Conflict of Interest

Professional Medical Organizations and Commercial Confl icts of Interest: Ethical Issues
ANNALS OF FAMILY MEDICINE ✦ WWW.ANNFAMMED.ORG ✦ VOL. 8, NO. 4 ✦ JULY/AUGUST 2010
*.pdf available on request
ABSTRACT
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. Confl icts 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 fi nancial self-interest. Accepting funds from commercial sources that seek to infl uence 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.
Ann Fam Med 2010;8:354-358. doi:10.1370/afm.1140.
See Heim for a related article: http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/8/4/359