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A study published buy kamagra uk next day today by researchers at the National Institutes of Health revealed that about half of individuals who said they don’t want to receive secondary genomic findings changed their mind after their healthcare provider gave them more detailed information. The paper, published in Genomics in Medicine, examines people's attitudes about receiving secondary genomic findings related to treatable or preventable diseases. The study was led by scientists at the National Human Genome buy kamagra uk next day Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), both part of NIH. Your browser does not support the video tag.

Animation of patient filling out an informed consent form and checking the "YES" checkboxes for both Expected Outcome buy kamagra uk next day and Secondary Findings. Credit. Ernesto del Aguila III, NHGRI. With the broader adoption of genome sequencing in clinical care, researchers buy kamagra uk next day and the bioethics community are considering options for how to navigate the discovery of secondary genomic findings.

Secondary findings that come out of genome sequencing reflect information that is separate from the primary reason for an individual's medical care or participation in a study. For example, the buy kamagra uk next day genomic data of a patient who undergoes genome sequencing to address an autoimmune problem might reveal genomic variants that are associated with a heightened risk for breast cancer. Based on the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics recommendations in 2021, individuals who have their genomes sequenced for a clinical reason should also be screened for genomic variants in 73 genes, including BRCA1 and BRCA2, both of which are linked to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. All 59 genes buy kamagra uk next day are associated with treatable or potentially severe diseases.

Proponents of a person’s right to not know their secondary genomic findings have argued that, to maintain autonomy, individuals should have the opportunity to decide whether to be provided information about genomic variants in these additional genes. "Because these genomic findings can have life-saving implications, we wanted to ask the question. Are people really understanding what buy kamagra uk next day they are saying no to?. If they get more context, or a second opportunity to decide, do they change their mind?.

" said Benjamin Berkman, J.D., M.P.H., deputy director of the NHGRI Bioethics buy kamagra uk next day Core and senior author on the study. The research group worked with participants from the Environmental Polymorphisms Registry, an NIEHS study examining how genetic and environmental factors influence human health. Out of 8,843 participants, 8,678 elected to receive secondary buy kamagra uk next day genomic findings, while 165 opted out. Researchers assessed those 165 individuals to determine how strongly and consistently they maintained their "right not to know" decision.

The researchers wanted to determine whether providing additional information to people about their genomic variants influenced their decision and to better understand why some people still refused their secondary genomic findings after they received the additional information. Following the intervention, the researchers buy kamagra uk next day found that the 165 people sorted into two groups. "reversible refusers" who switched their decision to accept to know their secondary genomic findings and "persistent refusers" who still refused. Because these genomic findings can have buy kamagra uk next day life-saving implications, we wanted to ask the question.

Are people really understanding what they are saying no to?. If they get more context, or a second opportunity to decide, do they buy kamagra uk next day change their mind?. "It is worth noting that nearly three-quarters of reversible refusers thought they had originally agreed to receive secondary genomic findings," said Will Schupmann, a doctoral candidate at UCLA and first author on the study. "This means that we should be skeptical about whether checkbox choices are accurately capturing people’s preferences.” Based on the results, the researchers question whether healthcare providers should ask people who have their genome sequenced if they want to receive clinically important secondary genomic findings.

Investigators argue that enough data supports a default practice of returning secondary genomic findings without first asking participants if they buy kamagra uk next day would like to receive them. But research studies should create a system that also allows people who do not want to know their secondary genomic findings to opt out. The researchers suggest that if healthcare providers actively seek their patients’ preferences to know or not know about their secondary genomic findings, the providers should give the individuals multiple buy kamagra uk next day opportunities to make and revise their choice. "The right not to know has been a contentious topic in the genomics research community, but we believe that our real-world data can help move the field towards a new policy consensus," said Berkman.

Researchers at the NIH Department buy kamagra uk next day of Bioethics, NIEHS, Harvard University and Social &. Scientific Systems collaborated on the study.NIH research could lead to new treatment strategies for stomach cancer Glucocorticoids and androgens promote a healthy stomach pit by inhibiting inflammation, left, while their absence promotes inflammation and SPEM seen in a diseased pit, right. SPEM glands are also much larger than healthy stomach glands. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Busada, Ph.D./NIEHS) Scientists at the National Institutes of Health determined that stomach inflammation is regulated differently in male and female buy kamagra uk next day mice after finding that androgens, or male sex hormones, play a critical role in preventing inflammation in the stomach.

The finding suggests that physicians could consider treating male patients with stomach inflammation differently than female patients with the same condition. The study was published in Gastroenterology.Researchers at buy kamagra uk next day NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) made the discovery after removing adrenal glands from mice of both sexes. Adrenal glands produce glucocorticoids, hormones that have several functions, one of them being suppressing inflammation. With no buy kamagra uk next day glucocorticoids, the female mice soon developed stomach inflammation.

The males did not. However, after removing androgens from the males, they exhibited the same stomach inflammation seen in the females."The fact that androgens are regulating inflammation is a novel idea," said co-corresponding author John Cidlowski, Ph.D., deputy chief of the NIEHS Laboratory of Signal Transduction and head of the Molecular Endocrinology Group. "Along with glucocorticoids, androgens offer a new way to control immune buy kamagra uk next day function in humans."While this study provides insight into how inflammation is being regulated in males, Cidlowski said additional research is underway to understand the process in females. The scientist handling this phase of research is co-corresponding author Jonathan Busada, Ph.D., assistant professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown.

When Busada started the project several years ago, he was a postdoctoral fellow working in Cidlowski’s group.Whether inflammation is inside the stomach or elsewhere in the body, Busada said rates buy kamagra uk next day of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases vary depending on sex. He said eight out of 10 individuals with autoimmune disease are women, and his long-term goal is to figure out how glucocorticoids and androgens affect stomach cancer, which is induced by chronic inflammation.The current research focused on stomach glands called pits, which are embedded in the lining of the stomach.Busada said the study showed that glucocorticoids and androgens act like brake pedals on the immune system and are essential for regulating stomach inflammation. In his analogy, glucocorticoids are the primary brakes and androgens are the emergency brakes."Females only have one layer of protection, so buy kamagra uk next day if you remove glucocorticoids, they develop stomach inflammation and a pre-cancerous condition in the stomach called spasmolytic polypeptide-expressing metaplasia (SPEM)," Busada said. "Males have redundancy built in, so if something cuts the glucocorticoid brake line, it is okay, because the androgens can pick up the slack."The research also offered a possible mechanism — or biological process — behind this phenomenon.

In healthy stomach glands, the presence of glucocorticoids and androgens inhibit special immune cells called type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s). But in diseased stomach buy kamagra uk next day glands, the hormones are missing. As a result, ILC2s may act like a fire alarm, directing other immune cells called macrophages to promote inflammation and damage gastric glands leading to SPEM and ultimately cancer."ILC2s are the only immune cells that contain androgen receptors and could be a potential therapeutic target," Cidlowski said.This press release describes a basic research finding. Basic research increases our buy kamagra uk next day understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease.

Science is an unpredictable and incremental process — each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible buy kamagra uk next day without the knowledge of fundamental basic research. To learn more about basic research, visit Basic Research – Digital Media Kit.Grant Numbers:ZIAES090057Fi2GM123974P20GM103434P20GM121322U54GM104942P30GM103488 Reference. Busada JT, Peterson KN, Khadka S, Xu, X, Oakley RH, Cook DN, Cidlowski JA.

2021. Glucocorticoids and androgens protect from gastric metaplasia by suppressing group 2 innate lymphoid cell activation. Gastroenterology. Doi.

10.1053/j.gastro.2021.04.075 [Online 7 May 2021]..

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For some people—like Spengler—the condition is kamagra for sale melbourne chronic. Spengler felt stuck with the aggravating symptoms of tinnitus—so much so, that she doesn’t think she even remembered to bring it up during a recent hearing test. When Spengler put on her hearing aids in the doctor’s office, she got an unexpected and delightful surprise. €œThe first minute they put the hearing aids on, the thing that I noticed the most is that the tinnitus is gone,” says Spengler, a retiree in New Mexico kamagra for sale melbourne.

€œI can’t even convey to people how wonderful it is,” she says, adding that she thinks hearing aids are the second best invention for older people after cataract surgery. And this wasn’t just a one-time occurrence. The tinnitus kamagra for sale melbourne disappears every time Spengler puts on the hearing aids, she says. That’s not the case for everyone with tinnitus, but it is somewhat common.

Here’s what you need to know about the connection between hearing loss and tinnitus—and why hearing aids can sometimes help alleviate tinnitus symptoms. Hearing loss and kamagra for sale melbourne tinnitus often occur together Hearing loss and tinnitus often go hand-in-hand. Not everyone with tinnitus experiences hearing loss, but it does often occur, says Virginia Ramachandran, AuD, PhD, the head of audiology at Oticon, Inc, a hearing aid manufacturer. €œA lot of times somebody comes into the office with a complaint of hearing noises.

And if you test their hearing, they typically will have at least some level of kamagra for sale melbourne hearing loss, and they might not have been aware of it,” Ramachandran says. The “why” is hard to know. €œThe exact mechanism or mechanisms that cause tinnitus are not entirely known,” Ramachandran says. That said, research studies done using animals show that nearly kamagra for sale melbourne anything that consistently causes hearing loss will also cause tinnitus, she explains.

Tinnitus is a result of an issue in your brain, not your ears. With hearing loss, you’ll experience missing inputs to your brain, explains audiologist Julie Prutsman, founder of the Sound Relief Hearing Center and board member of the American Tinnitus Association. “In its attempt to restore the kamagra for sale melbourne missing input, the auditory neurons in the brain become hyperactive and misfire,” Prutsman says. The results.

Tinnitus, or a phantom sound in the brain—not ears, she says. Why hearing aids can help kamagra for sale melbourne There are a few reasons why hearing aids—and an improved ability to hear—can help lessen the symptoms of tinnitus. Hearing aids restore auditory stimulation to the brain. In a nutshell.

Hearing loss makes your brain a bit hyperactive, with nerve cells in the dorsal cochlear nucleus kamagra for sale melbourne go wild with activity, which may potentially get mistakenly interpreted as a sound, Ramachandran says. It’s theorized that since hearing aids restore some of the stimulation that the brain has been missing, they may help manage tinnitus, she explains. Hearing aids allow you to hear background noises. Another potential kamagra for sale melbourne benefit of hearing aids.

The restoration of subtle, quiet background noises. €œHearing aids can increase the contrast in the brain to the tinnitus by increasing environmental sounds in the background that the person may be missing, such as a gentle breeze or leaves rustling in the wind,” Prutsman says. Hearing aids kamagra for sale melbourne may help reduce stress. “Stress can make tinnitus worse,” Ramachandran says.

There are so many things that can cause stress. Our work, money, relationships, and so on kamagra for sale melbourne. Not being able to hear and communicate with people around you is a stresser, too. Spengler’s hearing loss affected her ability to hear high frequency sounds—that means she could tell people were talking, but couldn’t distinguish what exactly they were saying, she recalls.

€I was kamagra for sale melbourne in a lost world of my own because I didn't understand anybody.... I went around saying ‘What?. What?. €™â€ Spengler kamagra for sale melbourne says.

Wearing hearing aids can help to alleviate stress that accompanies hearing loss, Ramachandran says. €œYou don't have to put as much effort into doing things because you're hearing better,” she says—simple tasks, like ordering breakfast at a diner or purchasing stamps at the post office no longer feel like a minefield of questions to navigate. Hearing aids have helpful features, too kamagra for sale melbourne. Just putting in hearing aids often helps reduce tinnitus symptoms, Ramachandran says.

