Harvard Pharma Influence:
Harvard's Pharma Influence Earns Ivy League University an "F"
by Craig Weatherby
Courtesy of Vital Choice SeafoodHarvard Medical School just got an F from the American Medical Student Association, which rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.
Its chief rivals fared better, with the AMSA awarding an A to the University of Pennsylvania, B’s to Stanford, Columbia, and New York University, and a C to Yale.
According to faculty and administrators interviewed by The New York Times, Harvard has been swayed because its teaching hospitals are independent and because reforms could cut funding from big pharma firms, or drive faculty to defect.
First-year Harvard Medical student David Tian, 24, said to the Times: “Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education. And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table ...” (Wilson D 2009)
As Time magazine put it, “… it turns out that many professors and instructors are, legally, on the dole as well, and students are beginning to worry that what they're being taught is just as one-sided as what patients are being prescribed.” (Kluger J 2009)
To find your favorite medical school’s ranking, see the American Medical Student Association’s report, "Conflict of interest policies at academic medical centers."
Political campaign finance forms the root of the problem
The drug companies’ influence over academia is only part of the unfortunate picture.
Many Congresspersons take drug money -- few other corporations spend more on lobbying and campaigns -- so it is unsurprising that its members make the legislative and funding decisions they do.
These bad decisions essentially bar highly promising -- but non-patentable -- foods and nutritional supplements from getting the costly research needed to gain FDA approval as legitimate preventive and/or therapeutic agents.
Instead, the public is force-fed a false belief in the synthetic drugs made by well-heeled private firms with the $250 million-plus it takes to gain FDA approval of health claims… which are highly lucrative only with regard to single, patentable chemicals.
Why isn’t Congress spending relatively small sums to pay universities to conduct the Phase I, II, and III clinical trials needed to gain approval for health claims?
This money would be paid back a thousand-fold in greatly reduced healthcare costs to Medicare.
Naturally, the politicians’ campaign-finance patrons in big pharma firms don’t want them to support creation of any non-patentable competitions.
So here the American people sit … at the tender mercies of Pfizer, Merck, and company. It’s sad, really.
Even the laudable med students behind the scorecard don’t go nearly far enough.
Their list of Federal policy recommendations doesn’t even touch on the research-funding and patent issues related to natural products and supplements.
At least they're a step in the right direction!
Editor's note: We consider organic whole foods from both plant and animal kingdoms to be a major key to superior health. We also think it's terribly important to eat fish at least twice a week to get the essential fatty acids. Here at our house, we only eat wild Alaskan salmon and other wild seafoods from our friends at Vital Choice. Click here to visit Vital Choice Seafood.
Sources:
American Medical Student Association (AMSA). Conflict of interest policies at academic medical centers. Accessed online at http://www.amsascorecard.org/
Kluger J. Time. March 06, 2009. Is Drug-Company Money Tainting Medical Education? Accessed online at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1883449,00.html
Wilson D. Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary. Accessed online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/business/03medschool.html
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