Fossil fuel industry influences medical research, raising ethical concerns

An investigation published by The BMJ today reveals the extent of fossil fuel industry involvement in medical research, leading to fresh calls for academics and publishing companies to cut ties with companies.

An analysis by journalists Hristio Boytchev, Natalie Widmann and Simon Wörpel found that over the past six years, more than 180 medical articles have acknowledged fossil fuel industry funding, and an additional 1000 articles feature authors who worked for a fossil fuel company or related organization.

While many studies don't have an obvious link with fossil fuel industry interests, experts told The BMJ that publishing research benefits the companies by enhancing their reputation and buying influence with researchers and health practitioners.

The BMJ analysis found that Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, was involved in around 600 articles, mostly through Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare (JHAH), a joint project between the oil giant and Johns Hopkins Medicine. Many of these papers concerned infectious diseases such as covid-19 and Mpox.

ExxonMobil was linked to the second largest group of articles. The ExxonMobil Foundation has funded the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network, which supports malaria research. Until recently, the company spent almost three decades drilling for oil in Equatorial Guinea, a country with a high risk of malaria. 

Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and ExxonMobil did not respond to The BMJ's requests to comment. Saudi Aramco declined to comment.

More than 1,000 articles were co-authored by employees of the companies. Often this was due to the involvement of hospitals or research institutes that are directly related to the companies, such as Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's (KPC) Ahmadi Hospital. 

The BMJ also found around 75 articles written by co-authors affiliated with fossil fuel companies without academic partners. These included Shell, ExxonMobil and the KPC (involved through Ahmadi Hospital). "Shell has a strong record of supporting important academic research and our involvement is always made clear," a company spokesperson said. 

Today's findings come as some experts demand that the fossil fuel industry be treated similarly to tobacco companies. "Fossil fuel companies and the tobacco industry are similar in both the vast scale of harm they cause to health and their tactics of deliberately distorting science", said Anna Gilmore, director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath.

Research journals and academic institutions must rethink their collaborations with the fossil fuel industry."

Anna Gilmore, Director, University of Bath

Of the world's five leading medical journals, only The BMJ has a policy banning fossil fuel-tied research. In 2020, The BMJ committed to ban advertising and research funded by companies that produce fossil fuels and this is now being extended to cover more BMJ journals. "We are extending this policy to BMJ Open and BMJ Medicine, and will begin a process of rolling out this policy to other BMJ Group journals," says editor in chief Kamran Abbasi. 

The BMJ has also strengthened its advertising policy by banning advertising from banks that fund fossil fuel companies. "Medical journals have an important role in not only advocating for climate action but also taking action," adds Abbasi.

A spokesperson for the Lancet Group, publisher of the Lancet, said editors would "strongly scrutinize any fossil fuel industry funded research" and the "Lancet journals are very unlikely to publish such research unless it provided a clear benefit to public and human health." 

A spokesperson for Nature Reviews Disease Primers said competing interests are made available to referees and "there is a high degree of editorial oversight for reviews published in the journal." The New England Journal of Medicine, and The Journal of the American Medical Association did not comment.

There have also been calls for medical organizations to divest from the fossil fuel industry. John Middleton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said that in addition to divesting, organizations should consider restricting researching and publishing together with the industry.