"I don't buy that this [Massachusetts Gift Ban] will have any material effect on the convention business in Massachusetts," said Senator Mark C. Montigny.
In Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a battle ensues where the Black Knight continues to threaten King Arthur despite getting both his arms and one of his legs cut off:
Black Knight: Right, I'll do you for that!
King Arthur: You'll what?
Black Knight: Come here!
King Arthur: What are you gonna do, bleed on me?
Black Knight: I'm invincible!
King Arthur: …You're a loony!
According to The Boston Globe, this is exactly how politicians and anti-industry activists in the Bay State are reacting to the current and potential loss of convention business for Massachusetts as a result of the passage of strict restrictions on medical meetings.
These groups and politicians are making outrageous statements after two conventions (American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and American Society for Gene Therapy) announced this week they were canceling their conventions to be held in Boston, and Heart Rhythm Society communicated in a letter to the Boston Convention Bureau that, as a result of the rules, they are considering canceling five conventions between 2009 and 2021.
One consumer group and a legislator who pushed for the law, called the concerns far-fetched. Health Care for All, a Boston-based consumer advocacy group that is lobbying for even stricter regulation of industry interactions with physicians, said the medical groups are engaging in "fear-mongering" as a way to cast doubt on the new rules, which will be finalized within the next two months.
On the subject of industry, scientists are being banned from presenting posters and presentations, "That's absolutely false," said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, Executive Director of Health Care for All. "Of course company scientists can present. But having providers get education credit for that is not appropriate. It's an advertisement." If you outlaw presentations that are not continuing medical educationally–accredited, then industry scientists cannot present, why else would the associations cancel their conventions?
"I don't buy that this will have any material effect on the convention business in Massachusetts," said Senator Mark C. Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat who has pushed for years to ban industry gift-giving. "But even if it does, I would say it's completely irrelevant. We're talking about rules to protect the public health here." Translation — I do not care about the economy of Boston.
The city hosted 2,500 medical and pharmaceutical company meetings in 2007 and 2008, attended by thousands of doctors and other clinicians; hotels earned $130 million from those meetings, while the state received approximately $16 million in tax payments, according to the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. Approximately 40 percent of the city's convention business is medical-related.
One day, the politicians and activists in Boston will realize that there are serious economic consequences for their blind hate of industry, but for now, they are living in a “State of Unreality.”
The Boston Globe: New drug firm limits prompt fears of falloff in medical meetings in city.