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On Sunday, Memorial Sloan CEO Kettering Cancer Center sent an email to all staff members telling them that the institution and its faculty "needed to better communicate their relationships with the drug and health care industries.
"The disclosure issue is serious," wrote the executive, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, as well as Kathryn Martin, chief operating officer.
The email, titled "Important Message," was referring directly to an article published this weekend by the New York Times and ProPublica on the failure of Dr. José Baselga, medical director of the cancer center, dozens of articles since 2013.
The Times and ProPublica found that Dr. Baselga had received millions of dollars in consulting fees and stake in health care companies, but had often failed to disclose these links at scientific conferences and research papers. journals. His reporting failures included articles in prestigious publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, as well as in Cancer Discovery, a journal of which he is one of two editors.
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Several institutions, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said they were reviewing its revelations. The American Association for Cancer Research said it had also begun a review of Dr. Baselga's reporting practices. Dr. Baselga seems to have violated disclosure rules while he was chairman of this organization in 2015 and 2016. A.A.C.R. also publishes the discovery of cancer.
In the email, Dr. Thompson and Ms. Martin described the guidelines for reporting relationships with the industry as "nebulous," adding that "we need to work with journal editors and professional associations to standardize the reporting process. ". problem with ASCO, the cancer control group, which advocated for more standardized disclosure.
Ten years ago, a series of scandals related to hidden payments by pharmaceutical companies to leading physicians prompted medical journals and professional associations to tighten their reporting requirements. But as the case of Dr. Baselga and others demonstrate, much remains to be done in the honor system. Medical journals said they did not systematically check the authors' disclosures.
In comments to the Times and ProPublica, the New England Journal of Medicine acknowledged that the problem of failed disclosures was "widespread" and stated that it was putting in place a better system for tracking author disclosures. Two of the articles that Dr. Baselga said he wanted to correct have been published in this review.
Since March, Dr. Baselga has served on the Board of Directors of Bristol-Myers Squibb, a leading manufacturer of anti-cancer drugs.
According to data from Open Payments, a federal database that tracks payments to healthcare companies' doctors, Dr. Baselga has received nearly $ 3.5 million in payments from August 2013 to 2017 from pharmaceutical companies , medical equipment and diagnostics. Most of this amount, approximately $ 3 million, related to a payment from Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, for Dr. Baselga's participation in a company she had acquired, Seragon Pharmaceuticals, in 2014.
But this amount does not include many companies with which Dr. Baselga has links that do not report physician payments to the federal database because they are biotech start-ups without any product approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Baselga refused to provide a count of the money he received from these companies.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center employs approximately 17,000 people and conducts hundreds of clinical trials.
In the staff e-mail, Dr. Thompson and Ms. Martin concluded by affirming the value of working with the health care sector.
"Collaboration with industry leaders, from start-ups to large companies, is needed to develop better treatments for patients," they said.
Christine Hickey, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan Kettering, said the cancer center had no other comments.
Charles Ornstein is editor at ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.
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