But these devices also have features that can help. For instance, many hearing aids come with masking features—these are white noise-like sounds kamagra for sale melbourne (think. Rushing water or rain noise). These are known as a tinnitus sound generator (TSG), Prutsman says.

With it on, you may kamagra for sale melbourne find that the buzz, ring, or whoosh of tinnitus is completely covered up. €œBut usually what they're designed to do is to help the person cope with their tinnitus by allowing them to get used to it in a way that's controlled,” Ramachandran says. In addition to TSG and masking features, many hearing aids allow you to easily connect to a phone, so you could stream sounds from a relaxation app or one that offers a range of white noises. Other tinnitus treatments The unfortunate reality kamagra for sale melbourne of tinnitus is that there is no cure, Ramachandran says.

Sometimes masking the tinnitus sounds with other sounds helps it temporarily disappear, she says. “But we can't make it go away permanently,” Ramachandran says. Hearing aids help kamagra for sale melbourne some people immensely, as Spengler experienced. But there’s no guarantee they’ll be effective, nor are they a cure.

Another common strategy for dealing with tinnitus is cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) — this therapy method helps people discover how to cope with something they can’t change, Ramachandran says. Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), which provides strategies to ignore tinnitus noises, is another treatment option, as well as coping strategies such as relaxation and visualization exercises kamagra for sale melbourne and meditation. “Since no two people react the same to tinnitus, trying multiple techniques is important to find the ones that help the most,” Prutsman says. Hearing test is important first step Both Prutsman and Ramachandran agree that a hearing test is a good first step if you experience tinnitus, since it can rule out medical causes for the condition (such as medications that cause tinnitus as a side effect).

“It's never a bad idea to get your hearing tested,” Ramachandran says, noting it’s especially encouraged kamagra for sale melbourne if you experience tinnitus in just one ear. €œIt’s a very simple thing to do and can help you rule out potential medical causes for tinnitus,” she says. And, if your hearing test reveals some hearing loss, it’s possible you’ll find that being fitted with hearing aids helps with tinnitus. “No longer do patients need to 'go home and live with it'—they just need to find someone with the knowledge and experience to help them find relief!.

€œIt's the most irritating thing that can buy kamagra uk next day happen to you almost because look at here it just interferes with your total life,” Spengler says, describing her tinnitus as an ever-present unpleasant background noise. Many people experience tinnitus. In fact, in the past year, an estimated 10 percent of the population experienced tinnitus for at least a few minutes.

For some buy kamagra uk next day people—like Spengler—the condition is chronic. Spengler felt stuck with the aggravating symptoms of tinnitus—so much so, that she doesn’t think she even remembered to bring it up during a recent hearing test. When Spengler put on her hearing aids in the doctor’s office, she got an unexpected and delightful surprise.

€œThe first minute they put the hearing aids on, the thing that I noticed the most is that the tinnitus is gone,” says Spengler, a retiree in New buy kamagra uk next day Mexico. €œI can’t even convey to people how wonderful it is,” she says, adding that she thinks hearing aids are the second best invention for older people after cataract surgery. And this wasn’t just a one-time occurrence.

The tinnitus disappears every time Spengler puts on the hearing aids, she says buy kamagra uk next day. That’s not the case for everyone with tinnitus, but it is somewhat common. Here’s what you need to know about the connection between hearing loss and tinnitus—and why hearing aids can sometimes help alleviate tinnitus symptoms.

Hearing loss and tinnitus often occur together Hearing loss and tinnitus buy kamagra uk next day often go hand-in-hand. Not everyone with tinnitus experiences hearing loss, but it does often occur, says Virginia Ramachandran, AuD, PhD, the head of audiology at Oticon, Inc, a hearing aid manufacturer. €œA lot of times somebody comes into the office with a complaint of hearing noises.

And if you test their hearing, they typically will have at least some buy kamagra uk next day level of hearing loss, and they might not have been aware of it,” Ramachandran says. The “why” is hard to know. €œThe exact mechanism or mechanisms that cause tinnitus are not entirely known,” Ramachandran says.

That said, research studies done using animals show that buy kamagra uk next day nearly anything that consistently causes hearing loss will also cause tinnitus, she explains. Tinnitus is a result of an issue in your brain, not your ears. With hearing loss, you’ll experience missing inputs to your brain, explains audiologist Julie Prutsman, founder of the Sound Relief Hearing Center and board member of the American Tinnitus Association.

“In its attempt to restore the missing input, the auditory buy kamagra uk next day neurons in the brain become hyperactive and misfire,” Prutsman says. The results. Tinnitus, or a phantom sound in the brain—not ears, she says.

Why hearing aids can help There are a few reasons why hearing aids—and an improved ability to hear—can help lessen the symptoms of tinnitus buy kamagra uk next day. Hearing aids restore auditory stimulation to the brain. In a nutshell.

Hearing loss makes your brain a bit hyperactive, with nerve cells in the dorsal cochlear nucleus go wild with activity, buy kamagra uk next day which may potentially get mistakenly interpreted as a sound, Ramachandran says. It’s theorized that since hearing aids restore some of the stimulation that the brain has been missing, they may help manage tinnitus, she explains. Hearing aids allow you to hear background noises.

Another potential buy kamagra uk next day benefit of hearing aids. The restoration of subtle, quiet background noises. €œHearing aids can increase the contrast in the brain to the tinnitus by increasing environmental important link sounds in the background that the person may be missing, such as a gentle breeze or leaves rustling in the wind,” Prutsman says.

Hearing aids may buy kamagra uk next day help reduce stress. “Stress can make tinnitus worse,” Ramachandran says. There are so many things that can cause stress.

Our work, buy kamagra uk next day money, relationships, and so on. Not being able to hear and communicate with people around you is a stresser, too. Spengler’s hearing loss affected her ability to hear high frequency sounds—that means she could tell people were talking, but couldn’t distinguish what exactly they were saying, she recalls.

€I was in a lost world of my own because I buy kamagra uk next day didn't understand anybody.... I went around saying ‘What?. What?.

€™â€ Spengler buy kamagra uk next day says. Wearing hearing aids can help to alleviate stress that accompanies hearing loss, Ramachandran says. €œYou don't have to put as much effort into doing things because you're hearing better,” she says—simple tasks, like ordering breakfast at a diner or purchasing stamps at the post office no longer feel like a minefield of questions to navigate.

Hearing aids buy kamagra uk next day have helpful features, too. Just putting in hearing aids often helps reduce tinnitus symptoms, Ramachandran says. But these devices also have features that can help.

For instance, many hearing aids come with masking features—these are white buy kamagra uk next day noise-like sounds (think. Rushing water or rain noise). These are known as a tinnitus sound generator (TSG), Prutsman says.

With it buy kamagra uk next day on, you may find that the buzz, ring, or whoosh of tinnitus is completely covered up. €œBut usually what they're designed to do is to help the person cope with their tinnitus by allowing them to get used to it in a way that's controlled,” Ramachandran says. In addition to TSG and masking features, many hearing aids allow you to easily connect to a phone, so you could stream sounds from a relaxation app or one that offers a range of white noises.

Other tinnitus treatments The unfortunate reality of tinnitus is that there is no cure, buy kamagra uk next day Ramachandran says. Sometimes masking the tinnitus sounds with other sounds helps it temporarily disappear, she says. “But we can't make it go away permanently,” Ramachandran says.

Hearing aids help some people immensely, as buy kamagra uk next day Spengler experienced. But there’s no guarantee they’ll be effective, nor are they a cure. Another common strategy for dealing with tinnitus is cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) — this therapy method helps people discover how to cope with something they can’t change, Ramachandran says.

Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), which provides strategies buy kamagra uk next day to ignore tinnitus noises, is another treatment option, as well as coping strategies such as relaxation and visualization exercises and meditation. “Since no two people react the same to tinnitus, trying multiple techniques is important to find the ones that help the most,” Prutsman says. Hearing test is important first step Both Prutsman and Ramachandran agree that a hearing test is a good first step if you experience tinnitus, since it can rule out medical causes for the condition (such as medications that cause tinnitus as a side effect).

“It's never a bad idea to get your hearing tested,” Ramachandran says, noting it’s especially encouraged if you experience tinnitus in just one ear.

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IntroductionThalassaemia is buy kamagra 100mg oral jelly an inherited anaemia that exerts an enormous disease burden worldwide.1 Along with sickle cell disease, it is one of the two most common single gene disorders. Indeed, ‘the alpha and beta thalassaemias are the most common inherited single-gene disorders in the world…’2A newly published study by Olivieri, Sabouhanian and Gallie3 analyses and assesses the comparative efficacy and safety profile of two drugs. Deferiprone (Ferriprox buy kamagra 100mg oral jelly.

Apotex) and deferasirox (Exfade. Novartis). Both of these ‘iron-chelating’ drugs remove (‘chelate’) iron deposited, as a result of transfusions, in the tissues of patients with thalassaemia.The present-day first-line chelator, deferasirox, was licensed by the US FDA in 2005.

The evidence for its safety and effectiveness was judged to be substantial and, accordingly, the FDA licensed it as a first-line agent. The prime advantage of deferasirox, in comparison to deferoxamine, an older drug that was formerly the gold standard of iron-chelating therapy for thalassaemia, is that deferasirox is orally active (that is, taken in pill form), while deferoxamine is more burdensome for patients because it has to be taken parenterally (that is, via injection). Deferiprone, like deferasirox, is taken orally but has not been licensed anywhere as first-line treatment.

The FDA withheld market approval for deferiprone because there were/are no controlled trials demonstrating direct treatment benefit. Although the FDA did eventually approve deferiprone, in 2011, it gave approval only as a last-resort treatment for those patients in whom other chelators had been tried unsuccessfully.1The data presented by Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE paper indicate that the drugs differ significantly with respect to their effectiveness and safety. This commentary explores some of the ethical issues raised by the PLOS data.Historical contextIn order to understand properly the significance of the PLOS ONE Study some historical context will be helpful.

What follows is a brief sketch of that context.2In 1993 Dr Nancy Olivieri, a specialist in blood diseases at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (HSC or ‘Sick Kids’) and Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Toronto (U of T), signed a contract with Apotex, a generic drug company, to continue studies of deferiprone, the early promise of which she had already reported in the literature. Olivieri’s thalassaemia research was initially supported by the Medical Research Council of Canada, but now she sought additional funding to extend her clinical trials. Apotex contributed this additional funding, thereby obtaining worldwide patents on the still-experimental drug.Despite early promise, by 1996 Olivieri’s research began to indicate that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in many patients, posing risks of potentially serious harm.

Olivieri communicated to Apotex her intention to inform patients of this unexpected risk and she proposed also to amend the study’s consent forms. She wished to continue amended studies of the drug, and to publish her findings.Apotex responded to Olivieri that they disagreed with her interpretation of the data and the company’s CEO threatened her with ‘all legal remedies’ should she inform patients or publish her findings. In issuing these threats, Apotex relied on a confidentiality clause in a legal contract Olivieri had signed with Apotex in 1993.

This contract prohibited disclosure ‘to any third party’ without the express permission of Apotex.3Despite the objections raised by Apotex, Olivieri saw it as her professional duty to disclose her findings. The Research Ethics Board (REB) of Sick Kids Hospital reached the same conclusion. In compliance with instructions from the Hospital’s REB, Olivieri duly informed both her patients and the regulatory authorities.When Olivieri later identified a second risk—that liver damage progressed during deferiprone exposure—Apotex issued additional legal warnings.

