Getting Slimed by the Slime Specialists

I must be doing something right. Yesterday, after I provided some free publicity for an upcoming "evidence-based" evaluation of industry funding of CME, I received the following comment from the Vice President of CMPI, Robert Goldberg:

Apparently you are the only pure one left on the planet. You have no biases or opinions that color your judgment or clinical practice. And of course your opinion about the negative pharmaceutical industry's impact on research -- none of which can be demonstrated through the traditional scientific methods but only appeals to emotion -- are right and everyone else is wrong. But that's not bias. Apart from the fact that the Sourcewatch material is three years old and outdated (which means you didn't even bother to check the facts since our 990 is readily available) you don't even have the intellectual or moral courage to engage on the merits of the issue CME or more generally the relationship between industry and academia. Rather, you resort to the oldest rhetorical trick in the book: attacking the character or motives of a person who has stated an idea, rather than the idea itself. That's the sign of a bully and a coward. If you had any integrity or guts at all you would show up at our session (the very thought of it must give be keeping you up nights!!) engage in reasoned discussion. But I doubt you will.

In this response, Mr. Goldberg demonstrates exactly why his organization and his blog have become notorious for perfecting the art of personal-attack-as-policy-discussion. Those who want to find example after example of Mr. Goldberg's and Mr. Pitt's inimitable rhetorical style should read this expose recently published in opednews.com.

Some of their pit bull (sans lipstick) pronouncements:

--"Sidney Wolfe, Public Citizen’s General Secretary of Junk Science..."

--"Not the real FDA - a Grahamatization" (referring the David Graham, the FDA analyst who revealed the extent of the Vioxx health risks)

--"That's the sign of a bully and a coward," describing me. We've descended to that level of name-calling now?

If Mr. Goldberg would like to engage in the merits of the CME discussion, he merely has to read dozens of my prior postings, in which I comment ad nauseum on the innumerable developments, debates, and policy pronouncements in the world of CME. If he would like concrete examples of commercially biased CME, I have provided them in spades.

Unlike the speakers at his conference, I don't have Fortune 500 companies standing in line ready to pony up for a trip to Washington D.C. at a moment's notice. If CMPI really wanted to engage in an "evidence-based" discussion, they would have invited speakers with alternative points of view, but they didn't, and because of that, the conference is a charade and is merely an opportunity for networking among those who profit mightily from industry-sponsored CME.