You might have noted that the previous entry on this blog was written by Coco Ballantyne, who recently joined the journal as our News intern. I’m confident she will blog about far less frivolous things than the one I’m going to write about today, so please join me in giving her a warm welcome.

Now, check out this entry from The Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog. In a nutshell, companies are beginning to restrict the freebies they give away at meetings, keeping them from doctors who work in specific parts of this country. For example, Lilly won’t give you a cup of frozen yogurt if you have prescribing authority in Minnesota or if you are a government employee in New York.

This priceless initiative, of course, finds its origins in the criticisms that pharma companies have received for giving doctors expensive gifts, which have been regarded as an attempt to bias the choice of drugs that physicians prescribe. As the pharma industry seems to want to comply with state regulations that limit the gifts that they can give to doctors in some places, it seems that companies are pulling all the stops (no matter how silly) to make sure they remain on the safe side. I’m sure that some pundits who are obsessed with transparency in biomedicine are celebrating this victory of what I call “CFI fundamentalism”.

Anyway, Minnesota docs, don’t worry. Our marketing department just created some very neat Rubik cube-like toys to advertise the different journals that NPG publishes on cancer. They may not be as tasty as that frozen yogurt but, if you come to come by our booth at a future meetings, you’ll be very welcome to take one of them home with you.