Olivieri nevertheless proceeded to inform her patients of this additional risk and published her findings.Since patient safety, research integrity and academic freedom were all at stake in this dispute, Olivieri appealed for assistance, repeatedly, to senior officials at both the U of T and Sick Kids Hospital. Neither the University nor the Hospital provided the support she requested. In the words of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry on the Case Involving Dr Nancy Olivieri, the HSC, the U of T, and Apotex Inc4:The HSC and the U of T did not provide effective support either for Dr Olivieri and her rights, or for the principles of research and clinical ethics, and of academic freedom, during the first two and a half years of this controversy.Instead, both the University and the Hospital ‘took actions that were harmful to Dr.

Olivieri’s interests and professional reputation and disrupted her work’.4 The harmful actions included firing Olivieri from her position as Director of the Hemoglobinopathy Program at Sick Kids Hospital and referring her for discipline to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).Only later did it emerge that, during this period of conflict, the U of T was negotiating with Apotex for a major donation towards building the University’s proposed new molecular medicine building. Some speculated that the University’s failure to support Olivieri may not have been unconnected from its desire to appease a wealthy corporate donor. This speculation was reinforced when it was discovered that the then President of the University, Robert Prichard, had secretly lobbied the government of Canada for changes in drug patent law, changes that would favour Apotex.4Apotex proceeded to sue Olivieri for defaming both the company and their drug.

She sued the company for defaming her.The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the U of T Faculty Association (UTFA), to whom Olivieri appealed for assistance after being rebuffed by the U of T and HSC, viewed the underlying issue as one of academic freedom. Both CAUT and UTFA provided support, including legal advice, to Olivieri.Thus began what is widely acknowledged to be the greatest scandal in Canadian academic history. Commissions of inquiry, books and articles (both scholarly and popular) proliferated, not to mention newspaper and television stories.

John le Carré’s novel The Constant Gardener and the Hollywood movie based on the book both appeared to draw heavily on the Olivieri-Apotex scandal. An inquiry into the dispute commissioned by Sick Kids Hospital (the Naimark Inquiry)5 absolved Apotex of wrongdoing but suggested that Olivieri was seriously at fault.5 She was charged with research misconduct and failures of patient care and was referred first to the Hospital’s Medical Advisory Council and subsequently to the disciplinary committee of the CPSO. Unsurprisingly, these widely publicised referrals were prejudicial to Olivieri’s reputation.The CAUT then commissioned an independent inquiry.6 The 540-page CAUT report on the Olivieri/Apotex affair4 gave a markedly different account of the scandal from that offered by the hospital-commissioned Naimark Report.

A few excerpts from the CAUT report will convey its central findings:Apotex issued more legal warnings to deter Dr. Olivieri from communicating this second unexpected risk of L1 (deferiprone) to anyone. However, she was legally and ethically obligated to communicate the risk to those taking or prescribing the drug as there were potential safety implications for patients, and she fulfilled these obligations despite the legal warnings.Apotex acted against the public interest in issuing legal warnings to Dr.

Olivieri to deter her from communicating about risks of L1.Apotex’s legal warnings violated Dr. Olivieri’s academic freedom.7Shortly after the CAUT report absolved Olivieri of misconduct, the CPSO published the findings of its inquiry. The CPSO report exonerated Olivieri of all misconduct charges.

Indeed, their report concluded that her conduct had been ‘commendable’.6 This favourable verdict did not, however, bring an end to litigation.In 2004, 8 years after the first legal threats had been issued, Apotex signed a mediated settlement with Olivieri. Nevertheless, litigation continued for another 10 years. Those unfamiliar with the workings of the law may wonder how it is possible for litigation to continue for such a long period after a mediated settlement.

Litigation continued because Apotex alleged that Olivieri had violated their agreement. Olivieri insisted that she was in compliance with the terms of the settlement. Court decisions were appealed by both parties.

A final settlement was not reached between Olivieri and Apotex until 2014.8 Shades of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Charles Dicken’s novel Bleak House.The HSC settled its dispute with Olivieri in 2006 and, although her research programme at the Hospital continued, she ceased to provide clinical care to HSC patients. From 1997 to 2009, Olivieri served as Director of the University Health Network (UHN) Hemoglobinopathy Program.

She continued, as she had since 1997, to assist in the clinical care of UHN patients with thalassaemia and to enrol them in her research studies. In March 2009, however, Olivieri was dismissed by UHN from her position as Director. No reason was given for her dismissal (Personal communication.

Olivieri, 2019).The PLOS ONE Study data3 show that, after Olivieri’s dismissal from her position as Director, the UHN thalassaemia Clinic began almost immediately to switch patients to (unlicensed) deferiprone. Olivieri has described how her UHN research work, from this time forward, was marginalised (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2018-12-20-GallieOlivieri-to-SmithHodges.pdf).Meanwhile, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests filed by Olivieri after her dismissal revealed that Apotex was supplying unrestricted educational grants to UHN’s thalassaemia programme as well as providing research support. The FOI requests filed by Olivieri also revealed that Apotex was strategising with the programme’s new director about how best to obtain licensing for deferiprone from the regulator (Health Canada).9 With this dramatic background as historical context, we commence our discussion of the ethical implications of the PLOS ONE paper.Findings of the PLOS ONE paperIn their 2019 PLOS ONE study Olivieri et al conclude, based on a retrospective review of patient data at Toronto’s UHN, that deferiprone is inadequately effective and associated with serious toxicity.

Their review also confirms that, by contrast, deferasirox is effective and associated with relatively few adverse effects.3Olivieri et al report that ‘[b]etween 2009 and 2015, a third of patients transfused and managed in Canada’s largest transfusion programme were switched from first-line, licensed drugs to regimens of unlicensed deferiprone’.3 This finding raises the ethically troubling question. How and why were so many locally transfused patients at UHN treated over such a long time period with an unlicensed drug of unproven safety and efficacy?. This ethical concern is followed immediately by another related concern.

Why did the UHN thalassaemia programme continue to treat large numbers of its patients with deferiprone—despite ongoing evidence of inadequate effectiveness and serious (and often irreversible) adverse effects?. 3To recapitulate. The PLOS ONE paper demonstrates that a substantial proportion of UHN patients with thalassaemia was switched, between the years 2009 and 2015, from first-line licensed therapies (deferasirox or deferoxamine) to deferiprone.

During this entire period, deferiprone was unlicensed in Canada. To this day in every jurisdiction in which deferiprone has been licensed it has been licensed only as ‘last resort’ therapy. The ethical concern is to explain and to explore possible justifications for how and why so many patients at one particular thalassaemia treatment centre were prescribed a drug whose safety and efficacy were unproven in face of availability of licensed effective drugs.

The urgency of the concern derives partly from the paper’s finding that those patients who were switched to deferiprone displayed evidence of increases in body iron and experienced the harms associated with body iron increase.3 This finding raises a second troubling ethical question. Why were patients not switched back to a first-line licensed therapy after they began to experience serious adverse effects from treatment with unlicensed deferiprone?. How and why?.

In a sustained effort to discover answers to these questions, Olivieri and Gallie have been in communication since 2015, by email and in personal meetings, with senior officials at UHN. Olivieri and Gallie report, however, that no definitive answers have yet been provided to any of their questions. FOI requests were filed but they, too, failed to produce definitive answers.

(Olivieri and Gallie to Smith &. Porter, 2019, https://inthepatientsinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-04-23-OlivieriGallie-to-SmithPorter.pdf).10 I, too, wrote to the CEO/President of UHN and to the Chief of Medical Staff, in an attempt to discover answers to a number of the ethical questions posed in this commentary. The hospital, however, has not responded to any of my questions.11Olivieri and Gallie have recently posted documentation of their correspondence with senior UHN administrators (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/).

In September 2019 the UHN administration responded to the PLOS ONE paper by revealing that it had conducted a ‘Review of chelation practice in the red blood cell disorders program at UHN’. However, as Olivieri and Gallie document on the web, the hospital’s ‘Review’ does not address any of the safety concerns flagged in the PLOS ONE paper (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Letter-to-Smith-and-Hodges-2-12-19.pdf). Nor does the ‘Review’ address any of the ethical concerns raised here.Despite UHN’s apparent reluctance to provide the information requested, here’s what we know or can reasonably infer.

Deferiprone was unlicensed in Canada during the relevant period, that is, from 2009 to 2015. €˜Unlicensed’ is different from ‘off-label’, the latter referring to a drug that has been licensed but is being provided for an indication other than that for which it is approved. Prescription of any unlicensed drug to Canadian patients can be accomplished only in one of two mutually exclusive ways.

Either through Health Canada’s ‘Special Access Program (SAP)’ or via an REB approved clinical trial. It has to be one or the other since, as Health Canada’s Guidance Document7 makes clear, patients cannot be simultaneously treated through SAP and in a research trial.12 Under the SAP, the treating physician must confirm to Health Canada that ‘conventional therapies have failed, or are unsuitable or unavailable’. Although some of the UHN patients’ records indicate that deferiprone was released under the SAP, Olivieri et al report that they ‘could identify no explanation for a proposed switch to deferiprone that was supported by evidence of failure of licensed therapy prescribed as recommended’3.

Indeed, the authors write that many patients appear to have been switched to deferiprone despite optimal responses, or improvements during treatment with first-line therapies. Here’s the relevant paragraph from their PLOS ONE article:Deferiprone was prescribed to 41 study patients between 2009 and 2015. We could identify in the electronic medical records no explanation for a proposed switch to deferiprone that was supported by evidence of failure of licensed therapy prescribed as recommended.

There was no indication that any patient switched to deferiprone over these 6 years had ‘failed’ therapy with either deferoxamine or deferasirox. Many patients were recorded as tolerant of at least one and (in most), both licensed first-line chelating agents. Some had sustained minor adverse events during deferasirox that had resolved by the time deferiprone was prescribed.3In other words, according to the data found in UHN patient records, there is no evidence that the patients with thalassaemia who were switched to deferiprone met Health Canada’s eligibility criteria under SAP.

Since deferiprone is licensed only as a ‘last resort’ therapy, its employment to treat patients who can tolerate either of the first-line therapies might improperly expose those patients to risks of serious medical harms, up to and including death.On the other hand, one should also consider the alternate possibility that, over the 6-year period studied by Olivieri et al, deferiprone was prescribed as part of a clinical trial. In favour of this hypothesis, one notes that the UHN physician primarily responsible for the widespread prescribing of deferiprone during the relevant time period claimed, in 2011, that deferiprone was provided to patients under a study approved by the REB of the UHN.8 UHN physicians also made this identical claim in a publicly available letter to the US FDA.9 Moreover, in response to an FOI application filed by Olivieri, UHN claimed that deferiprone was provided at UHN during a clinical trial (the data of which are protected from scrutiny under FOI laws), and not under SAP (the data of which are not protected from scrutiny under FOI). However, Olivieri et al have been unable to find any record of registration for such a trial, as required by Canadian Clinical Trial guidelines.13 Requests to the UHN administration for confirmation that a clinical trial existed remain unanswered.14 My own efforts to find some registration record for this putative clinical trial of deferiprone have been equally unsuccessful.15Two core ethical principles.

