Pfizer Gives Stanford $3M for CME
In an apparent effort to suppress criticism of industry bias in continuing medical education (CME), Pfizer is giving Stanford $3 million to produce such programs without condition. Specifically the grant will not stipulate therapeutic areas of interest for the educational activities—a major departure from current, recognized standards for US-based CME. A full report, with soup-to-nuts opinions from physicians on Pfizer's new type of pooled CME grant to the university, is available in today's NYT.
However...however.
Decisions have apparently been made that Stanford's Pfizer-funded CME will concentrate on diabetes, cardiovascular disease, smoking cessation, and infections, reports the paper. All of these therapeutic areas are of potential interest to the monolithic company.* For example, Pfizer makes Chantix, a smoking-cessation drug; the blockbuster statin Lipitor; and Caduet, a combo calcium-channel blocker/statin.
Now whether bias is inherent in a CME grant that merely specifies a therapeutic area is up for debate. For instance, see the comments here.
And for the historical record:
- Last year, Pfizer announced that it would no longer directly provide CME grants to medical education communications companies (MECCs), presumably because of the perception of bias in MECC-produced CME.
- In 2004, Pfizer agreed to pay the government $430 million to settle allegations of promoting Neurontin (gabapentin) off-label. One alleged off-label outlet: Pfizer-funded CME.**
* Implying here that it might be hard to find a therapeutic area that is not of interest to Pfizer.
** Also 2 months ago, it was revealed that the protocol-defined primary endpoints in company-funded trials of Neurontin were often changed.
