New York, NY - Brigham and Women's Hospital's chief of cardiovascular medicine, Dr Peter Libby, is one of three academic physicians profiled in a New York Times story looking at physicians who have stopped accepting compensation from industry [1]. As Gina Kolata writes, Libby and others have opted to decline payments for speakers' bureaus and advisory boards so that people cannot suggest that money has influenced their opinions.

"At last, they say, when they offer a heartfelt and scientifically reasoned opinion, no one will silently put an asterisk next to their name," Kolata writes.

Libby told the Times that accepting offers from drug companies back in the 1980s seemed like part of the natural progression of his reputation in his field: he always disclosed relationships to companies and never owned stock in any of the ones he consulted for. By working with multiple companies, "he thought that he was protected from accusations of favoring any particular company's products," Kolata reports.

Last year, however, critics suggested his role in the public television series "The Mysterious Human Heart"—which he had helped to create, without receiving compensation—was tainted by his relationship with drug and device companies. This, he says, was the "wake-up call" that prompted him to stop accepting payments for speaking gigs or consulting.

Also quoted in Kolata's story, former New England Journal of Medicine editor Dr Jerome P Kassirer (Tufts School of Medicine, Boston, MA) says the number of academic physicians who refuse payments is on the rise.

Kassirer, Kolata writes, "attributes the change to publicity about conflicts and what can be almost a public shaming when researchers' conflicts are published."

"Finally, it's gotten to people," she quotes Kassirer.

Yale psychology professor Dr Kelly D Brownell (Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, New Haven, CT) and oncologist Dr Eric P Winer (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard, Boston, MA) are also profiled in the story.