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Health Journal Comes Clean 

After embarrassing disclosures of financial links between authors of a lung-cancer study and two big corporations -- General Electric Co. and Vector Group Ltd. -- the New England Journal of Medicine published a correction, a clarification and an editorial calling for transparent disclosure of funding sources.

The lung-cancer study, which the journal published in 2006, has been controversial. It suggested that an annual screening with a CT scan could reduce the death rate from lung cancer, the top cancer killer. Critics said the study showed only that screening could detect cancers earlier -- not necessarily that it could avert deaths.

In today's correction, the New England Journal acknowledges that the study's lead authors, Claudia Henschke and David Yankelevitz of Cornell University's Weill Medical College in New York City, received royalties from GE, a big maker of CT scanners, for pending patents on ways to manipulate and interpret CT scans and other medical images. . . .

In its editorial, the New England Journal called for more-transparent disclosure of funding sources. Readers "cannot fully appreciate a study's meaning without acknowledging the subtle biases in design and interpretation that may arise when a sponsor stands to gain from the report," the journal's editors wrote. "We and our readers were surprised to learn that the source of the funding of the charitable foundation was, in fact, a large corporation that could have an interest in the study results."

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