From a Philadelphia Inquirer profile of Senator Charles Grassley:
Jerome Kassirer, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and an expert on conflicts of interest, applauds Grassley’s efforts [to go after academic physicians guilty of conflict of interest], but wants changes that would abolish speaking fees, trips, and other payments to doctors that help drug companies promote their point of view.
“Transparency is only a partial solution to conflict of interest,” Kassirer said.
Grassley has told him he’s just getting started.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:15AM
You’ve mentioned Dr. Kassirer before. As the former editor of a major medical journal – as was Dr. Marcia Angell – it is a little difficult to blow these folks off as ignorant wackos…
Carl Elliot is a professor of Biomedical Ethics here at Minnesota. At Minnesota this job is similar to the one held by the Maytag repairman. From an interview Carl gave to MPR last September:
"If the problem is that you think getting all this money from a pharmaceutical company is a conflict of interest, than the solution is to eliminate the money," Elliot said. "The solution is not to say, ‘Alright you can still take the money, but you have to report it to someone’. I can’t see how that’s going to fix anything."
(I am slightly less hardcore than Carl, but he has a point.)