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The aims of this study are to describe the characteristics of clinical trials in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) listed in ClinicalTrials.gov and examine existing trends in study design, funding sources, outcomes, and drugs under investigation. We conducted a survey of ongoing clinical trials in RA registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov website. We used the advanced search option and applied the following inclusion criteria, "rheumatoid arthritis", "open studies", "interventional", and "adults 18 years or older". Of 127 eligible trials, 53.5% of the studies were either phase 3 or 4, and 40.2% were phase 1, 2, and 2/3. Two-thirds of the trials were randomized (70.9%), and over half were, in addition, double-blinded (53.5%) and placebo-controlled (53.5%). Universities were listed as the primary sponsor for 18.9% of the trials and pharmaceutical industry for 73.2%. Majority of the trials were multi-center studies (93%) conducted outside the United States (54.3%). The most frequently used endpoint was drug efficacy (54.3%) followed by drug safety (25.2%). Most industry-funded trials were open for less than 12 months, whereas most university-funded trials were open for more than 24 months (58% each). Biologic therapies were the focus of most trials in the registry (78.5%). Randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, phase 3 and 4 trials form the majority of ongoing clinical trials in RA. The preponderance of industry funding of RA trials and the short duration of such trials are troubling trends which need to be addressed.

Objective: Reflecting on its role during apartheid, the University of Cape Town (UCT) Faculty of Health Sciences undertook a study to explore the experiences of black alumni who trained in the period 1945 - 1994., Design: Seventy-five black alumni were selected through purposive and snowball recruitment, resulting in 52 face-to-face and 23 telephonic or postal interviews., Results: Experiences of racial discrimination were widely reported and respondents believed the quality of their training was adversely affected. Until 1985, black students were required to sign a declaration agreeing to excuse themselves from classes where white patients were present. Black students were denied access to white patients in wards, and the university admitted that it could not guarantee their clinical training. Tutorial groups were racially segregated. Black students were also excluded from university facilities, events and extramural activities. Themes that emerged were: lack of social contact with white staff and students during training, belief that white staff members actively or tacitly upheld discriminatory regulations, and resistance by black students. Efforts of some white staff to resist discrimination were acknowledged., Conclusion: Racism was entrenched explicitly and implicitly. Perceptions of the attitudes of white staff to apartheid legislation on the part of black alumni were diverse, ranging from claims of active support for racial discrimination to recognition of attempts to resist racist rules. These findings provided the basis for faculty transformation initiatives based on human rights, respect for human dignity and non-discrimination.

There is a tension between the preservation of academic freedom and the economic context in which the university currently finds itself. This tension embodies serious threats to global health as a result of three overlapping phenomena which impede the production and diffusion of valuable knowledge about health. These phenomena, the privatisation, commercialisation and instrumentalisation of knowledge are identified and examined in this paper in relation to human rights and international morality.

Recognizing the profound need for greater patient and provider familiarity with personalized genomic medicine, many university instructors are including personalized genotyping as part of their curricula. During seminars and lectures students run polymerase chain reactions on their own DNA or evaluate their experiences using direct-to-consumer genetic testing services subsidized by the university. By testing for genes that may influence behavioral or health-related traits, however, such as alcohol tolerance and cancer susceptibility, certain universities have stirred debate on the ethical concerns raised by educational genotyping. Considering the potential for psychosocial harm and medically relevant outcomes, how far should university-facilitated DNA testing be permitted to go? The analysis here distinguishes among these learning initiatives and critiques their approaches to the ethical concerns raised by educational genotyping.

Research misconduct has been thoroughly discussed in the literature, but mainly in terms of definitions and prescriptions for proper conduct. Even when case studies are cited, they are generally used as a repository of "lessons learned." What has been lacking from this conversation is how the lessons of responsible conduct of research are imparted in the first place to graduate students, especially those in technical fields such as engineering. Nor has there been much conversation about who is responsible for what in training students in Responsible Conduct of Research or in allocating blame in cases of misconduct. This paper explores three seemingly disparate cases of misconduct-the 2004 plagiarism scandal at Ohio University; the famous Robert Millikan article of 1913, in which his reported data selection did not match his notebooks; and the 1990 fabrication scandal in Dr. Leroy Hood's research lab. Comparing these cases provides a way to look at the relationship between the graduate student (or trainee) and his/her advisor (a relationship that has been shown to be the most influential one for the student) as well as at possibly differential treatment for established researchers and researchers-in-training, in cases of misconduct. This paper reflects on the rights and responsibilities of research advisers and their students and offers suggestions for clarifying both those responsibilities and the particularly murky areas of research-conduct guidelines.

