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To the Editor: In attempting to articulate their condemnation of physicians advising investment firms, Drs Topol and Blumenthal¹ invoked an ethical rebuke all readers would recognize—conflict of interest. Consulting to the investment industry by physicians may be worrisome and deplorable, but it is not a conflict of interest.

A conflict of interest occurs when a financial or other secondary interest biases or has the potential to bias a physician’s primary professional aims.² When there is the lure of money but it cannot distort a physician’s judgment related to the duties of patient care, research, or the teaching of medicine, there may be worries about appearances, but there cannot be a conflict of interest.³

Providing advice to investment companies, even for large amounts of monetary compensation, does not distort or undermine physicians’ judgments regarding patient care, research, or teaching, except in rare circumstances when the individual providing advice is the principal . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Lindsay A. Hampson, BA
lhampson@cc.nih.gov

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD
Department of Clinical Bioethics
The Clinical Center
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Md

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