SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Dermatology’s policies that regulate conflicts of interest among members of its guidelines panels are “pretty good, but could be improved,” Lionel G. Bercovitch, MD, said at the annual meeting of the American Academy Dermatology.
One positive step might be to tighten the current American Academy of Dermatology requirement that more than half of the members in clinical guideline work groups be free of any financial conflicts and the minimum be raised to a higher percentage, such as more than 70%, suggested Dr. Bercovitch, a professor of dermatology at Brown University, Providence, R.I.
Mitchel L. Zoler/Frontline Medical News
Dr. Lionel G. Bercovitch
But his concern over the adequacy of existing conflict barriers during the writing of clinical guidelines wasn’t shared by Clifford Perlis, MD, who countered that “there are reasons not to waste too much time wringing our hands over conflicts of interest.”
He offered four reasons to support his statement:
- Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous and thus impossible to eliminate.
- Excluding working group members with conflicts can deprive the guidelines of valuable expertise.
- Checks and balances that are already in place in guideline development prevent inappropriate influence from conflicts of interest.
- No evidence has shown that conflicts of interest have inappropriately influenced development of treatment guidelines.
Mitchel L. Zoler/Frontline Medical News
Dr. Clifford Perlis