Most U.S. medical schools do not adequately limit gifts, payments from pharmaceutical industry, report finds

Most U.S. medical schools do not adequately limit gifts and payments from pharmaceutical companies to physicians and students, according to a report released on Tuesday by the American Medical Student Association, the New York Times reports.

For the report, which AMSA began to compile in November 2007, two evaluators issued letter grades on the conflict-of-interest policies of 150 medical schools.

According to the report, only seven schools -- including Mount Sinai School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and three University of California medical schools -- received grades of A. The report also said that 14 medical schools received grades of B and that 15 schools received grades of F. The 16 medical schools that declined to submit their conflict-of-interest policies and the 29 schools that did not respond to four requests for their policies also received grades of F, according to the report. The report also said that 28 medical schools currently are employing efforts to revise their conflict-of-interest policies. AMSA plans to update the grades, which appear by medical school on the Web site AMSAscorecard.org, on a regular basis.

Brian Hurley, president of AMSA, said that conflict-of-interest policies at medical schools are "incredibly important to protect the educational experience students have at a school and the quality of education they're getting." Sidney Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, said, "Most of the medical school bureaucracies are getting too much money and other forms of largess from the drug industry to initiate these healthy, long overdue policies on their own" (Harris, New York Times, 6/3).