Academic Emergency Medicine Can Print Pharmaceutical Advertising While Not Compromising Its Mission or Its Integrity

We advocate a sensible position, which would permit our society and our journal to accept pharmaceutical advertisements, while compromising neither our mission nor our integrity. It is time to change our journal's practice and permit such advertising. We assert that limited industry advertising could serve positive educational and financial values of sufficient importance to compel a change from AEM's current "no industry advertising" practice. Academia and industry have a commensal relationship. Academia is in the business of creating new science through cutting-edge research and then disseminating this information via peer-reviewed scientific publications. Shaywitz and Stossel point out that, "...the goal of medical research is not to publish papers, but to develop new treatments for people suffering from disease."16 When viewed as a means of publicity and not as a means of endorsement, with transparency of interaction and with a lack of any quid pro quo, pharmaceutical advertising represents a legitimate function for our journal and extends and enhances the underlying goal of medical research. Maintaining unnecessary barriers between academia and industry only serves to prolong the gap between the availability and the widespread implementation of new and useful medical "tools."13 Adoption of the policies and principles advocated by Rothman et al.7 to govern industry advertising in AEM would provide intelligent guidance to permit our society to take a measured and balanced step forward, in a manner that maintains the ethical high ground, while permitting the financial benefits of advertising that will accrue.