Med School Students May Reject Gifts

Many members of the Class of '81 at the Medical School are considering rejecting the free textbooks, stethoscopes, and black bags that are offered to them by various pharmaceutical companies, a member of the Student-Faculty Committee at the Med School said yesterday.

Alan Hamilton, a first-year Med student, said many students have been offered free textbooks, but there has been a low acceptance rate because students are "questioning the ethics" of the gifts.

Several pharmaceutical companies donate, without solicitation, various pieces of equipment and books to the students to promote their products, and to make the students and physicians more aware of the newer, brand name drugs on the market.

The cost of promoting each product per physician ranges from about 50 cents to $1 to the companies, which send gifts to students at many medical schools. In a year this amount to approximately $1500 to $2500 per physician. Howard G. Goldsweig, assistant medical director at Ives Laboratories in New York, wrote this week in a letter to The New York Times.

Rational Drug Use

This money, however, is spent to inform doctors how to use drugs "intelligently and rationally," Goldsweig wrote.

Goldsweig's letter was in response to another letter in The Times, from Andrew Marks, a second-year student at the Med School, who claimed that many medical students feel the gifts are more a promotion for the drug companies, and a way of influencing physicians to use the drugs of the donating companies.

"Doctors are encouraged to over-prescribe highly advertised drugs," Marks wrote. He said the companies' influencing of physicians starts as early as first year med school, when the drug companies donate the stethoscopes and other aids to the students.

It is important, Marks said, that drugs be "marketed on the basis of their value to the patient, not their value to the drug companies."

Lack of Ethics?

Now the members of the Class of '81 are beginning to sense a lack of ethics in the donations of the companies, Hamilton said. Last year, the Student-Faculty Committee voted to reject the products offered by the drug companies, and this may happen again, he said.

Since the arrival of the textbooks, some students have suggested an organized rejection of the stethoscopes and bags, which have not yet arrived, but are expected to soon, Hamilton said. If possible, the Class of '81 would like to have a 100 per cent rejection, he added.

The matter may soon be brought up for class referendum, at which time the Student-Faculty Committee will make a final decision. So far, however, the committee has not had a formal meeting concerning the donations.