Chapter 2 : conflict of interest and bioethics

Abstract

“Conflicts of interests” is a multi-meaning expression. to give a juridicalconcept 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 casein health area, a conflict of interests is present many times, i.e. at the beginningof a research, when informing its results, etc. this conflict of interests may affectdifferent aspects of the research work, economic or not; sometimes totally orpartially.the economic resources is one of the most common reasons of the conflict ofinterests. the mass media often cause conflicts of interests informing the general publicabout new scientific discovery in a simple way to be understood but without beenquite assertive. other times, great enterprises hide information about new and better medicinesdue to the fact that they have many old medicines that should be sold beforeintroducing in the market the new ones. From the academic point of view, conflicts may arise when the public funds arewrongly used to support unworthy researches.