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(NaturalNews) The American Psychiatric Association is considering a proposal to scale back the practice of allowing pharmaceutical companies to fund continuing education seminars, as a way of attempting to limit the companies' influence on doctors' prescribing habits.

One of the psychiatrists who introduced the proposal is Daniel Carlat of Tufts University, who received $30,000 from Wyeth in 2002 to promote the company's antidepressant drug Effexor XR.

"I quit doing it because I felt I was beginning to push some ethical boundaries in terms of what I was saying and what I was not saying," Carlat said.

In light of recent scandals over prominent psychiatrists failing to disclose payments from drug companies, a number of pharmaceutical companies recently adopted a set of voluntary restrictions on gifts to doctors. Although the companies have agreed to stop giving out small gifts like pens, many critics are saying the rules do not go far enough.

"Most people see the ban on trinkets as being a small step in the right direction but not really the major source of worry or concern," Carlat said. "I think much more important is the fact that companies are paying for legitimacy in different ways by hiring doctors to give talks and hiring companies to put on continuing medical education. As long as that continues, it is really hard to see that medical practice won't continue to be biased toward always prescribing the newest and most expensive drugs, even when we don't have much clinical experience with them."

The new voluntary industry guidelines specify that any funding for continuing education must go to seminars that promote "a full range of treatment options, and not ... a certain medicine."

Many health professionals insist, however, that the very idea of drug companies paying for doctors' education is inappropriate.

"It is self-evidently absurd to look to a company for information about a product it makes," said Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Why can't doctors, who are among the most privileged members of society, pay for their own continuing medical education?"

Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com.

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