Continuing Medical Education, a great American tradition described here, is under attack by the government, and by universities.
Daniel Carlat’s on the case; he’s reproduced on his blog an ad — no, not an ad! A call to arms! — running in medical journals and magazines that alerts fellow Americans to the chilling effect of efforts to transform CME from free vacations paid for by drug firms that want you to prescribe their pills and use their devices, to evidence-based, serious seminars run by independent scientists. (Here’s another description of the ad.)
If CME junkets, which after all make everyone happy — the doctor who gets a free vacation, the salesperson who gets a captive audience — are undermined, the very foundations of this nation will begin to tremble.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:01PM
Instead of phony advertising, we need to hear what the Coalition for Healthcare Communication says about the corruptions of commercial CME by compromised academic KOLs. This is why groups from the Institute of Medicine to the Macy Foundation have recommended an end to corporate funding of CME. What kind of corruption? Oh, things like Alan Schatzberg pushing his company’s underperforming drug in a Lilly-sponsored CME program on depression. Or Charles Nemeroff pushing his corporate client Janssen’s drug Risperdal for depression, even though the report he “authored” was retracted. Or Zachary Stowe going beyond the scientific record in order to push AstraZeneca’s drug Seroquel for depression in a CME Outfitters program sponsored by AZ.
No, the Coalition will wave the flag and appeal to misguided patriotism/first amendment rights in order to distract attention from the shit that goes down every week in commercial CME.