Medical Students Rally for Greater Disclosure of Faculty/Pharma Financial Ties

In general, I believe that medical students should spend their time hitting the books rather than engaging in various forms of social protest. However, I have just discovered a situation where it seems to be that a medical student "action" would be warranted (see: Harvard Med Students Might Want to Look Up Charles Grassley). Below is an excerpt from the note from the WSJ Health Blog:

Medical students, unite! It’s time to fight for your right to know your profs’ drug-industry ties! That’s what’s happening over at Harvard, where some 40 students rallied recently on the steps of Harvard Medical School’s Gordon Hall. Along with some folks from Tufts and Boston University, they were waving signs and pushing for tighter conflict-of-interest policies vis-a-vis Harvard docs and pharmaceutical companies....As the [Harvard] Crimson tells it, students have been trying for six years to get the administration to tighten its conflicts policies, both in the classroom and at the affiliated hospitals where the students train.  One idea they’re pushing is to require faculty and students, while talking about drugs in the classroom, to disclose any ties to the makers of those drugs. Harvard’s dean for faculty and research integrity, Gretchen Brodnicki [said that] the administration is taking the students’ concerns seriously. But she noted some practical issues, especially when it comes to the hospitals, which Harvard does not own or operate. The school can’t “force” affiliated hospitals to change their existing policies to line up with what the medical school requires internally, she said. She added, though, that the hospitals’ policies “go well beyond where we stop.”

I have covered in previous notes the problem of non- or inadequate disclosure of payments from Big Pharma on the part of medical school faculty (see: Medical Schools Share Some Blame in Scandals Involving Pharma Payments to Faculty; On the Corrosive Influence of Big Pharma on Academic Physicians). Clearly the faculty self-reporting system to medical school deans is not working, at least for some schools. As I noted in my note cited above, the medical schools need to share some of the blame. Here's my specific language:

...I don't think that the medical schools should emerge from these scandals untarnished. How is it possible for major medical schools to be "incapable of policing their faculty’s conflicts of interest." I can assure you that these institutions each employ hundreds of personnel in their research administration divisions to manage and audit research grants and contracts to the penny. And the reason for such diligence is obvious -- not to do so puts their research enterprise into jeopardy and such funding is the major sources of revenue for them.

The quote above from Harvard Medical School Dean Gretchen Brodnicki about the hands of school administration being tied regarding teaching hospital policies is a total "cop-out" and gives me little cause for optimism. The fact that Harvard Medical School does not "own" its teaching hospitals should not act in any way as a barrier for the harmonization of faculty ethical and conflict of interest policies across the various affiliated institutions.

Comments

[Ajit Alles]

Even though Harvard does not own these hospitals I presume that the physician/teachers have adjunct appointments as Harvard Faculty. Why doesn't the school withdraw these appointments if the Physicians refuse to disclose their Pharma contacts? They could also publicise the names of physicians refusing to comply. If regulations don't work maybe bad publicity will.