Stanford Revises CME With A $3M Pfizer Grant
13 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 11th, 2010 // 8:40 am
Stanford University will develop new continuing medical education programs for doctors without influence from drugmakers and plans to do so with a $3 million grant from…Pfizer, according to The New York Times. Phil Pizzo, the Stanford medical school dean, insists the drugmaker will have no say on how the three-year grant will be spent. Stanford signaled its intent to restrict CME financing in 2008 (see here).
The university plans to set up unbiased programs of postgraduate education on its campus rather than industry-selected topics that are typically presented to doctors at hotels and resorts. “It’s a fundamental change,” he tells the Times, and he criticizes the pharmaceutical industry for poisoning educational programs with marketing messages and doctors for “complicity” in taking speaker fees and expenses-paid trips. The grant, he says, is “a novel rebooting.”
Pfizer issued a statement to the paper saying it wants to help redefine how CME is financed to ensure the independence and patient benefit of the programs. But some remain skeptical. “The announcement is self-satirizing,” Adriane Fugh-Berman, a Georgetown University medical professor who runs PharmedOut, a project that promotes ‘pharma-free’ CME, tells the Times. “Pfizer’s interest in better ways to manipulate physicians is well-known.” And she notes that Pfizer markets drug in two of the four areas that the Stanford press release suggested might be pursued: smoking cessation and heart disease.
Two years ago, Pfizer was the first drugmaker to no longer provide funding directly to profit-making CME companies, but only to universities and other nonprofits (background). But recently, Pfizer was chastised for providing a $780,000 grant to the Canadian Medical Association for educational programs after getting two seats on a six-member supervisory board (see here). And the Times notes that last year, a $3.4 million grant for the California Academy of Family Physicians to sponsor stop-smoking educational programs was questioned because Pfizer makes Chantix, a smoking cessation drug.
bill inpa
what a joke
Condor
Color me skeptical.
Why should Stanford need (or accept) money to run independent CME? I don’t get it.
Didn’t the school already commit more broadly to not doing so?
This smells. . . a bit like a 19th century wharf restaurant — bringing the already-rotten fish BACK in, through a secret side door — long after you’ve publicly thrown them out via the front door.
Now, that cheap fish-fry is ready!
Namaste
Terry
So they were independent before, but now they are really, really, really independent? I don’t get it. What has changed?
taller yet today
stanford just wants all the bling
Stephany
What a circus full of fools, let’s ban peanuts at the circus, then the peanut company hands out free peanuts to all of the kids upon entry, but let’s forget who gave the peanuts to the kids, all the while the elephants continue to suffer at the hands of corrupt circus masters.
pharmavet
Ed, please refer readers to your June 25, 2008 blog on Stanford Psychiatry Chairman Dr. Alan Schatzberg, and his conflicts of interest with NIH and Pharma funding. In this regard, today’s blog coming out of Stanford is no surprise.
riv
Every Stanford person connected with this will make sure Pfizer’s goons knows their name, face, golf score. Implementing the CMEs will require lots of phone calls and meetings with Pfizer.
I feel like my generation has failed. We’ve raised fools and liars. Sepukku.
Betsy
THIS IS A TRUE OXYMORON. I’VE SHARED IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE IN THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY WHO LOVE LAUGHING! WE ALL KNOW HOW VIRULENT CME FUNDING BY BIG PHARMA IS. WHO ARE STANFORD AND PFIZER KIDDING?
“Stanford Revises CME With A $3M Pfizer Grant
Posted: 11 Jan 2010 05:40 AM PST
Stanford University will develop new continuing medical education programs for doctors without influence from drugmakers and plans to do so with a $3 million grant from… Pfizer . . . . . “
ann viera
I expect we might see this story featured on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Michael Kirsch, M.D.
Wow, a story about a drug company where they are not protrayed as diabolical, nefarious profiteers. How did this get into print? Did someone mess up? http://www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com
patrons99
This proposal sets a bad precedent and does nothing to sever the unholy symbiotic relationship between academic medicine and pharma. The only new wrinkle here is that the transfers of value (“better ways to manipulate physicians”) have become a little more subtle. Can’t KOLs survive without accepting “blood money” from Pharma? Personally, I wouldn’t trust any CME from this site. Whether you call it a “grant” or a “bribe”, the difference is only semantic. What’s particularly troubling is that more academic medical institutions will follow suit. They will court Pharma’s favor so as to receive “grant” money in exchange for ostensibly providing doctors with unbiased CME.
Charles
Boy, what a cynical lot. Money does make the world go round, and why shouldn’t Stamford take a grant to pay for education courses. And for the shock and awe of Pfizer doing something like sponsoring an anti-smoking program when they have anti-smoking meds, in my view that is good business. Do you criticize Nike for sponsoring sporting events? It’s the business they’re in! It’s good business people, and just because its pharma doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy! Think about it- more CME on anti-smoking and more docs will be better informed on helping patients to quit, and Pfizer will get a share of that increase- a rising tide lifts all boats.
I’m sure bad stuff still happens, and it should be turfed out, but let’s ease up on the pharma McCarthyisms.
Mike Wokasch
Unrestricted grants are not a new concept. I’m not sure how, or if, this is different. While Stanford control and lack of Pfizer input on specific content may be the implied distinction being proposed here, that has been the intent and practice of many unrestricted pharmaceutical industry grant supported programs including many ACCME programs in the past. Without more transparency about the negotiations that took place surrounding this grant, it is hard to understand how identifying “programs of mutual interest” with “milestone” payments hasn’t already or isn’t going to influence what topics are going to be covered in these Pfizer sponsored Stanford programs.
It appears that Pfizer merely found the price point at which Stanford was willing to compromise its previously stated position (Stanford Report dated September 13, 2006 “New Policy Limits Drug Industry Access”) that “industry-directed funding may compromise the integrity of these education programs”. The $3 million seems to have also moderated Dr. Pizzo’s concern about “the pervasive presence of the pharmaceutical industry in the medical profession” and his desire for Stanford educational activities to “not be influenced by any kind of financial industry support.”
A couple of things must have happened. Either Stanford could not find sufficient alternative sources of funding for their continuing medical education department and/or the $3 million was just too hard to turn down.
I guess everything still has a price; you just have to figure out what it is. This relationship based on a $3.0 million grant does not help move CME forward for the industry, academia or healthcare providers. It provides validation for those who continue to be concerned about financial influences of the industry. Pfizer merely proved that even Stanford can’t resist…when the price is right.
Mike Wokasch
http://www.pharmareform.com