Re: Group Urges Ban on Medical Giveaways
From: R. Daniel Braun (rd.braun@gmail.com)
Mon Apr 28 12:55:42 2008
Yeah ,et the Drug Companies spend that on advertising to the public. It is a
lot more effective at creating a demand for a product. Check out Cialis and
Viagra. Oh yeah, who ever heard of congenital dry eyes before restasis came
out on TV.
Just my opinion.
Dan
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Dean Huffman . <dean@thehuffpeople.net>
wrote:
> .
>
> Group Urges Ban on Medical Giveaways
>
> By GARDINER HARRIS
>
> Published: April 28, 2008, NY Times
>
> Drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free
> food,
> gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and
> students
> in all 129 of the nation's medical colleges, an influential college
> association
> has concluded.
>
> The proposed ban is the result of a two-year effort by the group, the
> Association of American Medical Colleges, to create a model policy
> governing
> interactions between the schools and industry. While schools can ignore
> the
> association's advice, most follow its recommendations.
>
> Rob Restuccia, executive director of the Prescription Project, a nonprofit
> group
> dedicated to eliminating conflicts of interest in medicine, said the
> report
> would transform medical education.
>
> "Most medical schools do not have strong conflict-of-interest policies,
> and this
> report will change that," Mr. Restuccia said.
>
> The rules would apply only to medical schools, but they could have
> enormous
> influence across medicine, said Dr. David Rothman, president of the
> Institute
> on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University.
>
> "We're hoping the example set by academic medical colleges will be
> contagious,"
> Dr. Rothman said.
>
> Drug companies spend billions wooing doctors — more than they spend on
> research
> or consumer advertising. Medical schools, packed with prominent professors
> and
> impressionable trainees, are particularly attractive marketing targets.
>
> So companies have for decades provided faculty and students free food and
> gifts,
> offered lucrative consulting arrangements to top-notch teachers and even
> ghost-wrote research papers for busy professors.
>
> "Such forms of industry involvement tend to establish reciprocal
> relationships
> that can inject bias, distort decision-making and create the perception
> among
> colleagues, students, trainees and the public that practitioners are being
> 'bought' or 'bribed' by industry," the report said.
>
> A group of influential doctors decried these practices in a 2006 article
> in The
> Journal of the American Medical Association, and said that medical schools
> should ban them. In the article's wake, the medical college association
> created
> a task force.
>
> With Dr. Roy Vagelos, a former Merck chief executive, serving as the task
> force's chairman and the chief executives of Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Amgen and
> Medtronic on the roster, some who advocate for greater restrictions on
> industry
> influence in medicine predicted that the report would be weak.
>
> They were wrong.
>
> In addition to the gift, food and travel bans, the report recommended that
> medical schools should "strongly discourage participation by their faculty
> in
> industry-sponsored speakers' bureaus," in which doctors are paid to
> promote
> drug and device benefits.
>
> It recommended that schools set up centralized systems for accepting free
> drug
> samples or "alternative ways to manage pharmaceutical sample distribution
> that
> do not carry the risks to professionalism with which current practices are
> associated." It suggested that schools audit independently accredited
> medical
> education seminars given by faculty "for the presence of inappropriate
> influence." And it said the rules should apply to faculty even when
> off-duty or
> away from school.
>
> Speakers' bureaus and drug samples are pillars of the industry's marketing
> operations, and many medical school professors have resisted efforts to
> restrict them. Only a handful of medical schools presently bar faculty
> members
> from serving on speakers' bureaus, so if this recommendation is widely
> adopted,
> it could transform the relationship between medical school faculty and
> industry,
> and it could change substantially the way medical education is routinely
> delivered.
>
> Indeed, the chief executives of Pfizer and Eli Lilly dissented from the
> report's
> recommendation regarding speakers' bureaus.
>
> "We continue to believe that these types of programs, which are subject to
> clear
> regulations regarding their content, can be worthwhile educational
> activities,"
> wrote Jeffrey B. Kindler of Pfizer and Sidney Taurel of Lilly.
>
> David Beier, an Amgen senior vice president, wrote a letter that endorsed
> the
> report's recommendations but disagreed with some of its text "because we
> have a
> different view about the accuracy concerning representations about the
> motives
> of the participants in industry-academic interactions."
>
> Ken Johnson of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America,
> said
> his group would review the report.
>
> "Providing physicians — and medical students — with timely, accurate
> information
> about the medicines they prescribe clearly benefits patients and advances
> healthcare throughout the United States," Mr. Johnson said.
>
> Dr. Robert J. Alpern, dean of the Yale School of Medicine, said that the
> university presently had no limits on participation in company speakers'
> bureaus, but that because of the medical college association's report he
> was
> thinking of taking them on.
>
> "I don't have a problem with doctors making $3,000 or $5,000 a year on the
> side," he said, "but it's a totally different thing when it's $80,000."
> Even
> more distasteful, Dr. Alpern said, is that the slides used in many of
> these
> presentations are created by drug makers, not the speakers.
>
> "That's like ghost-talking," Dr. Alpern said.
>
> Dr. Arthur S. Levine, dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of
> Medicine,
> said that when he graduated from medical school in 1964, Eli Lilly gave
> him his
> first doctor's bag, and Roche gave him an Omega watch for being
> valedictorian.
> He still has the watch.
>
> But this year's graduating class of doctors at Pittsburgh will not be
> allowed to
> accept any of these gifts, and the daily pizza lunches brought by drug
> companies
> are gone, he said.
>
> Julie Gottlieb, assistant dean of policy coordination for Johns Hopkins
> University School of Medicine, said Hopkins had adopted some of the
> association's recommendations and was considering others.
>
> "This report is bound to influence our deliberations," she said.
>
> Dr. Vagelos, formerly of Merck, said that the report's recommendations
> were
> certain to face resistance among faculty who liked the present system.
>
> "The outcome of this for the industry is that those companies that are
> strong in
> science will always be welcome at medical colleges and others won't," Dr.
> Vagelos said.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/28doctors.html?ref=us
>
--
R. Daniel Braun, MD FACOG(L) ABMP CMTh
Professor Emeritus
Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Indiana U. School of Medicine
--
R. Daniel Braun
"Science without Religion is LAME; Religion without Science is BLIND"
Einstein 1941
