PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Howard Brody
TI  - Professional Medical Organizations and Commercial Conflicts of Interest: Ethical Issues
AID  - 10.1370/afm.1140
DP  - 2010 Jul 01
TA  - The Annals of Family Medicine
PG  - 354--358
VI  - 8
IP  - 4
4099  - http://www.annfammed.org/content/8/4/354.short
4100  - http://www.annfammed.org/content/8/4/354.full
SO  - Ann Fam Med2010 Jul 01; 8
AB  - The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has recently been criticized for accepting a large corporate donation from Coca-Cola to fund patient education on obesity prevention. Conflicts of interest, whether individual or organizational, occur when one enters into arrangements that reasonably tempt one to put aside one’s primary obligations in favor of secondary interests, such as financial self-interest. Accepting funds from commercial sources that seek to influence physician organizational behavior in a direction that could run counter to the public health represents one of those circumstances and so constitutes a conflict of interest. Most of the defenses offered by AAFP are rationalizations rather than ethical counterarguments. Medical organizations, as the public face of medicine and as formulator of codes of ethics for their physician members, have special obligations to adhere to high ethical standards.