It appears that not only doctors and medical students are hearing the siren song of the pharmaceutical industry.
So are medical researchers, according to a story by Reuters news service.
Dr. Bruce Psaty, an assistant professor at the University of Washington at Seattle, published an article on using beta blockers to treat high blood pressure. A big drug company soon took notice.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
“My family and I were invited to a first-class resort, where I presented the results at a sponsored conference,” Psaty wrote in a commentary this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Dr. Psaty agreed to help develop a set of presentation slides on beta blockers. He suggested that the drug company’s studies be included in the slides because he felt “a kind of social duty to reciprocate both the kindness and the investment made by the sponsor in the slide set,” Psaty wrote.
This sense of social duty to a patron is natural. But it also represents a potential conflict of interest among medical researchers. What if this particular drug company’s studies weren’t the best? What if doctors or other medical professionals acted on these inferior studies?
Psaty is dissatisfied with the conflict-of-interest debate among doctors, spurred by reports last year by Iowa Republican Rep. Charles Grassley that a prominent Harvard psychiatrist failed to fully disclose large payments by drug companies, Reuters said.
As a result of the debate, however, hospitals like Harvard-affiliated Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Johns Hopkins have beefed up their conflicts-of-interest policies. Medical schools nationwide also have adopting conflict-of-interest policies that exclude drug company sponsorship of educational events or lunches.
More stories worth a read:
- Researcher faked data in sleep apnea study (Wall Street Journal Health blog)
- Fraud infects state in-home care program (Los Angeles Times)
- Johnson & Johnson sales reps face job cuts as top drugs go generic (Wall Street Journal Health blog)
- Deal by Express Scripts could lower drug prices (Associated Press/Columbus Dispatch)
- Evers’ goal to attain National Cancer Institute designation (Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader)
- A followup on WalmMart’s EHR effort (Life as a Healthcare CIO blog)
- Rivals will drive toward alliances or merge in health IT industry, national biz school war game predicts (PR Newswire)
- Maryland awarded nearly $1m for electronic health records (Baltimore Business Journal)
- Innovative new technology being studied as treatment option for chronic heartburn at Mayo Clinic (Mayo Clinic)
- Fewer VC firms raising money in 2009 (Dayton Business Journal)
- NeoStem Inc. completes $11 million private placement financing to support activities in China, further development of NeoStem’s VSEL technology and advancement of medical tourism initiatives (PR Newswire)
- Cleveland hospitals feel financial pinch (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
Illustration “Magic Pills” by Flickr user e-magic.
