Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19788

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: Magazine

Cole L
Medical sponsorship thrown under further scrutiny
Medical Observer 2005 May 6

Full text:

The need for lavish pharmaceutical-sponsored conference dinners has been questioned in a new report examining the relationship between the industry and doctor’s groups.
In the first detailed report on the link between pharmaceutical companies and medical organisations (as opposed to individual practitioners), authors of the Internal Medicine Journal (2005;35;206-10) report questioned whether current levels of industry support were appropriate or financially necessary.
The study’s lead author, Associate Professor Ian Kerridge from the University of Sydney centre for values, ethics and law in medicine, said a culture had developed whereby medical organisations expected pharmaceutical companies to offer events such as expensive conference dinners and five-star accomodation.
Professor Kerridge said while interaction between medical organisations and industry was important, a more critical look at the nature of the relationship was needed as there was a potential for conflict of interest.
The report surveyed 29 medical organisations, including lobby groups and educational colleges, and found that industry underwrote, to varying degrees, expenses such as conferences, continuing medical educational, journals, research grants, travel and library purchases.
AMA vice-president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal said he believed medical organisations could survive without pharmaceutical industry support, but that both would be “the poorer for it”. He said sponsorship of educational events reduced costs for doctors, and maintained a flow of information on medical innovation.
The report, which came as Medicines Australia conducts a review of its code of conduct, found few organisations believed they would be unable to continue without industry support. Acceptance of support from the pharmaceutical industry “may be more a function of medical culture than financial necessity”, the authors concluded.
Meanwhile, a new code of conduct by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), setting out specific dos and don’ts in its relationship with industry, is due to be released next month.
The chair of an RACP code of conduct working group, Professor Paul Komesaroff, said it was important to acknowledge the place industry held in the healthcare system, but that the relationship could be subject to “excesses and extortions”.