I live in a country where the media compete with each other to fool the most
people on April 1 so I'm always on guard about anything published that day.
Ironically, this year on April 1, JAMA published an editorial piece titled
'Professional Medical Associations and Their Relationships with Industry: A
Proposal for Controlling Conflict of Interest' co-authored by many prominent
leaders in various specialties, including one former head of the AAP, about
the urgent need to distance physicians from industry because of 'real or
perceived' conflict of interest, and how that should be accomplished.  They
advocate a zero (null) tolerance for money changing hands. They advocate
prohibiting companies from putting their logo on books to give to doctors,
and clearly separating commercial exhibits from scientific conferences, even
to the point of placing them so that participants do not have to pass
through the exhibit area in order to attend lecture sessions.  Gifts are
completely taboo.
It wasn't an April Fool's prank either, though JAMA ran it with a
no-nonsense disclaimer, saying it expressed the opinions of the authors and
not of the AMA nor of the editors of JAMA. Go figure.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway, where all IP addresses in the country have access to
JAMA for free, just like to the Cochrane database and the British Medical
Journal. 

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