Harm-minimisation and informed consentIf the deferiprone used to treat UHN patients with thalassaemia was obtained from Apotex as part of a randomised clinical trial, responsibility for approving the trial would fall to the UHN’s REB. In Canada, both researchers and REBs are governed by the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) ‘Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans’.10 The 1998 version of this policy statement (TCPS1) and the subsequent 2010 version (TCPS2), both applicable to research trials during this period, stipulate that clinical trials must be designed so that harm to research subjects will be minimised.16 For example, TCPS1 specifies, in section 1.5, that ‘Research subjects must not be subjected to unnecessary risks of harm’. TCPS2, under the rubric ‘Core Principles’, requires similarly that clinical trials must ‘ensure that participants are not exposed to unnecessary risks’.Data presented by Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE Study indicate that UHN patients exposed to unlicensed deferiprone, either as monotherapy or in combination with low dose of a first-line chelator (‘combination therapy’), experienced significant harms as a result of poor iron control, but very few if any compensating benefits.We provide new evidence of inadequate reduction in hepatic iron, a 17% incidence of new diabetes and new liver dysfunction in 65% of patients, many who were challenged and rechallenged with deferiprone despite elevated liver enzymes developed during previous exposure.

We identified no evidence of ‘cardio-protective’ effect during deferiprone therapy.3In light of PLOS ONE Study data indicating serious adverse events (SAEs) for patients switched to deferiprone from first-line drugs one is led to question why the study protocol did not, in anticipation of such a contingency, provide for a resumption of licensed therapy for patients doing poorly on the unlicensed drug. Moreover, the investigators were obliged to report adverse events to the hospital’s REB. Were the adverse events so reported?.

And if they were then why did the UHN REB not seek to protect patient safety by insisting that licensed therapy be resumed for deferiprone-harmed patients?. In an effort to establish whether the deferiprone ‘clinical trial’ satisfied the TCPS harm-minimisation principle, I made inquiries about how the adverse findings described by the PLOS ONE paper were reported to the hospital’s REB and also how they were reported to the regulatory authorities, that is, Health Canada and the US FDA. But my queries, like those made previously by Olivieri and Gallie, have not succeeded in eliciting this ethically relevant information.17 Neither UHN nor its thalassaemia clinic responded to my letters of inquiry.

It is known, however, from a publicly available 2011 document, that physicians in the UHN thalassaemia clinic strongly supported the market approval of deferiprone by the FDA.18 This support is difficult to reconcile with the toxicities recorded in UHN patient records. So, a final verdict on the issue of whether the UHN deferiprone ‘clinical trial design’ violated the TCPS harm-minimisation principle cannot be reached until those involved in conducting and monitoring clinical trials at UHN make available the relevant information. An independent public inquiry may be necessary to achieve the necessary degree of accountability.Reference has been made, above, to the TCPS core ethical requirement of harm-minimisation, applicable in Canada both to researchers and to REBs.

It is important to note, however, that TCPS2, like its predecessor, TCPS1 (and, indeed, like virtually every postwar code of research ethics) also stipulates as a second ‘core principle’ that ‘Researchers shall provide to prospective participants, or authorised third parties, full disclosure of all information necessary for making an informed decision’.19 Moreover, as the then-current TCPS guidelines make clear, ‘consent is an ongoing process’. So, assurance should be given to prospective participants that they ‘will be given in a timely manner throughout the course of the research project, information that is relevant to their decision to continue or withdraw from participation’.20 (My emphasis). Finally, TCPS2 imposes on researchers the additional ethical requirement that they disclose to research subjects ‘information concerning the possibility of commercialisation of research findings, and the presence of any real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest on the part of the researchers, their institutions or the research sponsors’.21 There is also an expectation that conflicts of interest will be disclosed to the REB.

Whether there was adequate disclosure of Apotex funding either to research subjects or to the UHN REB is still unknown.Thus, in order to assess the ethical adequacy of the putative UHN thalassaemia clinical trial one must inquire whether UHN patients/subjects were given adequate risk information when they were first enrolled, subsequently, when they were switched from treatment with deferasirox or deferoxamine to treatment with deferiprone and then, finally, when they experienced SAEs. That is, in order to know whether the putative deferiprone clinical trial conformed to established principles of research ethics, one would need to know whether patients/research subjects understood that they were being switched from licensed first-line drugs of proven efficacy to an unlicensed and unproven third-line drug. One would also need to know whether the deferiprone ‘research subjects’ were informed about conflicts of interest arising from Apotex donations (A) to the UHN.

(B) To the hospital’s thalassaemia programme,22 as well as the hoped-for commercialisation of deferiprone via Health Canada and FDA licensing.If there was a failure to obtain ongoing informed consent and/or a failure to disclose conflicts of interest (to patients and to the REB) then this would constitute a violation of research ethics. Unfortunately, my attempts to elicit the clinical trial’s consent to research information from the UHN and its thalassaemia clinic met with as little success as earlier attempts made by the PLOS ONE authors.23REB review. Safety monitoringAlthough every clinical trial requires safety monitoring, those trials which involve non-negligible risk of significant harm to patients/subjects require especially rigorous safety monitoring.24 Because the exposure of deferiprone to UHN patients posed risks of organ dysfunction and death, the need for safety monitoring was exigent.

As the TCPS1 and TCPS2 both make clear, those who conduct research have an obligation to monitor and protect the safety of their research subjects.Moreover, it is now widely recognised that individuals closely involved with the design and conduct of a trial may not be able to be fully objective in reviewing interim data for any emerging concerns.25 Hence the importance of REBs, part of whose role is to provide safety monitoring initially and, for ongoing trials, over the entire period of the trial. In order to assess the adequacy of the safety monitoring for the UHN ‘deferiprone trial’ one would need to know whether the hospital’s REB was provided with regular and accurate reports of SAEs and what actions this REB took in response to those reports.It has become common practice in North America ‘that for any controlled trial of any size that will compare rates of mortality or major morbidity’, a data safety monitoring board (DSMB) will be established.26,11 12 A DSMB is constituted by a panel of independent (and otherwise unbiased) individuals with expertise pertinent to reviewing trial data on a regular ongoing basis. Its role is to advise the sponsors regarding the safety of trial subjects and to recommend early termination where indicated, for example, on grounds of patient safety.27Since there are no specifically Canadian requirements with respect to the establishment of DSMBs, Canadian REBs tend to follow FDA guidelines.

Those guidelines recommend that a DSMB should be established when the study end point is such that a highly favourable or unfavourable result at an interim analysis might ethically require termination of the study. Advance information suggesting the possibility of serious toxicity with the study treatment is another a priori reason for safety concern that would justify the establishment of a DSMB.12For reasons given above, the UHN deferiprone trial appears to have been a prime candidate for the establishment of a DSMB. But it is not known whether the study’s research protocol, purportedly submitted for approval to the hospital’s REB, included a DSMB.

Nor is it known whether a DSMB was established and reported regularly to the trial’s sponsors. Data on the toxicity of deferiprone, provided by Olivieri et al from their retrospective study of UHN patient records, suggest that had a DSMB existed for this putative clinical trial the trial might, on grounds of patient safety, have been a candidate for premature cancellation. Lacunae in our knowledge of the safety monitoring provisions of the deferiprone ‘clinical trial’ make it difficult to reach any firm conclusion as to whether the ‘trial’ met prevailing safety monitoring requirements.The apparent unwillingness of the UHN to answer questions relating to safety monitoring might mean that an inquiry is needed to fill in our knowledge gaps and thereby make ethical evaluation possible.

For the findings of such an inquiry to be minimally credible it should be carried out by individuals who possess the requisite scientific/medical expertise and who are independent of the hospital and its thalassaemia clinic and who are demonstrably impartial. An inquiry carried out, for example, by someone whose research has been funded by Apotex and/or by an expert with close professional and personal ties to one or more of the physicians in the UHN thalassaemia clinic would not satisfy the hospital’s duty of accountability for patient safety.Ethical concernsA RecapitulationThe serious complications experienced by deferiprone-exposed UHN patients, as described by Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE article, raise a number of ethically important questions. How could an unlicensed drug of unproven efficacy and safety—a drug that has been questioned by regulatory agencies such that it is licensed only as a “last resort” therapy—have been administered to so many patients over a period of so many years when two licensed drugs, both proven adequately safe and effective and licensed as first-line therapies, were available?.

How did UHN physicians gain access to deferiprone from Health Canada when there is little evidence in UHN patient records that the deferiprone-exposed patients satisfied Health Canada’s criteria for Special Access?. Why was a putative UHN REB-approved research study involving deferiprone not registered as a clinical trial?. Did the trial design include a DSMB, to protect patient safety and, if not, why not?.

Were SAEs reported to the UHN REB and to regulators, as required?. Were deferiprone-treated UHN patients with thalassaemia adequately informed of the unlicensed status, unproven efficacy and reported toxicities of deferiprone?. Were deferiprone-exposed patients informed of harms they themselves had sustained during deferiprone from this exposure?.

28 Did the evidence of systematic treatment failure, as outlined in the PLOS ONE paper, raise red flags for thalassaemia clinic physicians and for the REB of UHN?. And if serious problems were flagged what actions were taken to protect patient safety?. Institutional conflict of interestThe literature on biomedical conflicts of interest tends to focus on the ways in which financial support of individual researchers by the pharmaceutical industry can adversely affect both research integrity and patient safety.13–16 But similar ethical problems arise at the macro level when institutions, such as hospitals and clinics, depend on drug company funding to support patient care and clinical research.13 15 Notable scandals associated with institutional conflicts of interest include the David Healy/Eli Lilly scandal at Toronto’s Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH),13 the Aubrey Blumsohn/Proctor and Gamble scandal at Sheffield University (UK)17 and the Carl Elliott/Janssen Pharmaceuticals scandal at the University of Minnesota.17 The underlying pattern in each of these scandals involves (A) a biomedical researcher who is concerned about patient safety coming into conflict with (B) a pharmaceutical company which funds both the researcher’s hospital and university and (C) a failure by the institutions involved vigorously to defend patient safety and research integrity when doing so might offend a wealthy sponsor.It should not be assumed that corporate influence on university medical centres is necessarily exerted by means of threats or other direct forms of intervention.

The mere presence of corporate funding can be sufficient to produce a corporate-friendly result. This point is illustrated by a recent STAT article, a propos the financial support which Purdue Pharma provided to Massachusetts General Hospital. The very title of the article encapsulates the ethical problem of institutional conflict of interest.

€˜Purdue Pharma cemented ties with universities and hospitals to expand opioid sales, documents contend’.18 Nor should it be supposed that the problem of institutional conflict of interest arises exclusively in the context of biomedical research. A recent Guardian article on the Mobil Oil Corporation describes how ‘Oil giant Mobil sought to make tax-exempt donations to leading universities … to promote the company’s interests and undermine environmental regulation, according to internal documents from the early 1990s obtained by the Guardian’.19As mentioned above, deferiprone, whose safety and efficacy are the central concern of Olivieri et al’s PLOS ONE paper, is manufactured by Apotex. When we seek to understand why deferiprone was so frequently prescribed to UHN patients, from 2009 to 2016, despite its being unlicensed and despite evidence of poor patient outcomes,3 it may be relevant to note that Apotex provided substantial funding to the UHN thalassaemia clinic.29 Moreover, a publicly displayed UHN banner lists ‘Apotex Inc – Barry and Honey Sherman’ as having donated between $1 million and $5 million to the hospital itself.30As every biomedical researcher understands, correlation is not causation.

Nevertheless, the correlation between industry funding of hospitals, on the one hand, and industry-friendly decisions made by researchers and administrators at those hospitals, on the other, is worth pondering. Physicians and researchers who speak or write critically of drugs manufactured by wealthy donor companies may find that their careers are jeopardised. Nancy Olivieri’s dismissal from two Apotex-funded teaching hospitals illustrates this phenomenon as does the termination of psychiatrist David Healy from Toronto’s CAMH.13 Healy’s appointment as Head of the CAMH Mood Disorders Clinic was rescinded almost immediately after he gave a public lecture at the hospital—a lecture in which he called for further research into the potentially adverse effects of Eli Lilly’s antidepressant drug, Prozac.

