It is official, you can no longer get a free meal at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual meeting.
Under intense scrutiny from the media, the APA’s Board of Trustees voted this month to phase-out industry-supported symposia along with industry-supplied meals at its annual meetings.
According to the APA, with this move, the APA remains at the leading edge of a trend throughout medicine to increase transparency and reduce potential financial conflicts of interest. Symposia at major medical meetings that supply doctors with continuing medical education (CME) credits are sometimes funded by pharmaceutical companies, a practice that has invited a concern that the sessions may be biased in favor of the sponsoring company’s medications.
“Although we took great care to avoid biased reporting at all our symposia, we came to the conclusion that the only way to totally eliminate the risk is to have the symposia supported by the APA alone,” said Nada L. Stotland, M.D., M.P.H., President of the APA.
The decision includes the elimination of industry-supplied meals that were provided during the industry-supported symposia. “There is a perception that accepting meals provided by pharmaceutical companies may have a subtle influence on doctors’ prescribing habits,” said James H. Scully Jr., M.D., the APA’s Medical Director and CEO.
“While industry-funded meals used to be normal operating procedure at medical meetings, a sea of change is currently underway in how we manage industry relationships,” he said. “What was acceptable five years ago isn’t necessarily acceptable today. Change is necessary, and the APA wants to stay at the forefront of a new and better way of doing things.”
It is unfortunate that medical societies have gone the way of self-flagellation. As they noted, the APA took great care to avoid biased reporting.
It is not like the media is going to say, hey great job except for 15 seconds, they should expect that the next move will be to eliminate their exhibit hall, any banners-posters advertising a product, and why stop there, they will next ban poster sessions conducted by industry experts, advertisements in journals. This is a never ending cycle to stop all relationships with industry.
I wonder if this will stop companies from paying for meals for their international attendees or meetings held without the cooperation of the APA, doctors want to learn and sometimes learning over dinner is a great use of time.
I guess from now on APA participants will have to wait in line for breakfast at the local Denny’s.
Wall Street Journal Blog: Psychiatrist Stop Taking Money from Drug Makers