AAMC Report: Do as I Say Now, Not as I Did Then

That's the recommendation from a task force created by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The report proposes that any gifts from pharma—including food, medical instruments, or ghostwriting services*—should be banned from all US medical schools. And because a large chunk of medical-school education takes place within affiliated hospitals, the proposal would logically extend to these training sites as well.

The task force included representatives from medical academia and organizations concerned with medial education (the AMA and ACCME), but pharma input was also represented by Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler, Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer, and former Lilly CEO Sidney Taurel. The task force was chaired by P. Roy Vagelos, MD, a former Merck exec.

While seemingly happy agreements were achieved on most of the task force's recommendations, Kindler and Taurel specifically objected to the report's proposal that faculty be discouraged from participating in industry-sponsored speakers' bureaus. These programs typically involve the "training" of scores of key opinion leaders (a term often loosely applied) to give talks to their regional collegues by using industry-supplied slide decks. Robert Alpern, MD, dean at Yale, likened the practice (and the Pathophilia blog agrees with him) to "ghost talking," according to today's NYT. The practice creates a conflict of interest much more egregious than whatever comes with hoovering a free sandwich on the fly.

*Gifts thoroughly enjoyed by preceding generations of medical trainees and/or their faculty.

Photo: iStockphoto.