I know I'm really late in posting this link, but I just wrote an article about it last week and didn't get around to watching it until then. So, with no further ado, check out this videocast of the Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing from late July, called Medical Research and Education: Higher Learning or Higher Earning?, starring ACCME's own Murray Kopelow, MD, among other illustrious folks. I don't know how he kept his cool after hearing ACCME get bashed repeatedly during the first panel's testimony, particularly that of Steven Nissen, MD, Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. I mean, really, he actually said, to Dr. Kopelow's face, that “Maybe [ACCME doesn’t] have resources, maybe they do not have the will. We need ACCME to go away.”
The problem the pro-commercial support people had (and I call them that for a lack of a better term) is that they threw either a lot of anecdotes or a lot of data, but not the kind of sound bites legislators can hear, digest, and understand. I'm not saying our elected officials are incapable of understanding all the nuances of accredited CME and its financial support system, just that they don't have the time or the inclination to parse every tiny bit of it the way you and I do. I hope they do go through the reams of info Dr. Kopelow put in his written testimony (also available for download here, with everyone else's as well), but I doubt it. The whole hearing seemed stacked against commercial support from the get-go to me.
