TY - JOUR T1 - THe proactive management of “relationship with industry” by acc/aha in the creation of our cardiovascular clinical practice guidelines—reply AU - Mendelson T, Meltzer M, Campbell EG, Caplan AL, Kirkpatrick JN Y1 - 2011/09/26 N1 - 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.426 JO - Archives of Internal Medicine SP - 1598 EP - 1600 VL - 171 IS - 17 N2 - 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. SN - 0003-9926 M3 - doi: 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.426 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2011.426 ER -