On the risks of mixing medical research with too much pomegranate juice

UCLA researchers’ ties to donors called into ques­tion (UCLA Dai­ly Bruin):

“The mul­ti­fac­eted rela­tion­ships between UCLA Health offi­cials and the pri­vate donors fund­ing their research have drawn scruti­ny recent­ly from experts and mem­bers of the uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty wor­ried about inher­ent or osten­si­ble con­flicts of inter­est. At the fore­front is bil­lion­aire cou­ple Stew­art and Lyn­da Resnick, two of the university’s most promi­nent donors and own­ers of pome­gran­ate juice com­pa­ny Pom Wonderful…The cou­ple fund­ed a series of clin­i­cal stud­ies over the past decade at UCLA to study their company’s prod­ucts and ser­vices. The stud­ies involved numer­ous depart­ments with­in the UCLA Health Sys­tem, from the Cen­ter for Human Nutri­tion to grants for doc­tors in phar­ma­col­o­gy and psychiatry…

A Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion com­plaint in 2010 found that Pom used false adver­tis­ing to claim their pome­gran­ate prod­ucts had cer­tain health ben­e­fits – call­ing into ques­tion UCLA’s role in any asso­ci­at­ed research used to but­tress Pom’s ads.”