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End pharma influence on CME, says AMA journal

New York Janice Tanne

The American Medical Association’s ethics journal has suggested reducing drug companies’ influence on doctors’ prescribing habits by stopping the companies paying for continuing medical education (CME; American Medical Association Journal of Ethics 2006;46:357-436).

Such education is required in most US states and by many medical societies. The journal devoted its entire June issue to ways to reduce or manage drug company influence on doctors.

In 2004, more than $2bn (£1.1bn; €1.6bn) was spent on continuing medical education. Medical communications companies and medical schools depend heavily on drug companies to develop educational programmes, say the authors, Dr Adriane Fugh-Berman, an adjunct associate professor and specialist in complementary and alternative medicine at Georgetown University’s school of medicine in Washington, DC, in the United States and Sharon Batt, a doctoral fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

“Only CME [continuing medical education] activities that are entirely free . . . [Full text of this article]

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