UC Davis Med School’s conflict of interest policies among best

A little late on tis post but still wanted to point out this story in the Davis student newspaper (California Aggie – UC Davis Med School’s conflict of interest policies among best). They report that:

The American Medical Student Association recently conducted a ranking of medical schools based on their policies regarding free gifts from pharmaceutical companies. UC Davis was one of only seven schools nationwide who received a grade of “A” – meaning the school has a comprehensive policy that restricts pharmaceutical company representatives‘ access to both campuses and academic medical centers.

Good to see this. I find the layers of real and potential conflicts of interest in medical research in general to be very poorly handled by the community. Not that basic science is immune to this problem either but it seems worse in medical research. For some scathing commentary on conflict of interest in medical research, keep an eye on Steven Salzberg’s blog. Every once in a while he has some juicy stuff to discuss.

Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis View all posts by Jonathan Eisen