Attitudes and practices of public health academics towards research funding from for-profit organizations: cross-sectional survey.

OBJECTIVES: The growing trend of for-profit organization (FPO)-funded university research is concerning because resultant potential conflicts of interest might lead to biases in methods, results, and interpretation. For public health academic programmes, receiving funds from FPOs whose products have negative health implications may be particularly problematic. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey assessed attitudes and practices of public health academics towards accepting funding from FPOs. The sampling frame included universities in five world regions offering a graduate degree in public health; 166 academics responded. Descriptive, bivariate, and logistic regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Over half of respondents were in favour of accepting funding from FPOs; attitudes differed by world region and gender but not by rank, contract status, % salary offset required, primary identity, or exposure to an ethics course. In the last 5 years, almost 20% of respondents had received funding from a FPO. Sixty per cent of respondents agreed that there was potential for bias in seven aspects of the research process, when funds were from FPOs. CONCLUSIONS: Globally, public health academics should increase dialogue around the potential harms of research and practice funded by FPOs.

Was it epilepsy?: misdiagnosing Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).

Lyndall Gordon's recent biography, Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds (2010), tells with high verve the story of generational infighting over poet Emily Dickinson's posthumous presentation to the world. Equally dramatic is Gordon's hypothesis that Dickinson suffered from epilepsy, which led Gordon to seemingly solve the ineffable mystery of Dickinson's reclusion, a conundrum in her own time and still so in ours. Gordon's startling diagnosis has been commended by book reviewers and on talk shows. Her hypothesis is based on two lines of inquiry. First, she avers that a compound called glycerine, which Dickinson took regularly in the early 1850s, was an anti-epileptic, basing this notion on its presence in a mixture containing the soporific chloral hydrate, a prescription first advised for epilepsy some two decades later. Second, Gordon proposes a genetic strain of epilepsy in the Dickinson family. In the process, Gordon recruits Dickinson's various illnesses to her hypothesis. This article refutes Gordon's claims on scientific, clinical, and biographical grounds. It reviews Dickinson's medical history to establish a differential diagnosis, in which epilepsy is considered and rejected.

Louisa May Alcott: her mysterious illness.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), famous in her own time and immortalized in ours as a major figure of the "American Renaissance," died at the age of 55 after intermittent suffering over 20 years. Her illnesses evoked intense interest in her time and in ours. Alcott tracked her signs and symptoms (in letters and journal entries), which included headaches and vertigo, rheumatism, musculo-skeletal pain, and skin rashes; in her final years she recorded severe dyspepsia with symptoms of obstruction, and headaches compatible with severe hypertension. Her death came suddenly with a stroke. Standard biographies propose that her illnesses were due to acute mercury poisoning from inorganic mercury medication she received for a bout of typhoid in 1863, a cause she herself believed. We have reviewed Alcott's observations, as well as those of others, and have determined that acute mercury poisoning could not have caused her long-term complaints. We propose instead that Alcott suffered a multi-system disease, possibly originating from effects of mercury on the immune system. A portrait of Alcott raises the possibility that she had systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Tobacco industry documents from outside sources: new perspectives on industry strategies on local levels.

The internal tobacco industry documents have also been used to study tobacco industry operations outside the United States. The scope of the documents on a country outside the US is decided mainly by the extent to which documents and reports were transmitted from the abroad offices of the US tobacco companies to headquarters. We explored whether the material from a private archive of a Finnish public relation consultant to Philip Morris will augment or revise the earlier reports on tobacco industry manipulation in Finland. The private records add more details to previously published reports. The new information mainly concerned implementation of the tobacco industry strategies. A general conclusion is that tobacco industry documents may not give a detailed picture of tobacco industry activities in distant markets, which would be of interest locally, even if they provide sufficient information to convey a general view of tobacco industry strategies.