RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Professional Medical Organizations and Commercial Conflicts of Interest: Ethical Issues
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 354
OP 358
DO 10.1370/afm.1140
VO 8
IS 4
A1 Brody, Howard
YR 2010
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/8/4/354.abstract
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.