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Stanford med school loosening industry ties
Certainly this is good news. The outrage is that Stanford, like so many medical schools, allowed the money tail to wag the dog for so long.
by Bernadette Tansey
The Stanford University School of Medicine, in a continuing re-examination of its relationship with industry, said it will no longer allow drug and medical device makers to control the content of continuing education programs they fund at the school.
A Stanford task force concluded that industry money earmarked for specific training sessions "may compromise the integrity of these education programs for practicing physicians," officials said in a statement Tuesday.
The increasing role of pharmaceutical companies in the sponsorship of continuing medical education, or CME, courses that doctors are required to take throughout their careers has raised growing concern among consumer groups, professional associations and lawmakers.
Manufacturers have been accused of converting the sessions into biased marketing vehicles for their own products. In the heyday of the practice, drugmakers offered doctors lavish trips at subsidized rates to exotic resorts, where they received CME credit for hearing company presentations.
Dr. Philip Pizzo, dean of the Stanford medical school, said continuing education can only be free of commercial influence if its curriculum is independent from industry funding.
"So much of that is actually directed toward changing prescribing patterns," he said.
Under the new policy that takes effect Mondy, biomedical companies will still be allowed to donate money for Stanford programs in a broad subject area of their choice. But they cannot insist on a specific topic, choose the speakers or set up exhibits at the site.
Five other medical schools, including UC Davis, have similar policies. The others are the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Colorado at Denver and the University of Kansas, according to the American Medical Student Association. The group assigns grades to U.S. medical schools every year based on their conflict-of-interest policies.
While pharmaceutical companies say they don't dictate the content of the programs they fund, said Dr. Brian Hurley, president of the student association, in reality they do control the outcome. "Pharmaceutical firms will only fund speakers who give favorable messages on the products they're trying to sell," he said.
The largest trade group for the drug industry, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said companies have improved their practices under guidance from government agencies and revisions of the trade group's own voluntary code of conduct.
"America's pharmaceutical research companies have taken positive steps to help ensure they provide nothing but accurate and balanced information to health care providers," said Senior Vice President Ken Johnson of the industry group. "When used ethically, educational grant programs help physicians provide the best care for patients suffering from disease."
Stanford's medical school received $1.87 million, or 38 percent of its funding for CME courses, from industry in 2006-07. Industry funding nationwide rose from $302 million in 1998 to $1.2 billion in 2006, according to a study cited by the university.
— Bernadette Tansey
San Francisco Chronicle
2008-08-27
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