File this under ‘Say Uncle.’ A dozen drug and device makers have told Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, that they have plans or are working on plans to publicly disclose grants to outside groups, and the details will be provided on each company’s Web sites, the Associated Press reports. In particular, Grassley is interested in [...]

In the latest issue of Medical Meetings, Donna Beales, the CME coordinator at Lowell General Hospital, in Lowell, Massachuesetts, and the editor of Journal of Hospital Librarianships, offers what she admittedly calls a “provocative plan” for making continuing medical education more palatable for all concerned. But in her view, the consequences for failing to do [...]

Last November, Bayer suspended marketing of its troubled med, which is used to control bleeding during heart surgery, after a Canadian study suggested an increased risk for death. Then, we learned the FDA received 235 reports noting death in patients who received Trasylol, although a conclusive link wasn’t established. None of this, however, deterred Bayer [...]

Two months ago, the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians became only the second state chapter in the national Academy of Family Physicians to adopt a policy of eschewing financial support from pharma. As a result, the 1,300-member group no longer accepts any grants - restricted or unrestricted - for its continuing ed seminars or allows [...]

When Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City stopped accepting commercial support for its continuing medical education activities last January, many at the institution had their doubts that the program would survive, writes Meetings Net. Most of the staff was surprised at the decision, since participants hadn’t reported perceiving commercial bias in Sloan-Kettering programs.
“Our [...]

That’s how C. Lindsay DeVane described his own ACCME-accredited article, which was published last May in the journal CNS Spectrums. DeVane, a psychiatry professor and vice chair of research in the clinical neuroscience division at the Medical University of South Carolina, offered this blunt assessment in an e-mail he wrote to Dan Carlat, an industry [...]

Say the words ‘Continuing Medical Education’ these days and anyone who pays attention to the pharmaceutical industry knows trouble is coming. CME lies at the delicate intersection where drugmakers, doctors and money all meet, which explains why so many politicians, consumer advocates and academics complain about corruption. The issue haunts drugmakers even as they scramble [...]

Dan Carlat, psychiatrist and professional gadfly, is wasting no time getting smarmy on his new blog about CME foibles. Today, he unveils the first in a promised series of occasional pokes-in-the-eye to drugmakers, continuing medical ed companies and doctors. His goal? To recognize their “outstanding achievement in masking promotional activities under the guise of continuing [...]

Finished mowing the lawn or washing the car? The kids are busy? No one’s asked you to do an errand? Then relax with these….
Will Glaxo’s Alli diet pill be a smash? Depends who you ask. Caroline Apovian, a Boston doc who wrote The Alli Diet Plan, a book designed to promote the drug, doesn’t understand [...]

Emboldened by the reaction to his op-ed about continuing medical education that ran in The New York Times last week, Carlat this weekend launched a site devoted to tracking the foibles surrounding CME. His essay described industry-funded CME programs as a thinly disguised form of money laundering taking place between pharma and docs.
“I want to [...]