ABSTRACT
In the last twenty years, biotechnology and pharmaceutical corporations have invested large sums of biomedical research dollars with universities. There is ample evidence that university-industry research relationships tend to create an environment that fosters ethical conflicts. For example, when life science companies support PhD students, the great majority of them require the students to project the results. The influx of money from industry and the recent decrease of federal research dollars, has presented ethical challenges both to the traditional roles of scientists and to the attitudes of universities receiving these funds. When universities and industry work together in a democratic society, their competing interests are justly facilitated by government. There can be significant uncertainty in both industry and academia about appropriate conditions under which industry funds are offered, accepted, and utilized by universities for biomedical research.
