![\"dress\"](\"http:\/\/s.wsj.net\/public\/resources\/images\/OB-HW433_logo_D_20100316152542.jpg\"){kind=logo}
The Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen took aim at tight ties between professional medical groups and Big Pharma today and came away with a bit of a red face over a red dress.<\/p>\nThe Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen took aim at tight ties between professional medical groups and Big Pharma today and came away with a bit of a red face over a red dress.<\/p>\n
Here’s the tale: During a session at the American College of Cardiology, Cardiologist Nissen charged that the American Heart Association issued a tepid statement on a study linking a prediabetes condition called metabolic syndrome with consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages such as those from Coca-Cola. The reason, he said, was Coke’s participation in the heart group’s red-dress campaign (see the logo above), intended to raise awareness about heart disease in women. The logo is currently on many cans of Diet Coke.<\/p>\n
“You can’t take the money and be independent,” Nissen said.<\/p>\n
Trouble is, while the heart association’s Go Red for Women campaign uses a red dress, it isn’t linked with Coke. The red-dress campaign Nissen was thinking about is run by the government’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and Diet Coke helps sponsor it.<\/p>\n
The heart association doesn’t take any money from Coca-Cola, Clyde Yancy, a Baylor cardiologist and AHA president, told the Health Blog. “The assertion that a scientific statement from the AHA has been [influenced] by a corporate relationship is totally disqualified,” Yancy said. <\/p>\n
Oh, well. Nissen, a past president of the ACC, also faulted the cardiology college for granting continuing medical education credits to docs attending a Merck-sponsored seminar where an experimental Merck drug was discussed. Four speakers at the seminar were consultants for Merck. The drug eventually failed a late stage trial and wasn’t approved. Nissen called the program marketing, not education. <\/p>\n
A Merck doc took issue with that description, but ACC’s CEO Jack Lewin considered it close to the mark. “That is wrong. It shouldn’t happen,” he told the Associated Press. “We can do better than that.” The ACC has taken strong steps to curb industry influence in physician education. <\/p>\n
Nissen has long faulted industry funding<\/a> for medical groups. And he has oftenbeen right<\/a> in taking on industry on drug-safety issues going back several years.<\/p>\n Image: The Heart Truth logo is a trademark of HHS<\/em><\/p>\n The Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen took aim at tight ties between professional medical groups and Big Pharma today and came away with a bit of a red face over a red dress. Here’s the tale: During a session at the American College of Cardiology, Cardiologist Nissen charged that the American Heart Association issued a tepid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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