Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14935
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Fitzgerald J.
Group drops event, says doc-gift rules too strict
The Boston Herald 2009 Jan 21
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/healthcare/view.bg?articleid=1146647
Full text:
A major medical group has canceled a multimillion-dollar convention in Boston, citing the state’s new law cracking down on free gifts, meals and other goodies handed out to doctors by the pharmaceutical industry.
Other life-sciences groups, meanwhile, are sending strong signals that they also won’t hold conventions in Boston as long as the state’s new law remains unclear and out of sync with industry gift-giving standards.
In a letter to the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, the executive director of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology said it was pulling out of its 2015 convention contract in Boston because it’s “very difficult” to find sponsorships and to provide education courses under current legal conditions.
“The re-evaluation of Boston as an annual meeting destination was prompted by the current laws in Massachusetts,” Kay Whalen, executive director of the AAAAI, wrote in her letter.
The group’s move will likely cost Boston businesses millions of dollars, as AAAAI shifts its 8,000-attendee show to another city and cancels thousands of hotel bookings in Boston.
In an interview, Whalen, whose group helps manage other medical associations, said she knows of other life-sciences organizations that are writing off Boston as a convention destination.
One of them is the American Society of Gene Therapy, which has management links with AAAAI.
The gene-therapy society’s president, Dr. David M. Bodine, said yesterday his group – which held a meeting in Boston last year – would “love to return” to the Hub. But the new law discourages convention events, such as continuing education classes, he said.
Last year, lawmakers passed the law, with the hope that banning gifts from industry groups to doctors would help control health-care costs and reduce needless use of expensive medical devices and drugs. The ban applies to meals, drinks, trips and presents.
Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of Health Care for All, which backs the gift ban, defended the new law and predicted other states will catch up to Massachusetts’ gift-ban rules by 2015.
Spokesmen for Gov. Deval Patrick – whose administration is currently hammering out specific guidelines for the new law – said the state is striving for a balance between the needs of consumers and life-sciences researchers.
