Two More Med Schools To End Pharma Funding
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // July 21st, 2010 // 9:36 am
Two more colleges are in the process of restricting funding from industry. Harvard Medical School will prohibit its 11,000 faculty from giving promotional talks for drug and device makers and accepting personal gifts, travel, or meals, The Boston Globe writes. And Central Michigan University may not accept money upcoming continuing medical education programs, according to Central Michigan Life.
The Harvard will also place strict limits on income faculty can earn from companies for consulting, joining boards, and other work; require public reporting of payments of at least $5,000 on a med school website; and promise more robust internal reporting and monitoring of these relationships. Harvard will also create a firewall between health care companies during these courses.
One target is Pri-Med, an annual conference for primary care docs at the Boston convention center, which features Harvard-taught courses and where drugmakers pay for breakfast, lunch, and dinner lectures by non-Harvard specialists and market meds in bathrooms. The program will be moved to another location, and marketing signs will not be allowed near toilets or sinks. “We’re anxious to be viewed publicly as doing what’s in the best interest of our patients,’’ Robert Mayer, co-chair of the committee that wrote the policy, tells the paper. The school wants to “ensure credibility even more than we do today.’’
Meanwhile, though no official decision has been made, Ernest Yoder, dean of the College of Medicine, said it is highly unlikely CMU will accept such funding to avoid conflicts of interest with those companies. “Research verifies that we are affected by those contacts and by the friendliness and the provision of resources,” he tells Central Michigan Life. Yoder adds that the college is taking its cue from the University of Michigan, which recently ended plans to accept pharma funding.
Photo courtesy of Jerome Kassirer
Chris K.
I think this is a huge step in the right direction.
billmd
about time-
now if only NIH and FDA etc. got their acts together
Justice in MI
Amazing.
But how about this scenario. A colleague gives pharma-sponsored CME on the illicit use of rx drugs (especially narcotics and stimulants), particularly among kids. She is a world-class expert in this area.
No product is named in her presentations, and, as above, it is about drug diversion, not prescribed use.
Should she be restricted from such participation?
pharmavet
The downside is that the Haavahd docs may actually have to start seeing patients to bring in money to their institutions. Hopefully they’ll remember the business end of a stethoscope.
M Helm, MD
“We’re anxious to be viewed publicly as doing what’s in the best interest of our patients,’’ Robert Mayer, co-chair of the committee
A semantically interesting quote. The committee is not “anxious to act in the best interest of our patients,” but to be “viewed publicly” as appearing to do so.
JiM - situational ethics questions always buy you grief. Nevertheless, a good question. Additionally, what if PhRMA companys contribute to a fund which pools money contributed for unspecified/unbranded continuing medical education. PhRMA money could be mixed with insurer/health plan, private company, or public/private grant money or not, but the subjects and content of the CME would be developed independent of the funding source. Could such a fund be administered through a school disavowing PhRMA funding? Would a faculty member who took such (laundered) money be approved to participate/teach?
Bob E.
My question is this:
If pharma. can not utilize academic physicians to give promotional talks on products, and answer questions related to the product and/or therapeutic area, then who will they ask to do this? The answer is “community based physicians”. Surely, who is usually the more qualified to give a presentation on a product: an academic physician that is challenged everyday by peers, residents,fellows as to what they are saying/teaching; an academic researcher who has done research on the product and other products in that therapeutic class for many years; an academician who is a key opinion leader (expert in the that field) of therapy), and from a leading teaching institution; etc. These academic physicians have an obligation to their institutions/profession to teach not only their students and peers about new drugs and new findings, but also to reach out into the communities (locally, regionally, and internationally). Other things to consider: (1) Does the individual physician have the resources to “inform or teach” outside of their institution; (2) Does this “speaking” offer the physician and institution an opportunity for community based physicians to get to know “what is the thinking of the institution (experts)on the subject/product”, and importantly, is this physician or institution one that I would want to refer patients to in the future? Does this denying physicians the opportunity to speak say that the institution does not train them or trust them to be ethical, or does not trust them to use the training they have received over many years to determine what is good evidence based medicine? Surely, there is both good and bad to be found, and academia can take a more reasonable stance.