A senior member of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists resigned as convenor of its 2009 Congress after his peers unanimously voted down a proposal to dump drug-company sponsorship, The Australian reports.

The college was forced last week to appoint two co-convenors to replace Malcolm Battersby, a fellow of the college. RANZC president Ken Kirkby says the college’s more than 20 councillors were not given enough reason to change a policy that complied with the industry’s code of conduct on sponsorships. The policy allows drugmakers to bid against other potential sponsors for naming and signage rights at the event.

“They all felt the proposal lacked substance and wasn’t a suitable way to go,” he tells the paper. “It hadn’t gone through the correct college processes. It was the view of the individuals rather than the college itself.”

The clash highlights the debate about the scale and implications of industry influence over docs, whose prescribing patterns affect not only patient care but the viability of taxpayer-funded programs that subsidize drugs, the paper writes. In the second half of last year, 42 drugmakers spent a total of $31 million paying for “educational events” for health professionals - mostly doctors.

This year’s RANZCP congress at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre in Melbourne has awarded its gold sponsorships to AstraZeneca, Lilly and Pfizer. AstraZeneca and Pfizer are among the companies that are due this month to face a code of conduct committee hearing of Medicines Australia over potential ethical breaches in the educational activities offered to doctors.

Battersby, who resigned as congress convenor last week, said the entire nine-member congress committee had supported a ban and they were happy to accept the industry as exhibitors at the event, but believed it had to remain in its “rightful place…It’s a much, much stronger form of promotion and blurring of the boundaries between psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies if they become the formal sponsors of a meeting or a congress.”