So goes Harvard, so goes the nation’s top tier medical schools?

Harvard Medical School, starting in January, is putting a “firewall” between its name and faculty participation in outside ventures ranging from promotional talks to gifts, travel and meals.

The issue of  what is an appropriate faculty role when a professor is one of the leading experts on a disease or a drug has plagued medicine for decades. Most recently, abroad, there were claims that outside consultants with ties to vaccine makers influenced the World Health Organization’s pandemic assessment. The WHO has denied those charges.

The growing pressures on medical costs is so great that any academic’s role in encouraging what may be excessive or inappropriate use of medications or devices.

The Boston Globe

“Harvard Medical School will prohibit its 11,000 faculty from giving promotional talks for drug and medical device makers and accepting personal gifts, travel, or meals, under a new policy intended partly to guard against companies’ use of Harvard’s prestige to market their products.”

Source: Boston Globe, July 21, 2010