Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19782

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Pai S
Changing attitudes to drug company sponsorship?
Indian J Med Ethics 2005 Jan; 2:(1):
http://www.ijme.in/131le028.html

Abstract:

LETTER FROM BANGALORE

This journal, the society and its members have always been perceived to be be anti-drug company. Certainly, we have published an entire issue on the pharmaceutical industry. One of us has been instrumental in abolishing drug company sponsorship for conferences held in his institution, another has done a study on pharmaceutical promotional practices. I, with others, have complained in The Lancet about the third world being treated differentially by companies. It is therefore time to admit that I recently attended a one and half day conference – organised entirely by a drug company.
The venue was a hill-station and about a hundred delegates were invited, along with spouses, and put up in a decent hotel. The expenses were borne by the company of course. However, it was a pleasant surprise to see that the course director, as well as the speakers were eminent and decidedly ethical physicians. The selection of topics for the ‘Continuing Medical Education’ was left to the course director and were unrelated, for the large part, to company products. He mentioned at the very beginning that he had been given a free hand in this. Indeed, the fact that my own talk, entitled ‘Test the test’, was on the subject of laboratory error should suffice as an example. Attendance was complete and to our delight, there were excellent discussions after the respective talks. Clearly, the audience learnt more here than they would have in a national conference. The drug promotion was limited to a few stills between speakers and to some samples in the inevitable conference bag.
I must admit that there are some grey areas (why were spouses invited?) but for all that, certainly, this group has educated many physicians while subtly promoting themselves. I was unaware, when initially invited, that it was a drug company CME. But would I do so in future, at least with this group? I think so. The purpose of education was served, more so of topics which would otherwise not have been included in a CME. I await flak from readers.