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Hundreds of doctors packed an auditorium at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on Oct. 1, deeply angered by revelations that the hospital’s top medical officer and other leaders had cultivated lucrative relationships with for-profit companies. One by one, they stood up to challenge the stewardship of their beloved institution, often to emotional applause. Some speakers accused their leaders of letting the quest to make more money undermine the hospital’s mission. Others bemoaned a rigid, hierarchical management that had left them feeling they had no real voice in the hospital’s direction. (Thomas and Ornstein, 12/31)

Cancer centers are re-evaluating their relationships with health care companies, including when, if ever, doctors and researchers should serve on corporate boards. Here are some hospital executives and cancer researchers who sit on the boards of publicly traded companies, in dual roles that may raise questions about conflicts of interest. (Thomas and Ornstein, 12/31)

A number of recent news articles have brought renewed attention to financial conflicts of interest in medical science. Physicians and medical administrators had financial links to companies that went undeclared to medical journals even when they were writing on topics in which they clearly had monetary interests. Most agree such lapses damage the medical and scientific community. But our focus on financial conflicts of interest should not lead us to ignore other conflicts that may be equally or even more important. Such biases need not be explicit, like fraud. (Carroll, 12/31)