Sir

It is appropriate to ask why universities permit alliances with industry, given that conflicts of interest can result. But your Editorial 'California dreaming' (Nature 448, 388; 2007) and your News story 'California campuses resist industry restrictions' (Nature 448, 394; doi:10.1038/448394b 2007), questioning the commitment of the University of California's campuses to regulate conflicts of interest, overlook the efforts that the campuses are making to address the issue, as well as the benefits that some collaboration can bring to public health.

Under guidelines currently implemented at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA; see http://dgsom.healthsciences.ucla.edu/administration/guidelinesMain), all marketing materials, including free lunches and other gifts from the pharmaceutical industry, are banned. Industry representatives are allowed to visit only by appointment and even then, only outside patient-care areas.

Faculty at other campuses have proposed greater restrictions, including clamping down on the granting of money from industry to some faculty members. Although such restrictions would remove one source of bias, they would also eliminate the benefits to public health of some alliances with industry. Breakthrough treatments are increasingly the product of academic collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry. Industry usually takes the lead in developing new medications or devices, but when academic researchers have the opportunity to examine cutting-edge treatments, they can learn more about root causes of illness and lay the foundations for even more effective treatments.

We don't expect any one set of policies to immunize academic researchers from bias or conflicts of interest. What is needed is the kind of tripartite policy that we have already developed at UCLA: the elimination of practices (such as free lunches) that add little to the academic mission but may introduce conflicts of interest; the regulation of practices (such as research grants) that add to the academic mission but may be sources of conflicts of interest; and the education of faculty, staff and trainees on sources of bias and conflicts of interest in academic medicine, to enable them to maintain the highest ethical standards.