Drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff 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 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 association’s report would transform medical education. “Most medical schools do not have strong conflict-of-interest policies, and this report will change that,” he said.
The new rules would apply only to medical schools, but they will 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 of dollars 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…
This is long overdue. When I was in medical school in the early 1960’s, the "detail men" were always around, but it was a different situation then. The drug companies were not financing medical research. Drug trials were not part of medical education. They gave us stethoscopes that said "Lilly" on the side, or notebooks that fit in the pockets of our uniforms. There were plastic brains, and illustrated atlases. Benign. It started changing in the 70’s. Suddenly, faculty were doing drug company financed drug trials. Faculty were giving seminars financed by drug companies. And it got worse and worse. I fortunately retired before the "ask your doctor if ____ is right for you" ads came on the scene. I audibly groan at every such ad. Medication in a modern world is hard enough to deal with. With the "prescription plans" from insurors, the "ask your doctor" ads, the high cost of medications, and the increasingly large pharmacopeia, prescribing is something of a nightmare. Add to that the difficulty of evaluation journal articals and continuing medical education because you never really know if what you’re getting is science or purchased hype, and you have a quagmire.
The busin-i-fication of medicine is a modern tragedy, now so entrenched I’m damned if I see a simple solution. This "ban" is one of the first things I’ve seen that might begin to deal with the problem. Capitalism and Health Care need a divorce…
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