Goodbye, branded notepads, pens, mousepads and stress-balls.

Pfizer's announcement that it would no longer support accredited CME programs directly through commercial providers has beleaguered medical education and communication companies (MECCs) scrambling.

"Collaboration" was the buzzword at this year's Med Ed Congress, held May 7-9 in Philadelphia, but the uncertainty surrounding continuing education was certainly top of mind.

On Jan. 14, Schering-Plough released preliminary results of its ENHANCE clinical trial, finding that Vytorin (Zocor/Zetia) did nothing more than generic Zocor alone to slow the progression of plaques—in the carotid arteries of a smallish number of patients with a familial form of hypercholesterolemia who had previously been on statins.

Sales reps could be effectively barred from circulating journal article reprints discussing off-label uses under FDA's draft guidance on "Good reprint practices," and the agency considers the policy to be effective already, even in its draft form.

Questions over the efficacy of Vytorin and Zetia could prompt a sharp pullback on first- and second-line use of the drug, according to a survey of physicians by GfK Market Measures, but docs are taking a wait-and-see approach with the drugs and remain open to new data.

In Washington, the saying goes, it's not the crime but the cover-up that gets you.

Funders of continuing medical education are becoming increasingly critical of satellite symposia.

On September 20, 2007, Sermo's founder and CEO Dr. Daniel Palestrant stepped up to the podium at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco and in less than three minutes summarized how his brainchild, an online community for physicians launched just a year earlier, has forever changed the healthcare media landscape.

Bruce Bellande, PhD, was pleased to learn that regulators accepted the materials he sent them as adequate proof of corporate separation.