Article published in Spanish

Article: Conflict of interest and bioethics

Aída KEMELMAJER DE CARLUCCI

Juge à la Cour suprême de l’État de Cuyo (Argentine) et Professeur Honoris causa à l’Université de Paris Est Créteil

Abstract

“Conflicts of interests” is a multi-meaning expression. To give a juridical concept is not easy because this concept is applied in public and private law. Maybe this is the reason of not having a law giving a valid definition in any case
In health area, a conflict of interests is present many times, i.e. at the beginning of a research, when informing its results, etc. This conflict of interests may affect different aspects of the research work, economic or not; sometimes totally or partially.
The economic resources is one of the most common reasons of the conflict of interests.
The mass media often cause conflicts of interests informing the general public about new scientific discovery in a simple way to be understood but without been quite assertive.
Other times, great enterprises hide information about new and better medicines due to the fact that they have many old medicines that should be sold before introducing in the market the new ones.
From the academic point of view, conflicts may arise when the public funds are wrongly used to support unworthy researches.