… release of its report on  Reggie Bush.

Medical school professors at the University of Minnesota are just as eager to lose money on their personal promotion of pills and devices, and on the sale of their university affiliation for use on corporate-generated research papers, as the University of Southern California is to admit guilt in the Bush recruiting scandal.   

Thrilled at the prospect of losing football games, incurring financial and win-record penalties, and telling professors accustomed to $500,000 base salaries plus up to a million dollars a year in corporate supplements that they’ll have to make due on the $500,000, committees at both schools are working with brisk efficiency on sanctions and rule changes. 

Here’s an update on the work of the University of Minnesota conflict of interest committee:

After a year and a half of work, the University of Minnesota still does not have a new conflict of interest policy in place for its 450 faculty, 990 residents and 920 medical students.

… [S]ome are frustrated with the pace of the process, and say the university has missed an opportunity to draft a tough policy that protects patients.

Josh Lackner and two dozen others in the University of Minnesota medical community came up with 14 pages of recommendations to prevent conflict of interest at the U of M’s medical school last fall.

Lackner, a recent med school graduate, doesn’t see many of those suggestions in a draft document being used by med school leaders to create a new conflict of interest policy.

… Allan Coukel, director of the Pew Prescription Project, a Boston-based group that monitors conflict of interest policies at the nation’s medical schools, has followed the U’s effort to rewrite its policy. Coukel thought early on the U was headed in the right direction.

“It looks like at one stage they were considering policies that really would have put them in the first rank nationally,” Coukel said. “And now they’re circulating a document that we can say is a modest advance, but they’ve squandered a chance to be a national leader.”

… Some say it’s simply taken too long for the med school’s leadership to come up with a new document. At one point, the document was expected to be ready by April.