ICO ruling: QMUL should release copies of COI statements made to the Trial Management Group

This 2006 document has an intro from Aylward saying it was a year since the centre became 'fully operational', so 2004 for a less than fully operational launch sounds about right: https://issuu.com/maxhead/docs/unum_cardiff_newsletter_issue_2

 

This paper is also a good resource http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Transparency_in_Government.htm

 

In the document Magical Medicine there is quite a good summary of the COIs from page 257 on http://www.investinme.org/Documents/Library/magical-medicine.pdf

 

The view that these people take of what might constitute a conflict of interest is a subject worthy of study.

Apparently membership of, for instance, the MEA is sufficient to perpetuate a lifetimes illness.

Yet a psychiatrist is wholly unaffected by the interests of the organisations that remunerate him.

 

It is just about possible to envisage a scenario in which MAs lack of disclosure originated in benign circumstances and only later turned shambolic.

Presumably there must be some contractual documentation backing up DWP involvement, setting out, inter alia, when and what stage payments were due, and some process of certification.

It might have appeared to lawyers, who might not have recognised how it would look from the point of view of the science, to have an observer on the inside, but having no active role. Provided he stuck to su ch a role the COI would be limited and understood.

The problem would then arise when employment by the DWP ceased and the very obvious COI with Unum commenced. What then was the role of MA, apart from demolishing any claim that the trial might have had to independence.