I would like to thank Michael Yeo for his commentary1 which underscores the role that CMA policy has played in setting guidelines for physicians and the pharmaceutical industry. This also affords me the opportunity to further clarify the CMA guidelines and their relationship to the 2003 revision of the Rx&D Code of Marketing Practices.2
First, it should be made perfectly clear that the CMA guidelines3 apply to continuing medical education (CME) both inside and outside Canada and have not changed.
The focus of Yeo's commentary relates to the pharmaceutical industry's introduction of a provision in the revised Rx&D code that allows Rx&D companies to consider “requests from individual physicians, specialty societies, and/or academic institutions for financial assistance to participate in CHE [continuing health education] events held outside Canada.”2 As I noted in my Mar. 18 letter to the membership,4 this does not conform to the CMA guidelines. Item 24 of those guidelines limits the payment of honoraria and travel expenses to faculty.
The issue of faculty development is not currently addressed in the CMA guidelines, but will be considered for future inclusion. We understand the Rx&D code to be a work in progress and look forward to further discussions to bring the Rx&D code fully in line with the CMA's guidelines.
In summary, I think that Yeo's commentary highlights the role that the CMA guidelines for physicians and the pharmaceutical industry serve as a benchmark. We are committed to following a principled approach in the development and review of our policies in an entirely independent manner.
β See related articles pages 1273 and 1275
Footnotes
Competing interests: None declared.
Correspondence to: Dr. Dana Hanson, President, Canadian Medical Association, 1867 Alta Vista Dr., Ottawa ON K1G 3Y6; fax 613 731-7314; dana.hanson@cma.ca
References
- 1.Yeo M. Marketing Rx&D: one step forward, two steps back [editorial]. CMAJ 2003;168(10):1273-4. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
- 2.Rx&D: Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies. Code of marketing practices. Revised Jan. 2003. Available: www.canadapharma.org/Industry_Publications/Code/code_e.html (accessed 2003 Mar 28).
- 3.Canadian Medical Association. Physicians and the pharmaceutical industry (update 2001) [policy statement]. Available: www.cma.ca/cma/common/displayPage.do?pageId=/staticContent/HTML/N0/l2/working_on/ppi.htm (accessed 2003 Mar 28).
- 4.Hanson DW. Message from the president: physicians and the pharmaceutical industry. Ottawa: Canadian Medical Association; 2003 [insert to CMAJ 2003;168(6)].