[Medicine: conflicts of interest in research]

A conflict of interest is a set of conditions in which professional judgment concerning a primary interest (patient's welfare, research integrity, ethics, education) tends to be influenced by a secondary interest. Among secondary interests are intellectual conflicts of interest that include the desire for faculty advancement, competition for sponsored research funding, to win prestigious research prizes, as well as financial conflicts of interest that arise when medical investigators own equity in a company that sponsors the study they conduct or when they serve as consultants to companies or are members of the company's advisory boards. Ethical conflicts of interest predominate in undeveloped countries. Known consequences of conflicts of interests include compromising health, death, minimization of adverse reactions, lower research quality, the probability to favor the sponsor's product, and delayed publication when results obtained are not the expected. Medical consciousness should be corrected to avoid moral duality that could harm both patients and medical ethics.