Pharmaceutical Industry Financial Support for Medical Education: Benefit, or Undue Influence?

Abstract

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, astute commentators began to call into question the degree of influence that the pharmaceutical industry was exercising over all aspects of medical research, education, and practice in the U.S. More recently, a spate of books and articles demonstrates that the issue has only become more serious in the last decade or two.My focus in this paper will be on the industry’s influence on medical education. The influence that the industry exerts on undergraduate and graduate medical education (that is, the training of medical students and residents) often occurs through the system of pharmaceutical sales representatives, who also “detail” drugs to practitioners; or through the influence that the industry exerts over medical research. I will therefore devote my attention here primarily to the system of continuing medical education (CME) by which practitioners receive information about medical advances. The pharmaceutical industry currently supports about one-half of the costs of CME in the U.S., so it seems appropriate to question the degree of industry influence over the content of CME.