April 2009br /br /Two hundred Harvard Medical School students are confronting the school’s administration, demanding an end to pharmaceutical industry influence in the classroom.br /br /The students worry that pharmaceutical industry scandals in recent years, including criminal convictions, billions of dollars in fines, proof of bias in research and publishing and false marketing claims, have cast a bad light on the medical profession. The students have criticized Harvard as being less vigilant than other leading medical schools in monitoring potential financial conflicts by faculty members.br /br /Harvard received the lowest possible grade, an “F,” from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.br /br /The students were joined by Dr. Marcia Angell, a faculty member and former editor in chief of the emNew England Journal of Medicine/em, who has vigorously advocated for an end to liaisons between academia and the drug industry.br /br /The revolt began when a first year medical student “grew wary” when a professor promoted cholesterol drugs and “seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.” He later discovered that the professor, a full-time Harvard Medical faculty member, was a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including manufacturers of cholesterol drugs.br /br /The school said it was unable to provide annual measures of the money flow to its faculty. The dean, Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, says that the Harvard Medical faculty may lead the nation in receiving money from industry, as well as government and charities, and he does not want to tighten the spigot.br /br /strongDr. Grout’s Comment:/strongbr /br /The statement made by David Tian, 24, a first-year Harvard Medical student, sums it up: “Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education. And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes.”br /br /When students can’t get straight answers about how to treat a href=”http://www.arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/articles/cholesterol.html”high cholesterol/a and what the side effects of a href=”http://www.arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/articles/crestor.html”statin drugs/a are, its no wonder that the next generation of doctors is being indoctrinated into the drug-based model of disease management.div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4769404502414351890-944359886738055821?l=arizonaadvancedmedicine.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div