Since the 1980s in the US and the 1990s in Europe, patenting and licensing activities by universities have massively increased. This is strongly encouraged by governments throughout the Western world. Many regard academic patenting as essential to achieve 'knowledge transfer' from academia to industry. This trend has far-reaching consequences for access to the fruits of academic research and so the question arises whether the current policies are indeed promoting innovation or whether they are instead a symptom of a pro-intellectual property (IP) culture which is blind to adverse effects. Addressing this question requires both empirical analysis (how real is the link between academic patenting and licensing and 'development' of academic research by industry?) and normative assessment (which justifications are given for the current policies and to what extent do they threaten important academic values?). After illustrating the major rise of academic patenting and licensing in the US and Europe and commenting on the increasing trend of 'upstream' patenting and the focus on exclusive as opposed to non-exclusive licences, this paper will discuss five negative effects of these trends. Subsequently, the question as to why policymakers seem to ignore these adverse effects will be addressed. Finally, a number of proposals for improving university policies will be made.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between the Chinese tobacco industry and academic institutions in China., Methods: We searched online databases of journal articles published in both Chinese and English for academic institutions in China conducting research with or sponsored by Chinese tobacco companies. We also searched the websites of tobacco companies, their affiliated institutions and academic institutions for reports of collaborations., Results: The Chinese tobacco industry, in addition to its own strong tobacco research capacity, maintains close ties with an extensive network of academic research institutions and universities to provide both research and training. The Chinese tobacco industry relies heavily upon academic researchers to advance its research agenda and such reliance has grown over time. Most research deals with farming, manufacturing and management issues, but research on 'reduced harm' and health effects has increased from 1% of projects in 1983-1987 to 4% in 2003-2007., Conclusions: Chinese academic institutions should consider the fact that engagement with the tobacco industry, particularly on issues related to health or promotion of tobacco products, could damage their reputations, a concern that has led many leading Western universities to eschew relationships with the tobacco industry. To the extent that the Chinese tobacco industry's involvement in academic institutions affects tobacco control policy making; it violates Article 5.3 of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which China ratified in 2005.

On 12 December 1980, in the waning days of the lame duck session of the 96th Congress, the U.S. Senate passed the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act, now known as the Bayh-Dole Act, a seemingly obscure act that allowed universities to claim title to inventions that had been made with federal funding. It is unlikely that many present that day realized what a dramatic impact that act would have. Data clearly show that it played a critical role in rejuvenating the entire U.S. economic system, transforming it from a manufacturing base to an innovation base. Yet ironically, the act has passionate critics.

This paper focuses on medical ghostwriting in the United States. I argue that medical ghostwriting often involves plagiarism and, in those cases, can be treated as an act of research misconduct by both the federal government and research institutions. I also propose several anti-ghostwriting measures, including: 1) journals should implement guarantor policies so that researchers may be better held accountable for their work; 2) research institutions and the federal government should explicitly prohibit medical ghostwriting and outline appropriate penalties; and 3) a publicly available database should be created to record researchers' ethics violations.

This study is based on analysis of copyright policies and 26 interviews with science and engineering faculty at three research universities on the topic of copyright beliefs, values, and practices, with emphasis on copyright of instructional materials, courseware, tools, and texts. Given that research universities now emphasize increasing external revenue flows through marketing of intellectual property, we expected copyright to follow the path of patents and lead to institutional emphasis of policies and practices that enhanced universities' intellectual property portfolios, accompanied by an increase in copyrighting by professors. Although this pattern occurred with regard to institutions, professors offered a more varied pattern, with some fully participating in commercialization of copyright and embracing entrepreneurial values, while others resisted or subverted commercial activity in favor of traditional science and engineering values.

Recent studies conducted at American post-secondary institutions report that a high proportion of college students seeking evaluations for either attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or learning disorders fail symptom validity tests (SVTs), calling into question the validity of their performance on standardized assessment measures. The current study undertook to investigate the rate of SVT failure in a Canadian post-secondary sample, drawing on assessment data from a large regional assessment facility. Evaluating the data from 144 consecutively tested students, the present study found that 14.6% of students failed an SVT, and those who failed returned lower scores on many other assessment measures compared with those who passed. These findings indicate that the rate of symptom exaggeration or low test-taking effort may be lower in Canadian samples than in U.S. samples but still represents a substantial number of students. Recommendations and suggestions for future directions are discussed.

Clinician researchers have a number of roles, each of which carries specific obligations. There are times when these obligations may be in competition (up to and including conflict) with each other. Using a narrative case study that describes a group of colleagues discussing their clinical department's participation in an industry-sponsored research protocol, we illustrate a number of the obligations faced by clinician researchers, and discuss how competing interests and obligations can lead to ethical problems. The case study is followed by a discussion of the effect of university-industry relations on competing interests and obligations in both clinical research and the role of the university, and a suggested framework that could be used to determine when university involvement in commercial research is ethically acceptable.

Although it is known that anatomists working in Germany during the Third Reich have used bodies of victims of the National Socialist (NS) regime for dissection and research, a comprehensive history of the anatomy in the Third Reich has not yet been written. Recent studies of the history of German anatomy departments during this time period provide material for a first outline of the subject matter. A historical review can help with the formulation of ethical foundations in modern anatomy. From the outset, the NS regime sought to reorganize German universities according to NS leadership principles and political goals. Many German academics, especially physicians and among them anatomists, followed these intentions with a voluntary "self-alignment" that encompassed their professional actions as well as their ethics. Currently, political information is available for 111 of 178 anatomists. Thirty-eight of the anatomists were dismissed for racial or political reasons, among them 10 chairmen of anatomy, whereas 35 of the anatomists were politically active members of one of the NS organizations. Over 70% of the chairmen of anatomical departments in the time period from 1941 to 1944 were members of NS organizations. Anatomists, as so many other physicians and academics, belonged both, to the group of victims of the regime, i.e., those being dismissed from their positions for racial and political reasons, and to the group of supporters and sometimes active perpetrators of NS policies.

