I am seeing a very strong trend of allowing pharmaceutical employees to speak to clinician and patient groups about their products in lectures set up by industry. I have attended many CME based and non CME lectures and I can say that I have hardly seen a neutral or unbiased lecture when a pharma employee delivers the message. What happened with allowing private investigators from medical schools, private practice and the public sector to speak instead?
I think it is time to put an end to this trend. The FDA should monitor this behavior and mandate that companies use neutral third parties to deliver treatment information to clinicians and patients.
It would be nice to see all pharmaceutical companies donate money to a large educational entity from medical schools or other venues so that a conglomerate of funding is placed in a pool that would be used for setting up educational programs for clinicians and patients. This entity would be audited yearly by an ethics and content review panel so that information is kept unbiased and all useful public domain information is provided to people who would benefit from it without selectively choosing what data sets to use to drive a message.
I know this is possible!