Physicians who take continuing-medical-education courses at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are often getting a slanted perspective that benefits the drug companies that are sponsoring the classes, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

The newspaper says an investigation it conducted reveals that doctor-refresher courses at Wisconsin frequently advocate prescription medications over drug-free therapies and omit important information about potentially deadly side effects.

It cites a number of examples, including an online smoking-cessation course bankrolled by Pfizer. The course recommends prescribing the company’s drug Chantix, but it fails to mention the drug’s potential side effects, as well as possible links to suicide, the newspaper reports.

The report says four of the nine continuing-medical-education courses the university offers online are paid for by industry and free to doctors, while physicians have to pay for university courses without industry backing.

“All CME courses at UW are evidence-based, free of commercial bias, and are designed to help physicians provide optimal, state-of-the-art care of patients,” said George Mejicano, director of the university’s Office of Continuing Professional Development.

Arnold Relman, a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said medical schools nationwide are letting drug companies slant the content of physician-training courses. “It’s unethical, and it is not in the public interest because it is going to bias doctors to use certain drugs,” he said.

Conflict of interest has been a hot-button issue at the University of Wisconsin, which is generally regarded as having strong policies to police such problems, but which has recently faced scrutiny over a renowned surgeon’s ties to a medical-device manufacturer.

Concerns about bias have prompted some medical schools, including Stanford University’s, to restrict industry support for doctor-training courses. —Katherine Mangan