Senator Charles Grassley is not the only one working to reveal financial ties between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. In November, a group of more than 200 students and faculty at Harvard Medical School asked the administration to expand the school’s conflict-of-interest policies. Students had already convinced the school to require professors and lecturers to disclose relevant financial ties to pharmaceutical companies when discussing drugs in class. In November, the group asked that professors at the teaching hospitals and institutes affiliated with Harvard also disclose their ties to industry. Today, The New York Times reported that a 19-member committee organized by the school’s dean will meet to re-evaluate these policies on 5 March.

In addition to the students’ demands, Harvard is facing external sources of pressure. In 2008 The American Medical Student Association, which grades medical schools on how well they track and curtail industry interaction with faculty and students, gave Harvard an F. Unlike schools such as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who received A’s, Harvard does not currently ban faculty from accepting personal gifts from pharmaceutical companies. We’ll have to wait to see if Harvard makes substantial policy changes and whether more medical schools follow suit.

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