OK, who hasn't taken money from drug companies?
Via Jim Fossett comes word of a paper in the October 17 JAMA reporting that 60 percent of respondents to a survey of medical school department chairs indicated they had some form of personal relationship with industry -- either as a consultant, a member of a scientific advisory board, a paid speaker, an officer, a founder, or a member of the board of directors.
Here's what Eric Campbell, the paper's lead author, told HealthDay:
"There is not a single aspect of medicine in which the drug companies do not have substantial and deep relationships, affecting not only doctors-in-training, resident physicians, researchers, physicians-in-practice, the people who review drugs for the federal government and the people who review studies."
...
"Drug companies have relationships with everyone. They're involved in every aspect of medicine. Someone has to decide which of these is OK."
And from an AP story about the paper:
Alan Goldhammer of the industry group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the study results don't mean these relationships are a problem. He said it makes sense to reach out to academic heads because they have the most expertise.
But Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former New England Journal of Medicine editor and frequent critic of industry influence over doctors, called the study eye-opening.
"I was appalled by the results," Kassirer said. "No one knew that so many chairs of medicine and psychiatry were paid speakers. We've never had that data before."
Earlier on blog.bioethics.net:
+ Stanford: No More Small Gifts
+ No More Free Lunch
From AJOB:
+ All Gifts Large and Small
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