Industry Support and Professional Medical Associations
- Norman Kahn, MD nkahn@cmss.orgCouncil of Medical Specialty SocietiesChicago, Illinois
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DERMATOLOGY
- CONFLICT OF INTEREST
- DERMATOLOGY
- DRUG INDUSTRY
- EDUCATION, MEDICAL, CONTINUING
- EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES
- MEDICAL DEVICES
- SOCIETIES, MEDICAL
- SURGICAL EQUIPMENT
To the Editor: In their Special Communication, Dr Rothman and colleagues1 noted that “extensive literature has documented the influence of gifts on individual physicians.” To my knowledge, there is no similar evidence showing that commercial support of continuing medical education (CME) has the same influence, either on physicians or on their professional medical associations (PMAs).
The best current evidence is a study commissioned by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and not published in the peer-reviewed literature.2 Additional high-quality evidence in this area would add to this already valuable national discussion.
It is critical to recognize the implications of the difference between relationships of individual physicians with industry and grants from industry to PMAs for independent CME. Based on the evidence, few of the authors' recommendations follow convincingly. One which does, however, is that committees crafting clinical practice guidelines should be composed of members without ties …