Anatomists in National Socialist (NS) Germany did research on materials from animals and humans, including tissues from the bodies of NS victims. The research was competent but rarely innovative. This may be due to the isolation of the German research community from international developments, as well as to the dismissal of a great number of successful anatomists for racial or political reasons. Other research was unproductive because of its foundation in the pseudoscience of racial hygiene. Anatomists in the Third Reich acted according to a new set of medical ethics favored by the NS regime. Not the individual human being but the "body of the people" as a whole was the object of this ethics. Every action was ethical that ensured the health of the German people, including sterilization, so-called euthanasia, and finally mass murder. Anatomists made use of the opportunities given to them by the NS regime, which led to the postmortem utilization of the bodies of NS victims. After the war, most anatomists retained their positions and NS history was not discussed until the later 20th century. Since then, historical research and public discussions have led to an increased awareness of questions of ethics in anatomy. The history of anatomy in the Third Reich illustrates that the theory and practice of a science is dependent on the political system it exists in, and that the scientists' competence not only in their science but also in politics and ethics is a prerequisite for the freedom of science.

All anatomical departments of German universities used bodies of the executed and other victims of the National Socialist (NS) regime for their work. Many of these victims had been executed in prisons and were members of the German political opposition; others had perished in camps for prisoners of war or forced laborers and concentration camps, and were of various European and other descent. Anatomists generally welcomed the increased influx of "fresh material" for purposes of research and education of the growing numbers of medical students. No anatomist is known to have refused work with the bodies of NS victims. Other medical disciplines also made use of these bodies, among them were racial hygienists and neuropathologists. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the fields of anatomy, physical anthropology, and racial hygiene (eugenics) were closely related in their subject matter. Anatomists were involved in the biological foundation of racial hygiene, most prominently among them Eugen Fischer. The discipline was established as part of the medical curriculum after 1920. Racial hygiene became the scientific justification for NS policies that led to racial discrimination, involuntary sterilization and ultimately mass murder. Anatomists taught racial hygiene throughout the Third Reich and did research in this area. Some were actively involved in NS policies through propaganda and evaluations for the so-called Genetic Health Courts, whereas others became victims of their own science in that they were dismissed for racial reasons.

The history of the National Health Service research ethics system in the UK and some of the key drivers for its change into the present system are described. It is suggested that the key drivers were the unnecessary delay of research, the complexity of the array of processes and contradictions between research ethics committee (REC) decisions. It is then argued that the primary drivers for this change are and will be replicated by the systems of research ethics review being put in place at UK universities in response to the Economic and Social Research Council research ethics framework. It is argued that this is particularly problematic for multi-centre review and for researchers who switch institutions. Finally, some potential solutions to this problem and their feasibility are discussed.

Nursing students who demonstrate disruptive and at-risk behaviors in the classroom and clinical arena compromise the learning environment and are unable to provide safe, quality client care. They require early and swift identification, consultation, sanctions, or possible referral into treatment to protect themselves and public safety. The authors describe the evolution of a comprehensive policy for faculty intervention with at-risk students and provide an exemplar of a situation illustrating the use of the policy.

Growing ties to private industry have prompted many to question the impartiality of academic bioethicists who receive financial support from for-profit corporations in exchange for ethics-related services and research. To the extent that corporate sponsors may view bioethics as little more than a way to strengthen public relations or avoid potential controversy, close ties to industry may pose serious threats to professional independence. New sources of support from private industry may also divert bioethicists from pursuing topics of greater social importance, such as the needs of medically underserved communities. To inform ongoing debates about the financing of bioethics and its transparency to those concerned about potential sources of bias, we examined funding disclosures appearing in original research reports in major bioethics journals. Reviewing research published over a 15-year period, we found little evidence that for-profit corporations are influencing bioethics research directly. Instead, we found evidence that a great number of organizations, both public and private, support bioethics research. These findings suggest that worries about the cooption of bioethics research by a few interested stakeholders are greatly overstated and undersupported by available data.

Interest and research on academic misconduct has become more salient in part due to recent publicized academic and organizational scandals. The current study investigated a possible interaction between perception of the university's academic culture and personality, conceptualized as Reliability, on students' perceptions of academic misconduct. A convenience sample of 217 university business students (91 men, 126 women), whose average age was 22.3 yr. (SD = 4.4) was tested. Reliability was measured with an occupational scale included in the Hogan Personality Inventory. Two hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using Cheating Intentions and Likelihood of Reporting Cheating as criteria. Age, Reliability, Integrity Culture, and the interaction between scores on Reliability and Integrity Culture were entered as predictors. Only Age and Reliability scores were significant predictors of Cheating Intentions, while all variables were significant predictors for Likelihood of Reporting Cheating. Suggestions for practice and research are provided.