{"id":35722,"date":"2013-04-24T21:11:33","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T01:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=35722"},"modified":"2013-04-24T21:16:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-25T01:16:59","slug":"let-the-sun-shine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2013\/04\/24\/let-the-sun-shine\/","title":{"rendered":"let the sun shine in&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\">After a long darkness, it seems like we&#8217;re getting a few things going the right way lately &#8211; successful lawsuits against Pharma&#8217;s improprieties, the AllTrials campaign, a growing awareness about the DSM-5 misadventures, more and more encouraging chatter, etc. Here&#8217;s some that really feels good &#8211; the results from this year&#8217;s <strong><font color=\"#200020\">American Medical Student Association<\/font><\/strong> [AMSA] scorecard. For the last 6 years, the organization has been scoring all 158 American Medical Schools based of their policies concerning Conflicts of Interest and their relationships with Industry:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/postscript.communitycatalyst.org\/?p=3297\" target=\"_blank\">Scorecard Shows U.S. Medical Schools Continue to Make Progress in Pharmaceutical Conflict-of-Interest Policies<\/a><br \/> <strong><font color=\"#200020\">POSTSCR<sub>x<\/sub>IPT <\/font><\/strong><br \/> by Community Catalyst<br \/> April 24, 2013<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup><strong>The American Medical Student Association released its <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/postscript.communitycatalyst.org\/www.amsascorecard.org\" title=\"AMSA PharmFree Scorecard\">2013 PharmFree Scorecard<\/a>  this month, continuing to pressure and encourage medical schools to  improve their policies on conflicts of interest and interactions with  industry. These policies have impacts on students&rsquo; medical education,  the future of the medical profession and the care physicians provide. As  patients we should be able to trust that decisions about our care are  based on science and our best interests, not the marketing strategies of  the pharmaceutical industry&#8230;<\/strong><\/sup><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup><strong>Highlights of the 2013 AMSA Scorecard:<\/strong><\/sup><\/div>\n<ul><sup><strong>  <\/p>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">93 schools [59 percent] now have model polices prohibiting all gifts and on-site meals, up from 19 [12 percent].<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">79 schools [50 percent] have a curriculum on conflicts of interest, up from 12 [8 percent] in 2008.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Schools with model policies on speaking arrangements have grown  tremendously; 44 [28 percent] schools ban or severely restrict  participation in speaker bureaus compared to 31 [20 percent] in 2011-2  and only 4 [2.5 percent] in 2008.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Only 41 schools [26 percent] have a model policy in terms of  disclosure, requiring personnel to disclose past and present financial  ties with industry [e.g., consulting and speaking agreements, research  grants] on a publicly-available website and disclosing these  relationships to patients.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Policies restricting industry support for Continuing Medical  Education are now in place in only 28 schools [18 percent], but this is  nearly double the number of schools in 2010.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Access by pharmaceutical sales representatives remains a major  challenge, with only four schools [2.5 percent] prohibiting sales reps  from meeting with faculty and trainees regardless of location, or  prohibiting sales reps from marketing their products.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<p>  <\/strong><\/sup><\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup><strong>&#8230; The 2013 AMSA PharmFree Scorecard, the NPA National Grand Rounds and the  Community Catalyst Policy Manual are made possible by a grant from the  state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program,  which is funded by the multi-state settlement of consumer fraud claims  regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin. Partners in  the PACME project are AMSA, Community Catalyst, the National Physician&rsquo;s  Alliance, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.<\/strong><\/sup><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" width=\"396\" vspace=\"5\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/amsa-1.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Any way you look at it, this is a remarkable achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that the changes reflect those made by Medical Students with a very simple intervention &#8211; a published survey. It portends an enlightened future generation of doctors and once again reinforces the ending line from Ben Goldacre&#8217;s TED Talk, &quot;<em><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Sunlight is the best disinfectant.<\/font><\/strong><\/em>&quot;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div align=\"right\"><sup><strong>hat tip to <a href=\"http:\/\/brodyhooked.blogspot.com\/2013\/04\/med-students-score-again-with-amsa.html\" target=\"_blank\">Hooked: Ethics, Medicine, and Pharma<\/a>&hellip; &nbsp;  <img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"middle\" height=\"35\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/hat-tip.gif\" \/><\/strong><\/sup><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a long darkness, it seems like we&#8217;re getting a few things going the right way lately &#8211; successful lawsuits against Pharma&#8217;s improprieties, the AllTrials campaign, a growing awareness about the DSM-5 misadventures, more and more encouraging chatter, etc. Here&#8217;s some that really feels good &#8211; the results from this year&#8217;s American Medical Student Association [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35722"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35729,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35722\/revisions\/35729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}