Stanford stops beating its wife…
From the San Francisco Chronicle, August 27:
The Stanford University School of Medicine, in a continuing re-examination of its relationship with industry, said it will no longer allow drug and medical device makers to control the content of continuing education programs they fund at the school.
Stanford will still accept industry funding… they just will not any longer allow the funding companies to dictate the curriculum, topic by topic, choose the speakers, and set up exhibits in and around the classrooms [and ski resorts and other places that Stanford offers CME credits… but that’s another story…] …38% of Stanford’s Continuing Medical Education course expenses were covered by pharma and device companies in the 2006-7 school year… and lest this be misunderstood to be a unique relationship, industry spent over $1.2 Billion on CME courses nationwide that same year.
As we review the Hippocratic Oath, we might light a birthday Gitanes for Charles Boyer, the French star of such Hollywood classics as Gaslight, Lost Horizon, and Algiers; he was born on this date in 1897. Boyer co-starred with Garbo, Dietrich, Bergman, and jump-started the U.S. career of Hedy Lamarr (infamous on her arrival in the States for her role in Ecstacy) by insisting on her as the foil for his Pepe le Moko character in Algiers. Indeed, it was to her that Boyer did not in fact utter his most famous line, “Come with me to the Casbah”; like “Play it again, Sam,” the line that’s most widely associated with the film was never actually spoken.
Boyer and Lamarr in Algiers (source: Atlas Shrugs)