Martha Rosenberg: Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Martha Rosenberg: Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Raise your hand if you've breathed a sigh of relief seeing your doctor had a CME (Continuing Medical Education) certificate next to the medical school diploma on the wall.

Did your doctor pass Bipolar Disorder: Individualizing Treatment to Improve Patient Outcomes, Part 2 "taught" by Trisha Suppes, MD, PhD and offered by CME Outfitters?

Suppes is a Professor in Stanford's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and funded by Abbott, AstraZeneca; GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, Wyeth, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Shire and four more drug companies.

Maybe your doctor passed Quadrivalent HPV Vaccine May Be Effective in Women 24 to 45 Years Old -- which sounds like a sales pitch for Gardasil because it is -- which "studies" a Lancet article written by Nubia Munoz, MD, two Merck employees and other authors.

Sample question: "What was the main conclusion of the current study by Munoz and colleagues of HPV vaccine among women between the ages of 24 and 45 years?" (Italics CME's) Hint: the answer is in the title.

Upon "completion on this activity" offered by CME giant Medscape, part of the WebMD monolith -- still available for credit if you hurry -- "participants will be able to: "Specify the currently recommended age range for the administration of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine" and "Describe the effects of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine among women between the ages of 24 and 45 years."

Maybe your doctor passed Medscape's Innovative Approaches to Vaccination Challenges: Overcoming Barriers for Adult Patients sponsored by -- surprise! -- vaccine makers Novartis, GSK and Merck and meaning sales barriers. ...

...

Last year Bernard Carroll, MD a former chairman of psychiatry at Duke, challenged the objectivity of a CME Outfitters course called Atypical Antipsychotics in Major Depressive Disorder: When Current Treatments Are Not Enough (what are they trying to say?) funded by Seroquel maker AstraZeneca and taught by disgraced Emory University psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, MD who lost his department chairmanship from unreported drug industry income.

Two doses of Seroquel were tested but only the results of one were "statistically significant," writes Carroll on a blog called Health Care Renewal. "One of the junior presenters stated very clearly that there was 'significant improvement in both response and remission with both doses' of Seroquel. That is a falsification of the scientific record."

In October AstraZeneca agreed to pay $520 million to settle Seroquel suits and investigations of "physicians who participated in clinical trials involving Seroquel," presumably on which safety was established, and a JAMA article red flags Seroquel's metabolic proclivities in which studied children gained a pound a week and more. Yet AstraZeneca still seeks FDA approval to market Seroquel to kids. ..