http://www.wma.net/e/press/02_05.html


5 April 2002
PHYSICIANS' CONFLICTS OF INTEREST MUST BE TRANSPARENT, SAYS WMA

Moves by the medical profession to ensure greater transparency by
physicians about their conflicts of interest have been set out by Dr
Delon Human, secretary general of the World Medical Association.
Speaking today at an international conference in Warsaw, Poland, Dr
Human said the profession could do more in this day and age to disclose
conflicting interests. This was as relevant to physicians in the
consulting room, in clinics and in hospitals as it was to physicians
engaged in medical research.

The WMA had recently revised the Declaration of Helsinki to make it
clear that medical researchers must provide ethical review committees
and potential subjects of research with information about funding,
sponsors, institutional affiliations and other potential conflicts of
interest such as incentives for subjects. In addition, these funding
sources had to be declared when research was published.

 When it came to physicians as practitioners, the International Code of
Medical Ethics declared that a physician must "not permit motives of
profit to influence the free and independent exercise of professional
judgement on behalf of patients". And the WMA's Statement on
Professional Responsibility for Standards of Medical Care recognised
that patients had the right to be cared for by a physician whom they
knew to be free to make clinical and ethical judgements without
inappropriate outside interference.

Dr Human said the American Medical Association had recently published a
new Code of Medical Ethics, which provided that payment to physicians
for the referral of patients was unethical, as were payments or
compensation from drug companies for prescribing their products. The
Code also drew attention to other conflicts of interest, such as health
facility ownership by physicians, and the sale of non-health-related
goods from physicians' offices.

Finally, Dr Human said that gifts to physicians from industry were "the
kinds of temptations to which physicians are all too often exposed" and
he emphasised that no gifts should be accepted if there were strings
attached, such as prescribing or underwriting medical conferences.

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