It scares the hell out of me. The agreement gives Novartis half the seats on the college's advisory committee and two of five seats on the research committee. The deal also requires professors to sign a confidentiality agreement regarding access to Novartis' private database. Hayden said this would discourage university faculty from doing research critical of biotechnology. Gordon Rausser, the college's dean and a principal architect of the agreement, defended it as a model contracts between a university and industry.
Faculty can get access to the confidential information with the confidentiality agreement.
That's their choice. The state had put the college in this position, Rausser said. State Sen. Steve Peace, a Democrat from El Cajon, said Rausser was misleading. You've built a mousetrap that at a distance nobody else can audit. Thirty years ago, we called that fascism.