Healy was particularly concerned about SSRI-induced suicidal ideation. After his lecture the hospital decided that he was not ‘a good fit’ with their programme and terminated his appointment. Shortly thereafter the hospital opened its Eli Lilly wing.13UHN, like every other research and teaching hospital in Canada, receives most of its funding, directly or indirectly, from governments.20 ,31 Nevertheless, UHN, again like other hospitals, faces ongoing pressure to find additional sources of revenue to support both patient care and clinical research.32 The pharmaceutical industry is a prime source of much-needed ‘top-up’ financial support for Canadian hospital research and clinical care.21 Hospital administrators, researchers and clinicians are thereby placed, willy nilly, in a conflict-of-interest situation.

Because of funding exigencies, hospitals and other healthcare institutions, like individual physicians and researchers, have a strong vested interest in pleasing corporate sponsors and encouraging their ongoing support. Moreover, institutional administrators, not unlike individual researchers and clinicians, typically experience a need to express their gratitude to donors by returning kindness for kindness and benefit for benefit. Thus, both the need for ongoing corporate sponsorship and the need to reciprocate for past corporate generosity create for hospital administrators (as well as for researchers and clinicians who work within hospitals) a conflict-of-interest situation in which their decision making may be skewed, consciously or unconsciously, in favour of the benefactors’ products.13 15 16 21Here’s an example of the manner in which an institutional conflict-of-interest situation can potentially bias the judgement of hospital administrators.

Hospitals are required to exercise their disinterested judgement in the appointment of medical and scientific staff and in the ethical monitoring of research. This moral obligation follows directly from their fundamental commitment to promote and defend patient safety and research integrity. To illustrate.

UHN’s website, under the heading Purpose, Values and Principles, declares that ‘[o]ur Primary Value and above all else. The needs of patients come first’.22 It would be difficult to find any hospital whose Mission Statement did not proclaim a similar commitment to the primacy of patient well-being. In a similar vein, the UHN website, under the heading Information for Patients, subheaded Our Mission, declares.

€˜We believe that health equity is achieved when each person is. Enabled to choose the best care and treatment based on the most current knowledge available’.From this fundamental commitment, it follows that healthcare institutions are obliged rigorously to monitor the quality of care provided to their patients and research subjects. As an important element of protecting patient safety, hospitals are required to appoint the most qualified and competent candidates to clinical and research positions.

But, as noted above, conflicts of interest are a risk factor for bias, conscious or unconscious, in personnel decisions.22 So, when a research hospital depends on corporate donations there is a risk that physicians and researchers may be appointed to key positions because they are known to be sympathetic to the donors’ product(s) rather than because they are the best qualified and the most competent. Contrariwise, physicians and researchers believed to be unsympathetic to the donors’ products are at risk of losing their jobs or of not being hired in the first place. The cases of Olivieri, Healy and Blumsohn illustrate this point.13 17As explained above, we know from the extensive literature on conflict of interest that when research and clinical care are funded by industry there is a marked tendency for both to favour the sponsors’/donors’ products.13 15 16 18 Significantly, the UHN itself explicitly recognises the danger to patient safety posed by systemic biases.

Its Mission Statement commits the hospital to ensuring that every patient is ‘[m]ade aware of existing systemic biases to support the best possible health decisions’.22 Unfortunately, it is not possible at present to ascertain whether UHN conformed to this ethical commitment in the case of its deferiprone research/treatment clinic. In order to make such an ethical determination we would need to know the mechanism by which the UHN thalassaemia clinic gained access to deferiprone and whether the clinic provided information about systemic bias to patients with thalassaemia and to the hospital’s REB.ConclusionsHospitals worldwide proclaim that their primary commitment is to meet the needs of their patients. Institutional codes of ethics and mission statements insist that patient needs come first.

Indeed, meeting ‘patient needs’ is agreed to be the fundamental value to which all other hospital goals should be subordinated. Toronto’s UHN declares unequivocally that it shares this value. €˜[t]he needs of patients come first’.22Although patients have many and various needs, the need for safety must be counted as the sine qua non.

If the need for safety is not met then other needs become irrelevant.The findings of Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE paper raise many troubling questions about the safety of patients in UHN’s thalassaemia clinic. One would expect that when top UHN officials became aware of the PLOS ONE data they would immediately have recognised the ethical red flags. Hospitals are ethically obliged both to investigate thoroughly possible safety failures and to rectify any problems identified.Over a period of several years, both before and after the publication of their research findings, Drs Olivieri and Gallie communicated regularly with UHN officials (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/).

Multiple safety concerns were brought to the hospital’s attention. Numerous questions were asked by the PLOS ONE authors and specific concerns were raised. To date, the hospital has not definitively addressed these issues.

I posed a series of ethically salient questions to these same hospital officials (see online supplementary appendix A). My queries were ignored. There was no response from UHN.Supplemental materialIf a healthcare institution such as UHN claims that patient safety is its top priority then when safety issues are raised, it necessarily incurs an obligation of accountability.

It would, for example, scarcely be adequate for a hospital, such as UHN, unilaterally to investigate alleged failures, declare that there has been no violation of patient care standards, and then to stonewall all further inquiries, whether those inquiries originate from its own medical staff, as was the case with Olivieri and Gallie, or from outside scholars, as was the case with me.When an unlicensed drug is prescribed to hospital patients, over a period of years, as happened in the UHN thalassaemia programme, it is surely the hospital’s obligation to answer questions about how and why this extraordinary practice occurred. When hospital records reveal that patients switched from licensed to unlicensed medication, have experienced serious harms, up to and including death, it is surely the hospital’s obligation to answer in a conscientious and complete manner all the ethically troubling questions that have been identified. This obligation of accountability is owed both to patients and to staff.

Thus far, UHN has not been willing to accept the implications of its own mission statement (https://www.uhn.ca/corporate/AboutUHN/Quality_Patient_Safety).The PLOS ONE Study by Olivieri Sabouhanian and Gallie spurs us to inquire whether the benefits which accrue to society from corporate sponsorship of healthcare institutions may, on balance, be outweighed by the associated harms. Admittedly, for governments committed to constraining public expenditures, the transfer of substantial healthcare costs to private corporations represents a benefit for public finances. But, as we have seen, when one considers this financial benefit, one ought also to take into account the spectrum of negative consequences potentially generated by institutional conflicts of interest.

The price for our continued acceptance of corporate funding of scientific research and clinical care may be the erosion of public trust. Arguably, it would be preferable if our research hospital were to aim instead for the complete elimination of systemic biases.Data availability statementAll data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary informationEthics statementsPatient consent for publicationNot required.AcknowledgmentsThe author thanks the editors of JME and two JME reviewers for their criticisms of and suggestions for change to an earlier version of this paper..

IntroductionThalassaemia is an inherited anaemia that exerts an buy kamagra uk next day enormous disease burden worldwide.1 http://www.wolf-garden.nl/buy-zithromax-250mg/ Along with sickle cell disease, it is one of the two most common single gene disorders. Indeed, ‘the alpha and beta thalassaemias are the most common inherited single-gene disorders in the world…’2A newly published study by Olivieri, Sabouhanian and Gallie3 analyses and assesses the comparative efficacy and safety profile of two drugs. Deferiprone (Ferriprox buy kamagra uk next day. Apotex) and deferasirox (Exfade. Novartis).

Both of these ‘iron-chelating’ drugs remove (‘chelate’) iron deposited, as a result of transfusions, in the tissues of patients with thalassaemia.The present-day first-line chelator, deferasirox, was licensed by the US FDA in 2005. The evidence for its safety and effectiveness was judged to be substantial and, accordingly, the FDA licensed it as a first-line agent. The prime advantage of deferasirox, in comparison to deferoxamine, an older drug that was formerly the gold standard of iron-chelating therapy for thalassaemia, is that deferasirox is orally active (that is, taken in pill form), while deferoxamine is more burdensome for patients because it has to be taken parenterally (that is, via injection). Deferiprone, like deferasirox, is taken orally but has not been licensed anywhere as first-line treatment. The FDA withheld market approval for deferiprone because there were/are no controlled trials demonstrating direct treatment benefit.

Although the FDA did eventually approve deferiprone, in 2011, it gave approval only as a last-resort treatment for those patients in whom other chelators had been tried unsuccessfully.1The data presented by Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE paper indicate that the drugs differ significantly with respect to their effectiveness and safety. This commentary explores some of the ethical issues raised by the PLOS data.Historical contextIn order to understand properly the significance of the PLOS ONE Study some historical context will be helpful. What follows is a brief sketch of that context.2In 1993 Dr Nancy Olivieri, a specialist in blood diseases at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (HSC or ‘Sick Kids’) and Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Toronto (U of T), signed a contract with Apotex, a generic drug company, to continue studies of deferiprone, the early promise of which she had already reported in the literature. Olivieri’s thalassaemia research was initially supported by the Medical Research Council of Canada, but now she sought additional funding to extend her clinical trials. Apotex contributed this additional funding, thereby obtaining worldwide patents on the still-experimental drug.Despite early promise, by 1996 Olivieri’s research began to indicate that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in many patients, posing risks of potentially serious harm.

Olivieri communicated to Apotex her intention to inform patients of this unexpected risk and she proposed also to amend the study’s consent forms. She wished to continue amended studies of the drug, and to publish her findings.Apotex responded to Olivieri that they disagreed with her interpretation of the data and the company’s CEO threatened her with ‘all legal remedies’ should she inform patients or publish her findings. In issuing these threats, Apotex relied on a confidentiality clause in a legal contract Olivieri had signed with Apotex in 1993. This contract prohibited disclosure ‘to any third party’ without the express permission of Apotex.3Despite the objections raised by Apotex, Olivieri saw it as her professional duty to disclose her findings. The Research Ethics Board (REB) of Sick Kids Hospital reached the same conclusion.

In compliance with instructions from the Hospital’s REB, Olivieri duly informed both her patients and the regulatory authorities.When Olivieri later identified a second risk—that liver damage progressed during deferiprone exposure—Apotex issued additional legal warnings. Olivieri nevertheless proceeded to inform her patients of this additional risk and published her findings.Since patient safety, research integrity and academic freedom were all at stake in this dispute, Olivieri appealed for assistance, repeatedly, to senior officials at both the U of T and Sick Kids Hospital. Neither the University nor the Hospital provided the support she requested. In the words of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry on the Case Involving Dr Nancy Olivieri, the HSC, the U of T, and Apotex Inc4:The HSC and the U of T did not provide effective support either for Dr Olivieri and her rights, or for the principles of research and clinical ethics, and of academic freedom, during the first two and a half years of this controversy.Instead, both the University and the Hospital ‘took actions that were harmful to Dr. Olivieri’s interests and professional reputation and disrupted her work’.4 The harmful actions included firing Olivieri from her position as Director of the Hemoglobinopathy Program at Sick Kids Hospital and referring her for discipline to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).Only later did it emerge that, during this period of conflict, the U of T was negotiating with Apotex for a major donation towards building the University’s proposed new molecular medicine building.

