RT Journal
A1 Mendelson T, Meltzer M, Campbell EG, Caplan AL, Kirkpatrick JN
T1 THe proactive management of “relationship with industry” by acc/aha in the creation of our cardiovascular clinical practice guidelines—reply
JF Archives of Internal Medicine
JO Archives of Internal Medicine
YR 2011
FD September 26
VO 171
IS 17
SP 1598
OP 1600
DO 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.426
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2011.426
AB 
We appreciate the difficulty organizations face in producing guidelines that garner the trust required to be effective. The adoption of the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) policy by the ACC was an important step. However, if one extrapolates the logic of requiring that the chair and majority of guideline committee members be free of conflicts, one could imagine moving to a committee 100% free of COI, especially given our finding of a substantial pool of nonconflicted experts with guidelines experience. The counterargument is that excluding crucial experts will diminish the quality of guidelines. But why not ask these crucial individuals to choose between guideline-writing participation and industry relations? Divestiture of industry affiliation is required of key society leaders in the CMSS policy.2 The same could be applied to guidelines committees, which are no less important.