Medical research without Big Oil: Why a specialist journal is calling for fossil sponsors to be abandoned

Experts see a risk of distorted results: research funding and authors sometimes come from oil companies. Their influence on health is problematic.

The conflict of interest is clear: air pollution and global warming caused by fossil fuels have been proven to have a negative impact on human health. Oil companies and other fossil energy companies are also involved in financing and implementing medical research; and sometimes significantly.

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In the specialist magazine British Medical Journal (BMJ) Therefore, we are now calling for these sponsors to be abandoned.

Oil industry and tobacco companies: two industries, one accusation

Oil companies should be treated like the tobacco industry, says Anna Gilmore, director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath in southwest Britain.

“Both industries harm human health to a comparable extent and pursue the tactic of distorting scientific work,” she said, justifying the demand.

Oil companies contribute co-authors to over 1,000 studies

The BMJ published a study showing that over the last six years, more than 180 published studies in the medical field were financed with money from fossil energy companies. Authors employed by this company were involved in more than 1,000 other research papers.

Around 600 contributions were created in cooperation between the state-owned Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco and Johns Hopkins Medicine, which is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The US oil multinational ExxonMobil appears second most frequently as a sponsor.

Among the world’s leading specialist magazines in the medical field, only the BMJ excludes studies that have been financed or supported by fossil energy companies, the editorial team emphasizes in a statement.

Medical research and climate protection: That’s what the editor-in-chief says

The journal has been following this policy since 2020 and will now extend it to its offshoots. “Medical journals play an important role in climate protection, not only by advocating for measures, but also by taking measures themselves,” said editor-in-chief Kamran Abbasi, justifying the journal’s line.

The science magazine The lancet A few weeks ago published a report on how climate change is increasingly endangering human health. Accordingly, “people around the world are facing record-breaking threats to their well-being, health and survival due to the rapidly changing climate.”

Heat waves particularly endanger people who work outdoors, as well as older people and small children. In addition, there is the spread of potentially fatal infectious diseases such as dengue fever, malaria, West Nile fever and vibrio infections. Due to the rise in temperatures, even in previous latitudes, more and more people in previously unaffected areas were exposed to the risk of transmission.

The loss of agricultural land could also increase food shortages and malnutrition.