root out the kinds of corruption uncovered in recent investigations by New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo. A good start would be to pass the Student Loan Sunshine Act, an important bill that was introduced months ago.

The Sunshine Act would make it a federal crime for lenders to offer college officials anything of value in exchange for the right to do business at a given school. The new law would require the colleges to explain publicly why they had placed a given lender on the school’s “preferred lender” list and would force the institutions to disclose any special deals that had been made behind the scenes.