The Association for Medical Ethics has drafted its Ethical Rules of Disclosure which it believes are key to medical reform and must include full disclosure, crucial for independent validity and integrity of research. The organization says it will present its disclosure guidelines to President-elect Barack Obama’s team to help with medical reform policies. Boy, this all sounds so good! Physicians and the medical industry have suddenly changed and want to be open about all the money changing hands. That is, it sounds good until you find out that while they say physicians and academics should have no “Substantive Financial Interest” that creates unacceptable conflicts, they define this term as “receipt of greater than $50,000 from industry in one calendar year.”

To read the guidelines for Ethical Rules of Disclosure by the Assn. for Medical Ethics, go to Ethic Soup blog at:

http://www.ethicsoup.com/assn-for-medical-ethics-ethical-rules-of-disclosure-of-money.html

Sharon McEachern

My brother has been a pharm rep for years and he has closets of crap that he can’t get rid of because of drugs being taken off market and/or changing companies!

I have to say though all the years of stuff I’ve seen from him a pen that looked like a real syringe with purple ink was pretty cool.