Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary page

[SerialSinner]

"Thank god" for our "fringy" Primal blogosphere.



[quote]

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.</blockquote>





source: http://2.ly/c33

[maba]

My naturopath was talking to me about how Medical Education is influenced by drug companies and he said, according to some survey, Harvard was the most-influenced by the Big Pharma.


ETA: Yeah, this is what he was talking about.
[quote]

Harvard should be embarrassed by the F grade it recently received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.</blockquote>

[Iceskater]

Its this sort of thing which has made me disillusioned about med school. I&#39;ve recently read &#39;On the take : how medicine&#39;s complicity with big business can endanger your health&#39; about the insidious influences in healthcare. I threw out my dad&#39;s statins yesterday, those skewed claims based on faulty science especially drive me crazy. Thanks for the blurb, SS.

[nina_70]

Unfortunately I&#39;m not suprised by this at all. I spent 4 years in research (materials science research mind you, but nonetheless). The #1 concern of my prof, and his students was always about getting funding. You gotta have money to survive. Publishing papers came in second...the actual research third.


I&#39;ve actually came across the dilemma during my resarch years that the results people were getting were at odds w/ the sponsor. I&#39;ve seen people been told not to publish (this is from a well-known school by the way). So, that&#39;s when I quit doing research altogether and went into sales/marketing.


So, unfortunately sponsors DO have a significant influence on education & research. I am pro-free-market so I&#39;m not saying sponsorship should be banned (alot of valuable research DOES get done out there thanks to companies willing to fund it), but I do think you need to be careful when reading & analyzing research and listening to profs who have vested interests.

[Shine]

Is there any sort of assessment for conflicts of interest regarding teaching professionals and their business engagements? As someone who is headed into the teaching profession someday, I hesitate to suggest that teachers&#39; private activities should be monitored. Nonetheless, I think that it is reasonable to expect teachers not to have a vested interest in the lecture material.

[nina_70]

[quote]

Is there any sort of assessment for conflicts of interest regarding teaching professionals and their business engagements? </blockquote>


Shine - none that I know of, and I&#39;m not clear it would be practical or sensible to implement. If there is a gross conflict of interest I&#39;m sure the issue could be raised to the department head or dean, but there would have to be a pretty clear problem.

[Shine]

Good point about practicality, Nina. It&#39;s a really dubious area and I cannot imagine how some sort of "oversight" would possibly be implemented without spending lots of money and violating teachers&#39; privacy. Plus, from the complaints I hear about teaching salaries, I really hesitate to suggest something that would restrict outside business ventures. But there is still something about it that bothers me.

[SerialSinner]

It baffles me that we are still talking about statins and low-fat to cure metabolic-syndrome-related-complications. The literature is THERE to enlighten anyone interested in at least questioning CW. It does appear to be all about big pharma, but maybe the fringe will grow and start to take over?


I sometimes wonder if public fundraising could be a good tool to finance research. It would require civil organizations to "translate" complicated issues in a more non-scientist-friendly language and hold researchers accountable for bad fund use, but maybe it could be put into practice.

[lbd]

If you publish research, you are supposed to make a disclosure statement at the end about any connections/influences you might have. I don&#39;t know how closely that is monitored, but I have seen those disclosures. It is something I point out to students when I teach them about bias in science.