JAMA: ACC President Rebuts — JAMA Call for Banning Industry Relationships with Professional Medical Associations

Total separation between the profession of medicine and the drug and device industry would cause irreparable harm to our patients by the lack of new therapies in the future— much more harm than the assumed bias produced by prohibiting industry funding of an education program.

Industry must be able to call on the expertise of the medical community to develop new drugs and devices and this should not be viewed as a conflict.

Physicians should be able to conduct industry funded clinical trials or consult with industry without being tainted with an assumption of lifelong misbehavior.

This is the sentiment of  Relations With Industry: Thoughts on Claims of a Broken System published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) by Alfred A. Bove, MD, President of the American College of Cardiology.  

The article is a response to the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) Special Communication by the Institute of Medicine as a Profession (David Rothman, PhD and Katherine DeAngelis, MD)  titled: Professional Medical Associations and Their Relationships with Industry a Proposal for Controlling Conflicts of Interest. For  a (summary of the JAMA article) which calls medical societies to adpot a total separation from industry.

Dr. Bove points out that faulty assumptions guided the recommendations.

To assume that physicians would not be responsible for providing the best patient care for their patients after being associated with an industry study or consultation is inappropriate. 

He correctly asserts that the  JAMA authors cited isolated examples of errant physicians who received large sums of money from industry then promoted their products.  The JAMA authors presume that all physicians are represented by these few and that we (all physicians) have a price. The Authors’ assumptions imply that physicians as a group are not responsible people, yet physicians are amongst the most responsible professionals.

This is a very rational response to an irrational article; it is encouraging to see society presidents standing up to JAMA and this jihad against physician industry collaboration.

JACC: Presidents Page:  Relations with Industry: Thoughts on Claims of a Broken System

Policy and Medicine:  JAMA: Calls for Ban on Industry Contributions to Medical Societies