Despite limits placed recently on industry funding of continuing medical education – and the requirement in the health reform law’s physician payment sunshine provisions that drug and medical device makers, beginning in 2013, publicly report payments to doctors and public hospitals for medical education – the practice continues to be controversial. The controversies are the subject of a conference being hosted today by PharmedOut, a Georgetown-based research and education project that focuses on inappropriate pharmaceutical company influence on prescribing. The conference, “Prescription for Conflict: Should Industry Fund CME?” includes speakers who are leaders in government, research, and industry. In remarks prepared for the meeting, a high-ranking pharmaceutical company executive condemns industry support of CME. The remarks were given to Bioethics Forum by PharmedOut’s director, Adriane Fugh-Berman.
The executive asked to remain anonymous, as do most critics within the drug industry, says Fugh-Berman. “Our presentations and other materials have changed clinicians’ minds about relationships with industry because we expose what industry says and does behind closed doors in its efforts to manipulate the prescribing habits of clinicians,” she says. “Our information about industry-wide practices comes from our unique network of former and current industry insiders. Only a few people who have worked in industry are willing to publicly criticize marketing practices.”
In this statement the executive says that drug companies try to create the impression that CME programs are unbiased while still making them “fit the profile of specific company products.” Fugh-Berman says, “This powerful perspective of an experienced industry professional should be heeded.” - The editors
Conference presentations here:
http://www.pharmedout.org/conferencematerials.htm
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