March 30, 2009

Required reading on industry-funded CME

Posted By

Tags

A devastating indictment. That’s what Dr. Daniel Carlat – on his blog – called yesterday’s piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Drug firms’ cash skews doctor classes: Company-funded UW courses often favor medicine, leave out side effects.”

I’m late in weighing in on this, so I’ll just refer you to Carlat’s analysis.

But I will add this: somehow that little paper in Milwaukee continues to publish top-notch tough investigative health care journalism and their readers should appreciate what they’re getting while they’re still getting it. This story was more than 2,500 words of important news – not the usual 300 word drivel trumpeting breakthroughs from the medical journals. Carlat said “Occasionally, a piece of investigative journalism sets into motion processes that strike corrupt business practices at their core. …it will become required reading for all those involved in health care policy.”

Comments

Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.

John Butler

April 1, 2009 at 8:34 pm

The article makes this type of marketing practice seem like a new discovery. It has been around for awhile. News is… transparency, I believe has remarkably improved in recent years. Most institutions are extremely sensitive to bias- in contrast to the past.
I think this it is important for the public to know that a huge amount of pharma marketing is used to influence physician practices. Journal ads, “detailing” literature, pencils and pens- its everywhere.
However, what was expected and acceptable 10-20 years ago, has dramatically diminished in my opinion.
I just returned from a week long CME conference presented by Mayo, and each presenter preceded his presentation with financial disclosures- a minority had them. But, there was transparency.
This is in extreme contrast to past practices.
I think the news is that disclosure and transparency is headed in the right direction.
John Butler MD

COMMENTS button We welcome comments, which users can leave at the end of any of our systematic story reviews or at the end of any of our blog posts.

But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.

You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.

This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.

We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.

There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”

The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:

“Shed light, not just heat. Facts, challenges, disagreements, corrections — those are all fine. Attacking the person, instead of the idea or the interpretation, is neither acceptable nor helpful.”

We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.

And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.

The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.