Some speculated that the University’s failure to support Olivieri may not have been unconnected from its desire to appease a wealthy corporate donor. This speculation was reinforced when it was discovered that the then President of the University, Robert Prichard, had secretly lobbied the government of Canada for changes in drug patent law, changes that would favour Apotex.4Apotex proceeded to sue Olivieri for defaming both the company and their drug. She sued the company for defaming her.The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the U of T Faculty Association (UTFA), to whom Olivieri appealed for assistance after being rebuffed by the U of T and HSC, viewed the underlying issue as one of academic freedom. Both CAUT and UTFA provided support, including legal advice, to Olivieri.Thus began what is widely acknowledged to be the greatest scandal in Canadian academic history. Commissions of inquiry, books and articles (both scholarly and popular) proliferated, not to mention newspaper and television stories.

John le Carré’s novel The Constant Gardener and the Hollywood movie based on the book both appeared to draw heavily on the Olivieri-Apotex scandal. An inquiry into the dispute commissioned by Sick Kids Hospital (the Naimark Inquiry)5 absolved Apotex of wrongdoing but suggested that Olivieri was seriously at fault.5 She was charged with research misconduct and failures of patient care and was referred first to the Hospital’s Medical Advisory Council and subsequently to the disciplinary committee of the CPSO. Unsurprisingly, these widely publicised referrals were prejudicial to Olivieri’s reputation.The CAUT then commissioned an independent inquiry.6 The 540-page CAUT report on the Olivieri/Apotex affair4 gave a markedly different account of the scandal from that offered by the hospital-commissioned Naimark Report. A few excerpts from the CAUT report will convey its central findings:Apotex issued more legal warnings to deter Dr. Olivieri from communicating this second unexpected risk of L1 (deferiprone) to anyone.

However, she was legally and ethically obligated to communicate the risk to those taking or prescribing the drug as there were potential safety implications for patients, and she fulfilled these obligations despite the legal warnings.Apotex acted against the public interest in issuing legal warnings to Dr. Olivieri to deter her from communicating about risks of L1.Apotex’s legal warnings violated Dr. Olivieri’s academic freedom.7Shortly after the CAUT report absolved Olivieri of misconduct, the CPSO published the findings of its inquiry. The CPSO report exonerated Olivieri of all misconduct charges. Indeed, their report concluded that her conduct had been ‘commendable’.6 This favourable verdict did not, however, bring an end to litigation.In 2004, 8 years after the first legal threats had been issued, Apotex signed a mediated settlement with Olivieri.

Nevertheless, litigation continued for another 10 years. Those unfamiliar with the workings of the law may wonder how it is possible for litigation to continue for such a long period after a mediated settlement. Litigation continued because Apotex alleged that Olivieri had violated their agreement. Olivieri insisted that she was in compliance with the terms of the settlement. Court decisions were appealed by both parties.

A final settlement was not reached between Olivieri and Apotex until 2014.8 Shades of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Charles Dicken’s novel Bleak House.The HSC settled its dispute with Olivieri in 2006 and, although her research programme at the Hospital continued, she ceased to provide clinical care to HSC patients. From 1997 to 2009, Olivieri served as Director of the University Health Network (UHN) Hemoglobinopathy Program. She continued, as she had since 1997, to assist in the clinical care of UHN patients with thalassaemia and to enrol them in her research studies. In March 2009, however, Olivieri was dismissed by UHN from her position as Director.

No reason was given for her dismissal (Personal communication. Olivieri, 2019).The PLOS ONE Study data3 show that, after Olivieri’s dismissal from her position as Director, the UHN thalassaemia Clinic began almost immediately to switch patients to (unlicensed) deferiprone. Olivieri has described how her UHN research work, from this time forward, was marginalised (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2018-12-20-GallieOlivieri-to-SmithHodges.pdf).Meanwhile, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests filed by Olivieri after her dismissal revealed that Apotex was supplying unrestricted educational grants to UHN’s thalassaemia programme as well as providing research support. The FOI requests filed by Olivieri also revealed that Apotex was strategising with the programme’s new director about how best to obtain licensing for deferiprone from the regulator (Health Canada).9 With this dramatic background as historical context, we commence our discussion of the ethical implications of the PLOS ONE paper.Findings of the PLOS ONE paperIn their 2019 PLOS ONE study Olivieri et al conclude, based on a retrospective review of patient data at Toronto’s UHN, that deferiprone is inadequately effective and associated with serious toxicity. Their review also confirms that, by contrast, deferasirox is effective and associated with relatively few adverse effects.3Olivieri et al report that ‘[b]etween 2009 and 2015, a third of patients transfused and managed in Canada’s largest transfusion programme were switched from first-line, licensed drugs to regimens of unlicensed deferiprone’.3 This finding raises the ethically troubling question.

How and why were so many locally transfused patients at UHN treated over such a long time period with an unlicensed drug of unproven safety and efficacy?. This ethical concern is followed immediately by another related concern. Why did the UHN thalassaemia programme continue to treat large numbers of its patients with deferiprone—despite ongoing evidence of inadequate effectiveness and serious (and often irreversible) adverse effects?. 3To recapitulate. The PLOS ONE paper demonstrates that a substantial proportion of UHN patients with thalassaemia was switched, between the years 2009 and 2015, from first-line licensed therapies (deferasirox or deferoxamine) to deferiprone.

During this entire period, deferiprone was unlicensed in Canada. To this day in every jurisdiction in which deferiprone has been licensed it has been licensed only as ‘last resort’ therapy. The ethical concern is to explain and to explore possible justifications for how and why so many patients at one particular thalassaemia treatment centre were prescribed a drug whose safety and efficacy were unproven in face of availability of licensed effective drugs. The urgency of the concern derives partly from the paper’s finding that those patients who were switched to deferiprone displayed evidence of increases in body iron and experienced the harms associated with body iron increase.3 This finding raises a second troubling ethical question. Why were patients not switched back to a first-line licensed therapy after they began to experience serious adverse effects from treatment with unlicensed deferiprone?.

How and why?. In a sustained effort to discover answers to these questions, Olivieri and Gallie have been in communication since 2015, by email and in personal meetings, with senior officials at UHN. Olivieri and Gallie report, however, that no definitive answers have yet been provided to any of their questions. FOI requests were filed but they, too, failed to produce definitive answers. (Olivieri and Gallie to Smith &.

Porter, 2019, https://inthepatientsinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-04-23-OlivieriGallie-to-SmithPorter.pdf).10 I, too, wrote to the CEO/President of UHN and to the Chief of Medical Staff, in an attempt to discover answers to a number of the ethical questions posed in this commentary. The hospital, however, has not responded to any of my questions.11Olivieri and Gallie have recently posted documentation of their correspondence with senior UHN administrators (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/). In September 2019 the UHN administration responded to the PLOS ONE paper by revealing that it had conducted a ‘Review of chelation practice in the red blood cell disorders program at UHN’. However, as Olivieri and Gallie document on the web, the hospital’s ‘Review’ does not address any of the safety concerns flagged in the PLOS ONE paper (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Letter-to-Smith-and-Hodges-2-12-19.pdf). Nor does the ‘Review’ address any of the ethical concerns raised here.Despite UHN’s apparent reluctance to provide the information requested, here’s what we know or can reasonably infer.

Deferiprone was unlicensed in Canada during the relevant period, that is, from 2009 to 2015. €˜Unlicensed’ is different from ‘off-label’, the latter referring to a drug that has been licensed but is being provided for an indication other than that for which it is approved. Prescription of any unlicensed drug to Canadian patients can be accomplished only in one of two mutually exclusive ways. Either through Health Canada’s ‘Special Access Program (SAP)’ or via an REB approved clinical trial. It has to be one or the other since, as Health Canada’s Guidance Document7 makes clear, patients cannot be simultaneously treated through SAP and in a research trial.12 Under the SAP, the treating physician must confirm to Health Canada that ‘conventional therapies have failed, or are unsuitable or unavailable’.

Although some of the UHN patients’ records indicate that deferiprone was released under the SAP, Olivieri et al report that they ‘could identify no explanation for a proposed switch to deferiprone that was supported by evidence of failure of licensed therapy prescribed as recommended’3. Indeed, the authors write that many patients appear to have been switched to deferiprone despite optimal responses, or improvements during treatment with first-line therapies. Here’s the relevant paragraph from their PLOS ONE article:Deferiprone was prescribed to 41 study patients between 2009 and 2015. We could identify in the electronic medical records no explanation for a proposed switch to deferiprone that was supported by evidence of failure of licensed therapy prescribed as recommended. There was no indication that any patient switched to deferiprone over these 6 years had ‘failed’ therapy with either deferoxamine or deferasirox.

Many patients were recorded as tolerant of at least one and (in most), both licensed first-line chelating agents. Some had sustained minor adverse events during deferasirox that had resolved by the time deferiprone was prescribed.3In other words, according to the data found in UHN patient records, there is no evidence that the patients with thalassaemia who were switched to deferiprone met Health Canada’s eligibility criteria under SAP. Since deferiprone is licensed only as a ‘last resort’ therapy, its employment to treat patients who can tolerate either of the first-line therapies might improperly expose those patients to risks of serious medical harms, up to and including death.On the other hand, one should also consider the alternate possibility that, over the 6-year period studied by Olivieri et al, deferiprone was prescribed as part of a clinical trial. In favour of this hypothesis, one notes that the UHN physician primarily responsible for the widespread prescribing of deferiprone during the relevant time period claimed, in 2011, that deferiprone was provided to patients under a study approved by the REB of the UHN.8 UHN physicians also made this identical claim in a publicly available letter to the US FDA.9 Moreover, in response to an FOI application filed by Olivieri, UHN claimed that deferiprone was provided at UHN during a clinical trial (the data of which are protected from scrutiny under FOI laws), and not under SAP (the data of which are not protected from scrutiny under FOI). However, Olivieri et al have been unable to find any record of registration for such a trial, as required by Canadian Clinical Trial guidelines.13 Requests to the UHN administration for confirmation that a clinical trial existed remain unanswered.14 My own efforts to find some registration record for this putative clinical trial of deferiprone have been equally unsuccessful.15Two core ethical principles.

Harm-minimisation and informed consentIf the deferiprone used to treat UHN patients with thalassaemia was obtained from Apotex as part of a randomised clinical trial, responsibility for approving the trial would fall to the UHN’s REB. In Canada, both researchers and REBs are governed by the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) ‘Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans’.10 The 1998 version of this policy statement (TCPS1) and the subsequent 2010 version (TCPS2), both applicable to research trials during this period, stipulate that clinical trials must be designed so that harm to research subjects will be minimised.16 For example, TCPS1 specifies, in section 1.5, that ‘Research subjects must not be subjected to unnecessary risks of harm’. TCPS2, under the rubric ‘Core Principles’, requires similarly that clinical trials must ‘ensure that participants are not exposed to unnecessary risks’.Data presented by Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE Study indicate that UHN patients exposed to unlicensed deferiprone, either as monotherapy or in combination with low dose of a first-line chelator (‘combination therapy’), experienced significant harms as a result of poor iron control, but very few if any compensating benefits.We provide new evidence of inadequate reduction in hepatic iron, a 17% incidence of new diabetes and new liver dysfunction in 65% of patients, many who were challenged and rechallenged with deferiprone despite elevated liver enzymes developed during previous exposure. We identified no evidence of ‘cardio-protective’ effect during deferiprone therapy.3In light of PLOS ONE Study data indicating serious adverse events (SAEs) for patients switched to deferiprone from first-line drugs one is led to question why the study protocol did not, in anticipation of such a contingency, provide for a resumption of licensed therapy for patients doing poorly on the unlicensed drug. Moreover, the investigators were obliged to report adverse events to the hospital’s REB.

