Virginia Commonwealth University made a mistake when it agreed to secrecy provisions in its research contracts with Philip Morris USA, Frank Macrina, VCU's vice president of research, acknowledged earlier today at a public hearing.

Contrary to widespread impressions, however, the work-for-hire research contracts do not give the tobacco company the right to suppress data it doesn’t like, said Macrina, who also serves as chairman of the task force appointed by VCU President Eugene Trani to study appropriate guidelines for corporate research contracts. He made the comments at the first of two public fora where VCU faculty, staff and students were invited to provide input into the proceedings.

The research agreements, which provoked a firestorm of controversy when the New York Times published a front page story putting VCU in an unfavorable light, also provide Philip Morris and other corporate sponsors of contract research an extended period of review before publication and permit the sponsors to retain ownership of intellectual property, Macrina said in response to a comment from the audience. The task force is researching practices at other universities to see if those contract provisions are comparable and appropriate.

But Macrina did not dispute that the secrecy agreements, which prohibited VCU officials from commenting upon the research and, indeed, required them to notify Philip Morris of media inquiries, went too far. “That was a mistake,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

The task force was charged with studying the studying the strengths and weaknesses of VCU’s policies and procedures related to sponsored research and submitting a report by Oct. 1. The scope of the study is not limited to the Philip Morris contracts that, Macrina acknowledged, served as a “catalytic event” for the task force inquiry.

However, most members of the VCU community who commented publicly had Philip Morris on their mind. Most of those who commented publicly were less concerned about the nuances of contract guidelines than they were of the ethics of doing business with the cigarette manufacturer in the first place.

Richard G. Moran, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology with the Massey Cancer Center, expressed the sentiments of many in an audience that exceeded 100 people when he said that the academic freedom to publish research results was an important question, but a bigger one was VCU’s relationship with Philip Morris. “The question of the relationship between VCU and Philip Morris will not go away,” he said.

Moran told a story of how he was visiting a cancer center in Buffalo, N.Y., recently when he encountered someone he “didn’t know from Adam" who wanted to know "how it was that a [National Institute of Health]-designated cancer center could condone a relationship with Philip Morris … given the product the company sells and its past history of suppressing research data.”

A number of themes emerged in audience questions and responses from the 18 members of the task force attending the hearing at the Kontos Medical Sciences Building at the Medical College of Virginia this afternoon: task force transparency, the task forces' credibility, and VCU’s relationship with Philip Morris.

Kia J. Bentley, a task force member and co-facilitator of the forum, elaborated upon VCU’s measures to make the task force study transparent and credible. The task force, she said, maintains a web page that lists meeting notes and an array of other documents. The group also has scheduled two public meetings to solicit input from members of the VCU community, and it has engaged an outside professional facilitator to run the meetings. In a nod to the fact that critics previously had expressed fears of retaliation should they speak out, speakers at today’s forum were not required to identify themselves, and they were allowed to submit written comments anonymously.

However, some speakers urged the task force to adopt even more measures to ensure the credibility of the process. Carol Hampton, associate dean of the School of Medicine, suggested that all written comments should be published on the task force’s website. “Anything that could be done to make this transparent would help the process.”

Other speakers contended that the study group was flawed from the inception. One professor with the Massey Cancer Center maintained that the university needed “a more robust dialog” than was possible with the corporate research task force. Any conclusion by the task force that the contracts with Philip Morris were OK would have “limited credibility” unless seconded by outside authorities, she said.

Distrust of Philip Morris ran deep among the comments. One oncology professor said there was a “huge conflict of interest” in having the Massey Cancer Center funded in any way by a company whose products had caused so much cancer and killed so many people. “What were we thinking in dealing with this company?” she asked.

Another speaker, who did not identify herself but said she spoke for a group of "a few dozen" but "less than 40" other VCU faculty, staff and students, questioned the outcome of a study headed by Macrina, whose name was prominently mentioned in the June New York Times article. Any conclusions of the task force, she said, "are likely to be ignored or discredited" by outsiders," she said in urging the task force to avoid "a future train wreck" for VCU's reputation.

But not all speakers objected to the Philip Morris relationship. One professor of pharmacology and toxicology said, “If you’d put Pfizer in that New York Times article [instead of Philip Morris], no one would have batted an eye.” Pharmaceutical companies also want to protect the “privacy” of research results. “Don’t promulgate rules,” he urged, “that prohibit us from conducting reasonable corporate research. Don’t let things go too far  in the other direction.