Could this become a trend? Yesterday, you may recall that we wrote about the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which is putting the finishing touches on a conflicts-of-interest policy to create guidelines for distributing samples. Now, the University of Texas Health Science Center will enact a new policy on Jan. 1, in which doctors and med students will have to refuse any gifts from the pharmaceutical industry."Gifts, no matter how small, maybe have the potential, subliminally even, to affect a decision that a clinician might be making," Robert Clark, UTHSC assistant vice president for clinical research, tells a San Antonio television station. "What is the very best thing for this particular patient in terms of the drug I'm going to prescribe or the device I'm going to recommend."
The gifts now prohibited include meals, trips, event tickets, textbooks, electronic devices, flashlights, even pens and notepads. You can watch the television report here.
Fred Campbell is an internal medicine doctor who treats patients at University Health Center Southeast. While he says some physicians are a bit resistant to this upcoming change, most are embracing this new, more strict policy. "It's important to remove as much conflict of interest as possible," he tells the station. "Clinical decision-making should be made on the basis of evidence rather than the lure of enticements."
As we have noted previously, these moves come after the American Medical Student Association began an aggressive campaign ranking med school policies in hopes of reducing industry influence. The organization recently held its annual Pharm-Free Week to promote the idea.
3 Comments
As a former academic and current pharma scientist, I am all for such high-minded ideals such as this. However, I find it ironic that these holier-than-thou medical institutions publicly decry the pharma industry while all the while having their hand out privately. UPMC and UTHSC will have my respect when they no longer demand that their institutions be paid overhead (often as high as 30%-40%)when legitimate research grants from pharma are given to investigators at their centers, nor should they continue to accept salary and benefit support for study personnel based on % effort. Furthermore, they should prohibit faculty and staff from owning drug company stocks, even in the form of mutual fund holdings....that is, if they are truly interested in removing conflicts of interest. fat chance.
The writer clearly is not from Texas because he says the "Texas Med Center" banned gifts from the pharmaceutical industry. This is about UTHSC-San Antonio. The TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER specifically means the medical complex in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, which has UT-Houston and Baylor College of Medicine. Pharmaceutical reps are still crawling there (as I know my uncle flew there recently, working for Merck).
Dear Tex,
You're right, I'm not from Texas. I'm from Brooklyn. That said, I did something headline writers do when they don't have much space - I went for a few words that would be most easily recognizable to the largest number of people. Outside Texas, not too many people would recognize UTHSC-San Antonio. Moreover, UTHSC is a marbly mouthful. My apologies, though, if my approach turned you off. But I had to make a choice and, for better or worse, that's I went with. Next time, I'll try to find something more eloquent and accurate.
Thanks for writing in.
ed at Pharmalot