Were the adverse events so reported?. And if they were then why did the UHN REB not seek to protect patient safety by insisting that licensed therapy be resumed for deferiprone-harmed patients?. In an effort to establish whether the deferiprone ‘clinical trial’ satisfied the TCPS harm-minimisation principle, I made inquiries about how the adverse findings described by the PLOS ONE paper were reported to the hospital’s REB and also how they were reported to the regulatory authorities, that is, Health Canada and the US FDA. But my queries, like those made previously by Olivieri and Gallie, have not succeeded in eliciting this ethically relevant information.17 Neither UHN nor its thalassaemia clinic responded to my letters of inquiry. It is known, however, from a publicly available 2011 document, that physicians in the UHN thalassaemia clinic strongly supported the market approval of deferiprone by the FDA.18 This support is difficult to reconcile with the toxicities recorded in UHN patient records.

So, a final verdict on the issue of whether the UHN deferiprone ‘clinical trial design’ violated the TCPS harm-minimisation principle cannot be reached until those involved in conducting and monitoring clinical trials at UHN make available the relevant information. An independent public inquiry may be necessary to achieve the necessary degree of accountability.Reference has been made, above, to the TCPS core ethical requirement of harm-minimisation, applicable in Canada both to researchers and to REBs. It is important to note, however, that TCPS2, like its predecessor, TCPS1 (and, indeed, like virtually every postwar code of research ethics) also stipulates as a second ‘core principle’ that ‘Researchers shall provide to prospective participants, or authorised third parties, full disclosure of all information necessary for making an informed decision’.19 Moreover, as the then-current TCPS guidelines make clear, ‘consent is an ongoing process’. So, assurance should be given to prospective participants that they ‘will be given in a timely manner throughout the course of the research project, information that is relevant to their decision to continue or withdraw from participation’.20 (My emphasis). Finally, TCPS2 imposes on researchers the additional ethical requirement that they disclose to research subjects ‘information concerning the possibility of commercialisation of research findings, and the presence of any real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest on the part of the researchers, their institutions or the research sponsors’.21 There is also an expectation that conflicts of interest will be disclosed to the REB.

Whether there was adequate disclosure of Apotex funding either to research subjects or to the UHN REB is still unknown.Thus, in order to assess the ethical adequacy of the putative UHN thalassaemia clinical trial one must inquire whether UHN patients/subjects were given adequate risk information when they were first enrolled, subsequently, when they were switched from treatment with deferasirox or deferoxamine to treatment with deferiprone and then, finally, when they experienced SAEs. That is, in order to know whether the putative deferiprone clinical trial conformed to established principles of research ethics, one would need to know whether patients/research subjects understood that they were being switched from licensed first-line drugs of proven efficacy to an unlicensed and unproven third-line drug. One would also need to know whether the deferiprone ‘research subjects’ were informed about conflicts of interest arising from Apotex donations (A) to the UHN. (B) To the hospital’s thalassaemia programme,22 as well as the hoped-for commercialisation of deferiprone via Health Canada and FDA licensing.If there was a failure to obtain ongoing informed consent and/or a failure to disclose conflicts of interest (to patients and to the REB) then this would constitute a violation of research ethics. Unfortunately, my attempts to elicit the clinical trial’s consent to research information from the UHN and its thalassaemia clinic met with as little success as earlier attempts made by the PLOS ONE authors.23REB review.

Safety monitoringAlthough every clinical trial requires safety monitoring, those trials which involve non-negligible risk of significant harm to patients/subjects require especially rigorous safety monitoring.24 Because the exposure of deferiprone to UHN patients posed risks of organ dysfunction and death, the need for safety monitoring was exigent. As the TCPS1 and TCPS2 both make clear, those who conduct research have an obligation to monitor and protect the safety of their research subjects.Moreover, it is now widely recognised that individuals closely involved with the design and conduct of a trial may not be able to be fully objective in reviewing interim data for any emerging concerns.25 Hence the importance of REBs, part of whose role is to provide safety monitoring initially and, for ongoing trials, over the entire period of the trial. In order to assess the adequacy of the safety monitoring for the UHN ‘deferiprone trial’ one would need to know whether the hospital’s REB was provided with regular and accurate reports of SAEs and what actions this REB took in response to those reports.It has become common practice in North America ‘that for any controlled trial of any size that will compare rates of mortality or major morbidity’, a data safety monitoring board (DSMB) will be established.26,11 12 A DSMB is constituted by a panel of independent (and otherwise unbiased) individuals with expertise pertinent to reviewing trial data on a regular ongoing basis. Its role is to advise the sponsors regarding the safety of trial subjects and to recommend early termination where indicated, for example, on grounds of patient safety.27Since there are no specifically Canadian requirements with respect to the establishment of DSMBs, Canadian REBs tend to follow FDA guidelines. Those guidelines recommend that a DSMB should be established when the study end point is such that a highly favourable or unfavourable result at an interim analysis might ethically require termination of the study.

Advance information suggesting the possibility of serious toxicity with the study treatment is another a priori reason for safety concern that would justify the establishment of a DSMB.12For reasons given above, the UHN deferiprone trial appears to have been a prime candidate for the establishment of a DSMB. But it is not known whether the study’s research protocol, purportedly submitted for approval to the hospital’s REB, included a DSMB. Nor is it known whether a DSMB was established and reported regularly to the trial’s sponsors. Data on the toxicity of deferiprone, provided by Olivieri et al from their retrospective study of UHN patient records, suggest that had a DSMB existed for this putative clinical trial the trial might, on grounds of patient safety, have been a candidate for premature cancellation. Lacunae in our knowledge of the safety monitoring provisions of the deferiprone ‘clinical trial’ make it difficult to reach any firm conclusion as to whether the ‘trial’ met prevailing safety monitoring requirements.The apparent unwillingness of the UHN to answer questions relating to safety monitoring might mean that an inquiry is needed to fill in our knowledge gaps and thereby make ethical evaluation possible.

For the findings of such an inquiry to be minimally credible it should be carried out by individuals who possess the requisite scientific/medical expertise and who are independent of the hospital and its thalassaemia clinic and who are demonstrably impartial. An inquiry carried out, for example, by someone whose research has been funded by Apotex and/or by an expert with close professional and personal ties to one or more of the physicians in the UHN thalassaemia clinic would not satisfy the hospital’s duty of accountability for patient safety.Ethical concernsA RecapitulationThe serious complications experienced by deferiprone-exposed UHN patients, as described by Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE article, raise a number of ethically important questions. How could an unlicensed drug of unproven efficacy and safety—a drug that has been questioned by regulatory agencies such that it is licensed only as a “last resort” therapy—have been administered to so many patients over a period of so many years when two licensed drugs, both proven adequately safe and effective and licensed as first-line therapies, were available?. How did UHN physicians gain access to deferiprone from Health Canada when there is little evidence in UHN patient records that the deferiprone-exposed patients satisfied Health Canada’s criteria for Special Access?. Why was a putative UHN REB-approved research study involving deferiprone not registered as a clinical trial?.

Did the trial design include a DSMB, to protect patient safety and, if not, why not?. Were SAEs reported to the UHN REB and to regulators, as required?. Were deferiprone-treated UHN patients with thalassaemia adequately informed of the unlicensed status, unproven efficacy and reported toxicities of deferiprone?. Were deferiprone-exposed patients informed of harms they themselves had sustained during deferiprone from this exposure?. 28 Did the evidence of systematic treatment failure, as outlined in the PLOS ONE paper, raise red flags for thalassaemia clinic physicians and for the REB of UHN?.

And if serious problems were flagged what actions were taken to protect patient safety?. Institutional conflict of interestThe literature on biomedical conflicts of interest tends to focus on the ways in which financial support of individual researchers by the pharmaceutical industry can adversely affect both research integrity and patient safety.13–16 But similar ethical problems arise at the macro level when institutions, such as hospitals and clinics, depend on drug company funding to support patient care and clinical research.13 15 Notable scandals associated with institutional conflicts of interest include the David Healy/Eli Lilly scandal at Toronto’s Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH),13 the Aubrey Blumsohn/Proctor and Gamble scandal at Sheffield University (UK)17 and the Carl Elliott/Janssen Pharmaceuticals scandal at the University of Minnesota.17 The underlying pattern in each of these scandals involves (A) a biomedical researcher who is concerned about patient safety coming into conflict with (B) a pharmaceutical company which funds both the researcher’s hospital and university and (C) a failure by the institutions involved vigorously to defend patient safety and research integrity when doing so might offend a wealthy sponsor.It should not be assumed that corporate influence on university medical centres is necessarily exerted by means of threats or other direct forms of intervention. The mere presence of corporate funding can be sufficient to produce a corporate-friendly result. This point is illustrated by a recent STAT article, a propos the financial support which Purdue Pharma provided to Massachusetts General Hospital. The very title of the article encapsulates the ethical problem of institutional conflict of interest.

€˜Purdue Pharma cemented ties with universities and hospitals to expand opioid sales, documents contend’.18 Nor should it be supposed that the problem of institutional conflict of interest arises exclusively in the context of biomedical research. A recent Guardian article on the Mobil Oil Corporation describes how ‘Oil giant Mobil sought to make tax-exempt donations to leading universities … to promote the company’s interests and undermine environmental regulation, according to internal documents from the early 1990s obtained by the Guardian’.19As mentioned above, deferiprone, whose safety and efficacy are the central concern of Olivieri et al’s PLOS ONE paper, is manufactured by Apotex. When we seek to understand why deferiprone was so frequently prescribed to UHN patients, from 2009 to 2016, despite its being unlicensed and despite evidence of poor patient outcomes,3 it may be relevant to note that Apotex provided substantial funding to the UHN thalassaemia clinic.29 Moreover, a publicly displayed UHN banner lists ‘Apotex Inc – Barry and Honey Sherman’ as having donated between $1 million and $5 million to the hospital itself.30As every biomedical researcher understands, correlation is not causation. Nevertheless, the correlation between industry funding of hospitals, on the one hand, and industry-friendly decisions made by researchers and administrators at those hospitals, on the other, is worth pondering. Physicians and researchers who speak or write critically of drugs manufactured by wealthy donor companies may find that their careers are jeopardised.

Nancy Olivieri’s dismissal from two Apotex-funded teaching hospitals illustrates this phenomenon as does the termination of psychiatrist David Healy from Toronto’s CAMH.13 Healy’s appointment as Head of the CAMH Mood Disorders Clinic was rescinded almost immediately after he gave a public lecture at the hospital—a lecture in which he called for further research into the potentially adverse effects of Eli Lilly’s antidepressant drug, Prozac. Healy was particularly concerned about SSRI-induced suicidal ideation. After his lecture the hospital decided that he was not ‘a good fit’ with their programme and terminated his appointment. Shortly thereafter the hospital opened its Eli Lilly wing.13UHN, like every other research and teaching hospital in Canada, receives most of its funding, directly or indirectly, from governments.20 ,31 Nevertheless, UHN, again like other hospitals, faces ongoing pressure to find additional sources of revenue to support both patient care and clinical research.32 The pharmaceutical industry is a prime source of much-needed ‘top-up’ financial support for Canadian hospital research and clinical care.21 Hospital administrators, researchers and clinicians are thereby placed, willy nilly, in a conflict-of-interest situation. Because of funding exigencies, hospitals and other healthcare institutions, like individual physicians and researchers, have a strong vested interest in pleasing corporate sponsors and encouraging their ongoing support.

