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The Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) recently released its Code for Interactions with Companies, a document designed to “guide medical specialty societies in the development of policies and procedures that safeguard the independence of their programs, policies, and advocacy positions.” The ACC, as a leader in transparent, ethical relation-ships with industry, not only signed on to this code, but played a pivotal role in developing it. The College has had great concern for some time about ensuring that proper firewalls be established between educational grants and other funding provided by industry. The ACC also has long had rigorous policies in place for members of writing committees for our scientific documents. These policies help ensure that our relationships with drug and device companies never influence the scientific or educational materials produced by the College. For the past two years, we have been transparent about all industry funding received by the organization — this is available to all on our website (www.cardiosource. org). Many of our policies have been incorporated into the CMSS Code for Interactions with Companies.
The College has been working to strengthen its policies on relationships with industry (RWI) for several years. During our 2008 Industry Forum, assembled leaders from the ACC, other societies, Congress, industry, and the Food and Drug Administration discussed the potential for a single, consistent policy for specialty societies to use to self-regulate RWI. The College committed to leading the charge on this policy. In the spring of 2009, ACC General Counsel Tom Arend began meeting with other specialty organizations to work on a joint document.
The Code does not include many significant changes from common practice for most medical specialty societies, but it does codify certain principles. For example:
• No officer may have a direct RWI during his or her tenure.