Psychiatrists Group To Cut Some Drug Industry Ties

On Sunday, Reuters had a piece on its wire (OK, is there even a wire in wire service anymore or is it all Web-based now?) concerning a push by Daniel Carlat, a Tufts University psychiatrist, to have the American Psychiatric Association stop allowing pharmaceutical companies to fund continuing medical education programs, sometimes at lavish resorts, for psychiatrists. Carlat, who began making noise about industry-funded CMEs on his blog in 2007 (and possibly earlier in his newsletter), was asked by the APA last year to be on a panel to make recommendations to the APA board on how to handle the CME issue. The scope of the panel's recommendations are not known to me, but it's clear that some kind of change is afoot:

"Carlat and other psychiatrists have been studying the issue and have proposed that the American Psychiatric Association cut back on medical education seminars funded by drug companies.

"Dr. Nada Stotland, president of the group that represents 38,000 doctors, said the proposal is one of several the association's board will take up next month to address concerns that psychiatrists have become too cozy with drugmakers...."

"Stotland has heard a range of opinions on whether to ban industry-sponsored talks but she said the APA board will likely cut out at least some of the seminars during their meetings.

"'There are still those who feel strongly that they can hear things but it doesn't influence their practice,' she said. 'But the evidence points the other way.'"

It'll be interesting to see how far the APA goes in strangling its baby, so to speak.

Carlat deserves a lot of credit for pressing so hard on this issue, because it took some guts to stand up to the establishment in his own profession even though what he's asking his field to address probably seems self evident to us in patient land. Does it make any sense for pharma companies to sponsor CMEs (at which docs get credit towards their annual license requirements) which basically just amount to promotional exercises for their drugs and often omit any less-than-rosy details of research around those same drugs? Well, it makes sense for industry but not for doctors or patients. (Carlat's efforts also say a lot about the reach of blogs, but that's another story.)

Marcia Angell, a former New England Journal of Medicine editor, has pounded on similar medicine-in-bed-with-pharma issues in recent years. She's quoted to great effect in the Reuters piece:

"'It is self-evidently absurd to look to a company for information about a product it makes,' Dr. Marcia Angell of Harvard Medical School and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said in a telephone interview.

"'Why can't doctors, who are among the most privileged members of society, pay for their own continuing medical education?' Angell said. 'Why have they abdicated that responsibility to the companies who make drugs?'"

Those are some great questions.