Moreover, institutional administrators, not unlike individual researchers and clinicians, typically experience a need to express their gratitude to donors by returning kindness for kindness and benefit for benefit. Thus, both the need for ongoing corporate sponsorship and the need to reciprocate for past corporate generosity create for hospital administrators (as well as for researchers and clinicians who work within hospitals) a conflict-of-interest situation in which their decision making may be skewed, consciously or unconsciously, in favour of the benefactors’ products.13 15 16 21Here’s an example of the manner in which an institutional conflict-of-interest situation can potentially bias the judgement of hospital administrators. Hospitals are required to exercise their disinterested judgement in the appointment of medical and scientific staff and in the ethical monitoring of research. This moral obligation follows directly from their fundamental commitment to promote and defend patient safety and research integrity. To illustrate.

UHN’s website, under the heading Purpose, Values and Principles, declares that ‘[o]ur Primary Value and above all else. The needs of patients come first’.22 It would be difficult to find any hospital whose Mission Statement did not proclaim a similar commitment to the primacy of patient well-being. In a similar vein, the UHN website, under the heading Information for Patients, subheaded Our Mission, declares. €˜We believe that health equity is achieved when each person is. Enabled to choose the best care and treatment based on the most current knowledge available’.From this fundamental commitment, it follows that healthcare institutions are obliged rigorously to monitor the quality of care provided to their patients and research subjects.

As an important element of protecting patient safety, hospitals are required to appoint the most qualified and competent candidates to clinical and research positions. But, as noted above, conflicts of interest are a risk factor for bias, conscious or unconscious, in personnel decisions.22 So, when a research hospital depends on corporate donations there is a risk that physicians and researchers may be appointed to key positions because they are known to be sympathetic to the donors’ product(s) rather than because they are the best qualified and the most competent. Contrariwise, physicians and researchers believed to be unsympathetic to the donors’ products are at risk of losing their jobs or of not being hired in the first place. The cases of Olivieri, Healy and Blumsohn illustrate this point.13 17As explained above, we know from the extensive literature on conflict of interest that when research and clinical care are funded by industry there is a marked tendency for both to favour the sponsors’/donors’ products.13 15 16 18 Significantly, the UHN itself explicitly recognises the danger to patient safety posed by systemic biases. Its Mission Statement commits the hospital to ensuring that every patient is ‘[m]ade aware of existing systemic biases to support the best possible health decisions’.22 Unfortunately, it is not possible at present to ascertain whether UHN conformed to this ethical commitment in the case of its deferiprone research/treatment clinic.

In order to make such an ethical determination we would need to know the mechanism by which the UHN thalassaemia clinic gained access to deferiprone and whether the clinic provided information about systemic bias to patients with thalassaemia and to the hospital’s REB.ConclusionsHospitals worldwide proclaim that their primary commitment is to meet the needs of their patients. Institutional codes of ethics and mission statements insist that patient needs come first. Indeed, meeting ‘patient needs’ is agreed to be the fundamental value to which all other hospital goals should be subordinated. Toronto’s UHN declares unequivocally that it shares this value. €˜[t]he needs of patients come first’.22Although patients have many and various needs, the need for safety must be counted as the sine qua non.

If the need for safety is not met then other needs become irrelevant.The findings of Olivieri et al in their PLOS ONE paper raise many troubling questions about the safety of patients in UHN’s thalassaemia clinic. One would expect that when top UHN officials became aware of the PLOS ONE data they would immediately have recognised the ethical red flags. Hospitals are ethically obliged both to investigate thoroughly possible safety failures and to rectify any problems identified.Over a period of several years, both before and after the publication of their research findings, Drs Olivieri and Gallie communicated regularly with UHN officials (https://inthepatientsinterest.org/). Multiple safety concerns were brought to the hospital’s attention. Numerous questions were asked by the PLOS ONE authors and specific concerns were raised.

To date, the hospital has not definitively addressed these issues. I posed a series of ethically salient questions to these same hospital officials (see online supplementary appendix A). My queries were ignored. There was no response from UHN.Supplemental materialIf a healthcare institution such as UHN claims that patient safety is its top priority then when safety issues are raised, it necessarily incurs an obligation of accountability. It would, for example, scarcely be adequate for a hospital, such as UHN, unilaterally to investigate alleged failures, declare that there has been no violation of patient care standards, and then to stonewall all further inquiries, whether those inquiries originate from its own medical staff, as was the case with Olivieri and Gallie, or from outside scholars, as was the case with me.When an unlicensed drug is prescribed to hospital patients, over a period of years, as happened in the UHN thalassaemia programme, it is surely the hospital’s obligation to answer questions about how and why this extraordinary practice occurred.

When hospital records reveal that patients switched from licensed to unlicensed medication, have experienced serious harms, up to and including death, it is surely the hospital’s obligation to answer in a conscientious and complete manner all the ethically troubling questions that have been identified. This obligation of accountability is owed both to patients and to staff. Thus far, UHN has not been willing to accept the implications of its own mission statement (https://www.uhn.ca/corporate/AboutUHN/Quality_Patient_Safety).The PLOS ONE Study by Olivieri Sabouhanian and Gallie spurs us to inquire whether the benefits which accrue to society from corporate sponsorship of healthcare institutions may, on balance, be outweighed by the associated harms. Admittedly, for governments committed to constraining public expenditures, the transfer of substantial healthcare costs to private corporations represents a benefit for public finances. But, as we have seen, when one considers this financial benefit, one ought also to take into account the spectrum of negative consequences potentially generated by institutional conflicts of interest.

The price for our continued acceptance of corporate funding of scientific research and clinical care may be the erosion of public trust. Arguably, it would be preferable if our research hospital were to aim instead for the complete elimination of systemic biases.Data availability statementAll data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary informationEthics statementsPatient consent for publicationNot required.AcknowledgmentsThe author thanks the editors of JME and two JME reviewers for their criticisms of and suggestions for change to an earlier version of this paper..

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China – buy kamagra uk next day 35,615. Nigeria – 21,439. Pakistan – 14,161.

Indonesia –12,336 buy kamagra uk next day. Ethiopia – 12,006 – US (10,312), Egypt – 9,455. Bangladesh – 9,236.

And the buy kamagra uk next day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – 8,640. In total, UNICEF estimates an 84-year average life expectancy for the 140 million children it projects will be born throughout 2021. More to celebrate The year will also mark the 75th anniversary of UNICEF.

Over the course of 2021, UNICEF and its partners will be commemorating the milestone anniversary buy kamagra uk next day with events and announcements celebrating three-quarters of a century of protecting children from conflict, disease and exclusion, and championing their right to survival, health and education.  “Children born today will inherit the world we begin to build for them today”, reminded the UNICEF chief. “Let us make 2021 the year we start to build a fairer, safer, healthier world for children”, she added. erectile dysfunction treatment challenges Meanwhile, as the number of erectile dysfunction treatment cases continue to soar, so do the needs of children and their families, the UN agency said.

From delivering life-saving health supplies, to building water and hygiene facilities, to keeping girls and boys connected to education and protection, UNICEF is working to slow the spread of the kamagra and minimize its impact on children worldwide. Regulatory experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) from around the world and UN agency’s own teams reviewed the data on buy kamagra uk next day the Pfizer/BioNTech treatment and found on Thursday that it met WHO’s must-have criteria for safety and efficacy – with its benefits offsetting any potential risks. €œThis is a very positive step towards ensuring global access to erectile dysfunction treatments,” said Dr. Mariângela Simão, WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Medicines and Health Products.  “But I want to emphasize the need for an even greater global effort to achieve enough treatment supply to meet the needs of priority populations everywhere”.

€˜Working night and day’ The move opens the door for countries to expedite their own regulatory approval processes to import and administer buy kamagra uk next day the treatment. It also enables UNICEF and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) to procure the treatment for distribution to countries in need. At the same time, WHO is encouraging more developers to come forward for review and assessment to satisfy the critical supply for all countries globally to stem the kamagra.

€œWHO and our partners are working night and day to evaluate other treatments that have reached safety and efficacy standards”, said Dr. Simão. Setting policy The treatment is also under policy review.  Drawing from WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) population prioritization recommendations for erectile dysfunction treatments, which were issued in September, the group will convene on 5 January to formulate treatment specific policies and recommendations.

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Over the last few years, there have been many articles buy kamagra uk next day detailing how bad sitting can be http://www.circ-ien-ingersheim.ac-strasbourg.fr/wpi/?p=665 for the body. You may have even seen the phrase, “Sitting is the new smoking.” But how bad is sitting down, really?. As a physical therapist, I see many people who come into my buy kamagra uk next day office and sheepishly admit that they sit all day long for their jobs.

As our reliance on technology for our jobs increases, this becomes more and more of the norm for society. Personally, I think sitting has buy kamagra uk next day gotten a bad rap, and what we really need to do is look at our lack of physical activity overall. When we sit every day for our job, it can have a negative impact on the body, but an overall lack of physical activity is much more concerning than sitting itself.

When we sit, our bodies adapt to that position. There are buy kamagra uk next day several things that occur, such as a tightening of the hamstrings and a forward head and rounded shoulder posture. We don’t use our core muscles when we sit, because our body is supported, so there can be a weakening of those muscles as well.

Our body gets used to not having to use buy kamagra uk next day these muscle groups. Then, when you do try to get out and be active, or work in the yard, you might be more susceptible to injury or pain because your body isn’t used to that kind of stress. In short, you buy kamagra uk next day don’t need to quit your day job to pursue a career that involves standing all day.

What you really need to do is increase your activity level outside of work and incorporate some regular exercises that combat the negative effects of sitting. These exercises can include core strengthening, stretching of the hips and chest and exercises to reverse your forward posture. If you are experiencing pain related to buy kamagra uk next day sitting for long periods of time, a physical therapist can help you identify a more targeted exercise program.

Physical Therapist Kyle Stevenson, D.P.T., sees patients at MidMichigan’s Rehabilitation Services location in Greater Midland North-End Fitness Center. He has a special interest in sports buy kamagra uk next day medicine, and enjoys working with athletes of all ages. He has completed specialized coursework and training for the throwing athletes.

New patients buy kamagra uk next day are welcome with a physician referral by calling (989) 832-5913. Those who would like more information about MidMichigan’s Rehabilitation Services may visit www.midmichigan.org/rehabilitation.W-sitting is a normal developmental position that babies usually discover when they sit back straight from their hands and knees. Their legs will then form a “W.” Often, babies also transition back to a single hip, toward a side sitting position.

When a baby varies his or her sitting position, buy kamagra uk next day W-sitting is rarely a problem. However, when a baby sits back straight to a W-sit consistently, they don’t get the opportunity to elongate and activate lateral trunk muscles to develop their core muscles. W-sitting is a very buy kamagra uk next day stable position that children find useful, however, it allows them to play without developing muscle that provide the ability for kids to reach out to their sides or rotate across their midline, leading to underdevelopment of lower trunk muscles, which stabilize the pelvis.

When a child uses this position as their preference without the normal variety in movements, it can affect development. They may demonstrate an in-toeing gait, core buy kamagra uk next day weakness or balance difficulties. The hips are positioned in extreme internal rotation, placing stress on the hips and the knee joints.

This can lead to hip and knee orthopedic issues as the child develops. So, what can you do to prevent any development issues?. Encourage your child to alternate sitting positions, such as side sitting (alternating sides), ring sitting, or, with older children, sitting in a chair or on a ball.

This might be challenging initially, but once your child gets used to it, they may just need reminders. If it’s difficult for your child to sit in alternate positions or they begin to show other developmental concerns, a referral to a physical therapist may be helpful to facilitate trunk muscle development. Eileen McMahon, M.S.P.T., is a physical therapist at MidMichigan Health..