Thursday, October 21, 2010

Medical University of AstraZeneca

Here's the question: Who is responsible for your medical education?

I ran across a really interesting website the other day. Apparently, there were multiple lawsuits involving pharmaceutical companies that helped disclose 260 million dollars worth of pharmaceutical payoffs to physicians. See the searchable database here.

I took a curious look because I, being in the medical field, understand the temptation involved in pharmaceutical speaking fees, consulting fees, "educational reimbursements", etc. After searching my friends and family, I went to the next obvious target, my alma mater. It only took a second to realize that the results were appalling.

At quick glance, it seems that clinical faculty at MUSC have been paid $230,000 in speaking fees in 2009 alone.

You know, I've thought about this for a while and come to this more moderate conclusion.

I can get over the fact that you get pharm dollars, just tell me about it.

I had no idea that my clinical faculty had these ties to pharmaceutical companies. I don't know if anyone did. But the bottom line is this: If you're telling me that Seroquel is first-line treatment for schizoaffective disorder, tell me that AstraZeneca, who makes Seroquel, also happened to give you $63,000 last year.

Which isn't to say that this problem is isolated to MUSC. As you can imagine, this is a problem in conflict of interest that pervades all medical institutions. Just recently, Harvard Medical College had its own pharmaceutical scandal develop and decided, in response, to institute its own monitoring program for potential conflicts of interest.

And in that vain, there is an easy solution to this problem. Require all of your academic faculty to disclose financial conflicts of interest. Then, put them online and send an e-mail.

In summary, a lesson: Forget betadine. Sunlight is the best disinfectant

Peace,

Ahmed

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