Conflict of Interest

My initial response was a polite, professional equivalent of: Thank you but…are you sure your company is asking the right person? You know what kind of doctor I am?

They assured me that I was indeed who they wanted. I agreed, vaguely intrigued — pretty sure that their manager was going to have something to say about this.

I sent in my talking points, as requested, thinking that would be the end of that. But, no, they just thanked me. Later, I sent in my slides ahead of the event, as requested. Again ,they thanked me and were looking forward to my talk.

I am a cynic so I couldn’t processed it: a company that made drugs was giving me not only permission – but inviting me and compensating me – to talk about de-prescribing and disease prevention? How was that in their interest?

Now, I had an internal conflict. On one hand, I could not do the talk, and stick to my principles, my pristine record never having had a single conflict of interest to declare. That is, never having received any industry funding/ fees. (that infamous Big Pharma €) But it wasn’t so simple: I had the opportunity, at an event discussing chronic disease and drugs, to get on my soapbox and preach to the potentially yet-unconverted about how we should not be making chronic disease care just about prescribing more and more drugs with worse and worse outcomes.

So, earlier today, I talked to docs – and some reps from the pharma industry – about disease prevention and lifestyle management and de-prescribing drugs.

Conflict of interest? On paper, maybe. But I’ll sleep well, my principles uncompromised. If I’m conflicted anywhere, it’s that torn feeling between my baseline cynicism but also now this grudging admiration for pharma company for including lifestyle medicine in its education programme.