From puritanism to McCarthyism

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 6, July August 2007, Page 301 Letters
By: Michael A. Ross, MD, FRCSC

Most normal people would expect the medical school of UBC to encourage any medical education and learning. But perhaps you should be morally informed. Between the hour of 07:00 and 08:00 on St. Valentine’s Day the Section of Otolaryngology was edified by a harangue on “Ethics in CME,” ex cathedra, UBC. 

We were dissuaded from attending medically instructive meetings sponsored by drug suppliers if their logo was on the same page as the list of speakers, if the trade name of their product was mentioned, if there were any inducements to defray travel costs, if the meeting was held in a five-star restaurant, “with a wine cellar,” etc. In the real world, the various costs to the physicians are greater than that to the drug companies. We are not bought. Calculating the commuting time to and fro, added to the duration of the meeting (at MSP evening rates) the cost of travel and parking, we arrive at a figure far exceeding the best meal in town (without the imponderables of another deadline, postponing other tasks, further separation from family, etc.). No evidence-based conclusions were provided for immoral collusion, just innuendos, and perceptions.

UBC has the responsibility for ensuring respectable guidelines for medical education but should separate religion from reason.

—Michael A. Ross, FRCSC
Victoria
 

Competing interests

Dr Ross has no financial or other interest in the pharmaceutical industry.

Michael A. Ross, MD, FRCSC. From puritanism to McCarthyism. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 6, July, August, 2007, Page(s) 301 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply