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