In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.
Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.
“I felt really violated,” Mr. Zerden, now a fourth-year student, recently recalled. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”
… Harvard [received an] F grade … from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.
[The last dean] was such an industry booster that he served on a pharmaceutical company board…
(One Harvard professor’s [now-required] disclosure in class listed 47 company affiliations.)…
new york times