Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15345

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Publication type: news

Wang SS.
Psychiatrists to Stop Taking Meeting Money From Drug Makers
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2009 Mar 25
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/03/25/psychiatrists-to-stop-taking-meeting-money-from-drug-makers/

Full text:

Amid the flak surrounding several prominent psychiatrists (see here and here) and their ties to the drug industry, the American Psychiatric Association has decided to drop all industry-sponsored meals and educational sessions from its annual conferences, the group announced today.

Drug makers routinely pay big bucks for prominent doctors to speak about disorders and their treatments at breakfasts and dinners during the conference, with the sessions costing up to $50,000 a meal to sponsor, APA President Nada Stotland told the Health Blog. There could be between 30 and 40 sessions during any one conference, Stotland said.

The sponsoring companies had no say in the material being presented during sessions and the APA looked over every slide before it was shown. But with many APA members questioning whether the practice made sense, the group wanted to get out front on the issue.

Last March, the organization began discussing how it would fund the conference if it stopped taking money from industry. “I want to be very clear that this was before big press or congressional attention to this,” said Stotland.

“It was time for us to look at it very realistically and honestly,” she told the Health Blog. “We should actually decide how important it was to diminish or eliminate those [sponsorships] and in fact how we would cope with that financially.”

The changes will likely take two years to three years implement, said Stotland, but the industry-sponsored sessions at this year’s meeting, which takes place in May, will be featured far less prominently than at previous gatherings. The Health Blog recalls seeing posterboards placed at key locations all around the conference at the meeting last year. This year, Stotland says, all of the sessions will be announced on just one board.

The APA told its members last week that it would stop with the practice. Responses have been mostly positive, said Stotland, though a few “are insulted by the implication that their treatment decisions could be influenced by anything other than science.”