Here’s a link to a blog commentary about a new report just released by the US Institute of Medicine:
Report Calls for Stricter Regulation of Medical Conflicts of Interest. Here’s the report brief.
See also these news stories
So what happens when the president of a University becomes a member of a board of directors for a company (and received direct financial benefits) that is also a major benefactor to the University? Well, this is the situation at South Dakota State University, where President David Chicoine has joined the board at Monsanto (Conflict of interest?)…how’s this for a institutional conflict of interest?
Here’s a great quote from president Chicoine (cited in another news story)
“I thought it would be from just a practicing professional economist perspective, a great learning experience,” he said. “I think the university hopefully will benefit from an administrator that has a broader base of experience and capabilities. … I would hope what I learn there is going to be enable me to do my job better.”
In my home province of Quebec (Canada), there’s a move by the government to create an Ethics Commissioner for the National Assembly (provinicial parliament in English Canada), following a series of COI scandals that have rocked the provincial and municipal (e.g., Montreal) governments: Quebec will create ethics commissioner: Charest.
This raises an interesting question in my mind…why is it that in government, “ethics” so often has the feel of “police”? Clearly COI is an important ethical issue of politicians and government administrators, and I would hope that attention to COI (and other ethical issues) facing democratic political representatives would be a subject of concern. My worry is that attention to often goes to bureaucratic policing – in the form of “ethics officers” – and not to ethics education, or the development of effective and relevant policy that can actually guide behaviour…
An interesting twist on the problem of polypharmacy — that is, patients taking too many drugs — is outlined in this story (Profit drives drug misuse in Asia) about MD prescribing habits in Asia. In the North American context, usually the concern arises from patients shopping around for medications, or a lack of coordination of medical and pharmacy records, so that a patient ends up taking multiple drugs. But the problem can also arise when the financial incentives are such that MDs get paid for their prescriptions, as seems to be the case in some Asian countries; the end result is over-medication, adverse drug reactions, increased financial costs to patients and insurers, and even the growth in antibiotic resistance…
P.S. See this detailed analysis of the power of pharma / drug rep influence on MDs, by Chris MacDonald over at the Business Ethics Blog: Pharma Gift-Giving: Influence, Relationships, & Zero-Sum Games