Yale Daily News

I can tell you firsthand that Yale Medical students openly welcome pharm money and influence at our beloved school. Please pay no attention to a few hippies and this news article.

While I am for transparency, I would also suggest that these students get involve in asking Yale not to spend more tuition money on fancy gym and cafeteria which are driving the cost of attendance. Also the students should inform themselves on how their university is paying for teaching at medical schools and certainly they should get outraged by how much time physicians waste on the phone with managed care companies to get approval for medications. Many newspapers and especially the NY Times have written bias editorial comments on the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and physicians without doing serious investigative work. They just pick up the worse case scenario and make up a story. This is an awful way to stimulate healthy policies.

Nadim Salomon, MD

Let me get this straight: Harvard Med's grade is an F (F!), Yale's grade is a C, and some students still complain that Yale should do more (even though it is two full letter grades ahead of Harvard Med)? What am I missing?

@ #3
Who are you, George W. Bush? A C isn't a great grade, especially when Yale used to be getting A's. Yes, we're better than Harvard but there is still plenty of room for improvement (Penn got an A). And what's the big deal about doctors being more transparent? How is that harmful to them or to the university?

Nadim -

What makes you believe that the medical students are only capable of taking on one issue at a time? Of course we want a nicer gym and cafeteria; we haven't gotten either, but those would be great changes. We know how our teachers are paid - they aren't! It's a problem, and we're trying to bring attention to it. We know how much time docs waste with managed care - we're advocating for single payer national health insurance so we can get rid of these preposterous money-sucking for-profit care-averse insurance companies. And, on top of all of that work that we're already doing (not to mention trying to study for medical school), we're also trying to keep our teachers honest by getting rid of pharma's influence. Maybe you should spend some more time talking to the medical students and a little less time reading articles in the undergrad newspaper.

What people seem to fail to realize here is that AMSA is an powerless organization full of the most liberal, leftist medical students. Stating that AMSA gives us a 'C' is a joke. I am sure that NAMBLA would give us an 'F' and PETA would give us even lower. What is damn sure is that I don't care.

The greater point is that the rest of the students at the Yale University School of Medicine don't care either. My bet is that their vaguely worded online petition got less than 25% of the medical students to sign it.

On another note, when you show up as a first year, AMSA gives you free anatomy text books if you sign up (an 80 dollar value). Then they claim to be a powerful voice of medical students. If they didn't give away the free text book no one would join their club. That is the truth.

Go back to playing hacky sack.

See #6's comment and read it over and over until you understand it. AMSA is a joke.

That said, I'm all for reducing or eliminating PhRMA influence from medical education. Let's just not give AMSA any credit, since it deserves none. Its grading criteria are laughable, at best.

Faculty teach the medical students for no compensation. Now the students want to take away the sugar teat of big pharma, which has provided a way to supplement paltry academic salaries. Harumpf.