Post-Deception Medicine

I'm on vacation and snatched an hour or so of internet time to check email, but I couldn't resist a quick entry alerting readers to a couple of hot items. First, today's New York Times published this article by Gardiner Harris reporting that the major association of medical schools has unveiled its new policy on drug company gifting. And the news is tremendous. The Association of American Medical Colleges now recommends that "drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff and students in all 129 of the nation’s medical colleges...." In addition, "the report recommended that medical schools should 'strongly discourage participation by their faculty in industry-sponsored speakers’ bureaus,' in which doctors are paid to promote the benefits of drugs and devices."

And in a feat of good timing, the Prescription Project has released a series of "toolkits" to help hospitals and academic medical centers create the conflict of interest policies that the parent organization now recommends. You can read more about this here.

The era of post-deception medicine is finally here.