Conflict of interest

Medical students have risen up and forced faculty to begin disclosing ties with the medical industry – pharmaceutical companies particularly – at Harvard.

I wouldn’t be surprised if education-industry ties in other schools start getting scrutinized as well.

And thinking beyond interactions between medical school faculty and the medical industry, you should certainly start asking tough questions of your professors’ affiliations.

Think pharmacology teachers mixing overzealous praise of cholesterol-lowering drugs into extended lectures of dosing regimens and methods of action.

The more I learn about the actions of Big Pharma – its relative profits compared to other companies, its strategies for grasping and maintaining market share – the more difficult it is to see its good works.

I’m blind to any potential benefits of collaboration between academia and industry. They’re there – somewhere. It’s just too hard to discern anything from the angry fog that accompanies the lack of oversight.

These days I avert my eyes when driving by the Eli Lilly building in downtown Indianapolis.

My pride for a company so close to home marketing some pretty revolutionary drugs, contributing to myriad area causes and charities and employing countless friends’ parents has yielded to quiet, smoldering exasperation and anger.

I’m reluctant to believe that companies are actively attempting to indoctrinate students.

But I reserve a particular disdain for any professors with teaching responsibilities sprinkling praise of products and companies for which they have financial interests in their lectures.

They should know better.

If only I knew who they were.

The American Medical Student Association released a scorecard grading medical schools on their monitoring and control of drug industry money.

Funny story: My own institution is currently grade-less. It’s “putting in place policies” to regulate faculty-industry ties, according to the association. But as of yet, if you want any details, forget about it.

Of course IU has a conflict-of-interest policy, requiring tenured and tenure-track professors, visiting faculty and researchers to disclose potential financial conflicts of interest.

But is there anything about full disclosure to students as part of a lecture or instructional activity, like you might see in a conference or poster presentation?
Why wouldn’t there be?

Medical education is clearly having problems with transparency. Attempting to find out the details is like hearing side effects in drug advertisements – low-pitched and rapid-fire.

The curious can scan faculty and lab Web sites for resumes that might mention an association with a company, but it can quickly get tedious, and there is obvious opportunity for subterfuge.

I concede that ties between industry and academia are in some ways – financial ones, mainly – necessary and in other ways, despite my skepticism, beneficial for both.

But I shouldn’t have to worry, nor should students at schools around the country, that the professor teaching me about the effectiveness of an experimental, unproven treatment for rheumatoid arthritis or inflammation is getting paid by the company that invented it.