Harvard Professor starts non-profit, opposes doctor-pharma ties scrutiny of conflicts of interest

A Harvard Medical School Professor is against the scrutiny of pharmaceutical industry ties and physicians being investigated. Inside Higher Ed has the story:

From the article:

"Thomas Stossel, the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is spearheading a new nonprofit professional organization that is, according to Stossel’s preliminary description, “to be a forum for what we believe is a hitherto silent majority of individuals engaged in clinical service, medical education and medical innovation ready to oppose a small but well organized and well-funded coterie responsible for an anti-industry movement."

AND

"Harvard Medical School, for example, is reviewing its conflict of interest policies after Grassley last year uncovered that psychiatrist Joseph Biederman of Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital received $1.6 million from companies that produced the drugs he used to treat children for bipolar disorders. Part of the push for review of conflict of interest policy came from Harvard Medical students who lobbied for faculty to be subject to a full disclosure policy. Also last year, the National Institutes for Health froze funding for an Emory University depression study because of a conflict of interest involving Charles Nemeroff, chairman of the psychiatry department and the study’s principal investigator. Nemeroff collected, but mostly did not disclose, about $2 million from pharmaceutical companies that, in some cases, produced the products he was using in his research."

AND

"There has been a McCarthy-style witch hunt going on here. I believe the standard should be that you’re innocent until proven guilty,” Markowitz said. “Can I tell you everybody is on the up and up? No. But there are people in every profession who will behave dishonorably, and no rules anywhere will stop those people from doing that.”

The most egregious cases making recent headlines -- the Nemeroffs and Biedermans -- are not excusable, Markowitz said, but are bound to happen with or without more extensive regulation of the physician-industry relationship. Bad apples are a fact of life, he said."

Click here to continue reading "Conflict With My Interests", at Inside Higher Ed.

Addendum: Read this hilarious satire-- by Pharma Giles :

Part of it

"The Forum for University Corporate Kickbacks in Education as Determined by University Professors (FUCKEDUP), slated to hold its charter conference this month, will be led by a steering committee consisting of physicians from Dry Prong Medical School, the State University of Louisiana and the Catsup Clinic."

The pens, the meals, who’s going to fall on their sword for that?” he said. “What we want is large amounts of cash in plain brown envelopes, and now.”

“Rest assured, we at FUCKEDUP will be doing our utmost to discredit and smear our critics whilst ensuring that the backhanders still continue to roll in for us,” Tossall states, “just like every other pharmaceutical industry funded forum…”