March 4, 2009--Rx

Call me naïve, but I’ve always thought that some things, some places are sacred.

Like the medical school at Harvard.

I know that premeds when in college and scrounging for the grades that will make them competitive for the most-selective med schools will sometimes do things they shouldn’t. Like cheat on lab exams. But once they enter that temple of study they can put all the fierce competition behind and be assured that though things will be challenging they will also be fair and free of the taint of commerce.

That may come later; but while in the anatomy lab or while studying pharmacology, all will be expected to excel and they will encounter professors who have given up the uncertainties of private practice for the world of academic medicine and the preparation of America’s future best physicians.

Then yesterday my bubble of naiveté was burst when I read in the New York Times how even at Harvard this is far from true. (Linked below.)

Matt Zerden, a first-year medical student taking that pharmacology class became uneasy when the professor refused to take questions from students asking about the side effects of the cholesterol drugs whose benefits he was promoting.

A little Internet searching revealed that the professor was not only a full-time faculty member but also on the payroll of ten drug companies, five of which manufactured the very drugs he had been extolling.

This could have been written off as an anomaly—who or what, after all is perfect?

But it seems Harvard Medical School is largely staffed by professors with deep ties to drug companies and other suppliers of medical equipment and services.

Thanks to students who organized themselves to insist that the school ferret out and reveal all these connections and potential conflicts of interest, students and now we know more about the depth and extent of these associations.

Thus far about 20 percent of the faculty have revealed that they are on drug company payrolls—149 to Pfizer and another 130 to Merck.

And, it turns out, that the medical school itself and its teaching hospitals are substantially subsidized by the medical industry. The specific numbers are not yet fully revealed, but these questionable relationships are so extensive that the school as a school has been given an F grade from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

The new dean is attempting to clean up the mess, which was allowed to fester under the leadership of his predecessor, who himself served on the board of a major medical products company, Baxter International, for which he received in annual compensation—are you sitting--$197,000!

So when the other day I went for a checkup, I now realize what a very glamorous young woman was doing as she roamed about among the doctors’ offices. Wearing a very short dress on which was pinned a Pfizer nametag I saw her huddling with my doctor.

After she left he and I talked about what he found when examining me—happily nothing much—and as I was leaving he tossed me a sample package of three Viagra pills.

With a smile and a wink he said, “Have a great weekend.”

I’m sure I will. I also noticed that they are manufactured by Pfizer.