Word: pharma
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...There's always been reason to worry about the influence of Big Pharma on the practice of medicine. When doctors are being lavished with meals and speaking fees by the likes of Pfizer and Merck, can you really trust them when they later write prescriptions for those companies' drugs? Medical schools were long considered above such vulgar stuff. Now, however, 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. Campaigns...
...facts, they argued, justify their outrage. Of Harvard's 8,900 professors and lecturers, 1,600 admit that either they or a family member have had some kind of business link to drug companies - sometimes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars - that could bias their teaching or research. Additionally, pharma contributed more than $11.5 million to the school last year for research and continuing-education classes. The Times covered these details in its stories and included the damning fact that during the November demonstration, a Pfizer employee was on campus photographing protesters with a cell-phone camera. Pfizer...
...protesters, it should. But there are some gray areas. Medical-school professors get their jobs in the first place because they know their fields. Forbid such educated people to consult with the companies that develop new medicines and you cut off a valuable source of knowledge. What's more, pharma's largesse also flows to the schools themselves in the form of multimillion-dollar endowments. Whether or not the companies are trying to curry favor, they're also building labs and bankrolling scholarships - something that becomes increasingly important as the deteriorating economy causes philanthropic giving...
...companies at universities is a controversial topic. We are often rightly cautioned that becoming too closely tied with industry may lead us to lose sight of our public interest mission. Yet when a major pharmaceutical company takes the lead in promoting access to medicines in developing countries, following Big Pharma would bring us more in line with our own core values as an educational nonprofit...
...call for corporations engaging in medical research to recognize our responsibility to patients and the public. It presents a challenge to the entire Harvard community, including faculty, administrators, overseers, technology development officers, and students, to build a better access policy that will allow us to meet and surpass Big Pharma in the arena of good global citizenship...