Interacting with the Pharmaceutical Industry

It is time to stop hiding our heads in the sand when it comes to interactions with the pharmaceutical industry! This is an issue of reality, not ideology. In an ideal world there would be no industry sponsored research and no potential for tainted research. In an ideal world there would be no need for marketing of new drugs to physicians or to the public and all the savings would be passed on to consumers. In an ideal world there would also be no crime, no disease (and no doctors), and no war; everyone would look like they just walked off the set of Baywatch, and no one would have to work unless they wanted to! The reality is that there is not enough money in all the governments or independent organizations in the world to fund the all research that is necessary, and so some funding must also come from the pharmaceutical industry. It is also reality that marketing campaigns work, whether it be to physicians or to the lay public. It is time to stop the rhetoric about conspiracy theory (what I sometimes hear people say would make a good episode for the X-Files) and get down to the business of creating a framework that will in every possible manner limit bias and maximize objectivity in conducting, reporting, and using the results of clinical trials. Whether as investigators or educators in emergency medicine, interaction with the pharmaceutical industry is inevitable. Rather than attempting to naively avoid it, we can use such interactions to enforce ethical conduct and scientific Upcoming CAL/AAEM Officers & Board of Directors Elections Call for Nominations