The Editor’s Dilemma

Abstract

Correspondence: George O. Waring III, MD, FACS, FRCOphth, 36 Willow Glen, Atlanta, Georgia 30342. Tel: 404.642.2848; E-mail: drgeorge@georgewaring.com doi:10.3928/1081597X-20100609-01 C oncern about physicians being unduly infl uenced by drug and device manufacturers is an active topic within medical organizations and in the lay and professional news media. The fear is that company gifts, sponsored seminars and getaways, and paid consultancies seduce, obligate, or brainwash physicians to prescribe certain drugs, to select certain instruments or devices in their practice, or to make recommendations through lectures and publications based on their personal allegiance to the gracious companies rather than based on their clinical, scientifi c, and evidence-based information. The recipients may become biased toward the generous companies, compromising their personal integrity and presenting to the public an image of corporate allegiance trumping patient care. A panoply of safeguards has included prohibitions of companies’ contributions to physicians and their practices and organizations; constraints on sales personnel; elimination of seemingly small gifts (see page 621 of this issue); requirements for disclosure of industry relations by speakers and authors; and university regulation of income from research grants, consultation fees, and academic honoraria. Recently, the Council of Medical Specialty Societies—of which the American Academy of Ophthalmology (and by association the International Society of Refractive Surgery) is a member—promulgated a “Code for Interaction with Companies,” recommending that individuals in a society’s presidential succession and editors-in-chief of society journals (such as the Journal of Refractive Surgery) be free of direct fi nancial relationships with medical industries during their tenure (www.cmss.org/codeofconduct). To include journal editors seems appropriate because the editor-in-chief makes the fi nal selection of manuscripts to publish after peer review. These published articles are the gold standard for information in the profession, enshrined in digital databases indefi nitely.