By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent

Doctors who receive money from drug or medical device makers are expected to reveal those payments when speaking at professional meetings or submitting a manuscript to a medical journal. A new study led by Boston researchers found that the accuracy of physicians' disclosures fell short when compared to what orthopedic device makers reported.

Dr. Mininder Kocher of Children's Hospital Boston and his New England Journal of Medicine co-authors took a list of payments made to surgeons by five companies that develop and market knee and hip replacement implants. The information was published on company web sites in late 2007 as part of a settlement with the US Department of Justice, as this Globe story reported.

Before the March 2008 annual meeting of the Academy of American Orthopedic Surgeons, physicians who were making presentations or serving on committees for the meeting were asked to list payments they received that could indicate potential conflicts of interest. About seven out of 10 physicians disclosed financial relationships that the device manufacturers had already made public, the authors concluded.

"The thrust has been voluntary disclosure from the physicians," Kocher said in an interview. "Our study would suggest that that may not be so accurate and is difficult to validate."

Massachusetts has made a strong showing in a $348 million federal grant program that encourages biomedical researchers to engage in high-risk projects with the potential to accelerate the translation of research discoveries into treatments.

Eleven of 42 Transformational R01 grants are flowing to scientists in the state and 12 of 55 New Innovator award winners are based here. One of 18 Pioneer Award recipients is from Massachusetts. All three programs from the National Institutes of Health are designed to spur exploration that may have been deemed too risky in past rounds.

Dr. Mark Gendreau flew from Boston to Orlando, Fla., recently and didn't like what he saw.

An emergency medicine specialist at Lahey Clinic and Tufts University, he was dismayed by what his fellow passengers weren't doing, in light of swine flu's spread around the world.

"I was horrified to see that most of my fellow passengers failed to periodically wash or sanitize their hands," he writes in an op-ed article in the New York Times. "Keeping our hands clean is critical, because aside from being directly coughed or sneezed upon by an infected passenger, we are most likely to catch a virus by touching a hand or an object like a seat, an overhead bin or plastic seatback tray that is contaminated with invisible droplets full of microorganisms (the bugs can survive there for many hours), and then touching our own mouth, nose or eyes."

Hand-washing is more practical than screening air passengers, but people need help to do it, he writes. And passenger cabin air quality should also be improved, he adds.

"Airports and airline personnel should be fully trained in infection control measures, and alcohol-based gel hand sanitizers should be available throughout airports and aboard aircraft," he says. "The cruise ship industry has been doing this for years."

Rhesus monkeys Canto (left) and Owen (right) are among the oldest subjects in a 20-year study that found calorie restriction can slow aging. Canto, 27, is on a restricted diet. Owen, 29, is on a normal diet.
CREDIT: University of Wisconsin-Madison, photo by Jeff Miller

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

Scientists have long known that dramatically cutting calories can extend the lives of yeast, flies, and rodents, discoveries that have sparked a fevered quest for a human fountain of youth.

In labs in Cambridge and elsewhere, researchers are searching for drugs that would mimic the effects of calorie restriction, and products based on this intriguing idea are already widely sold as anti-aging nostrums -- though there has been little evidence that they work in humans.

But today, researchers reported that rhesus monkeys on a low-calorie diet live longer and healthier lives, a finding two decades in the making that suggests, because monkeys and humans are genetic cousins, such diets might slow aging in people, too.

"For 70 years, people have been wondering whether this phenomenon that occurs in rats might also occur in humans," said David Sinclair, a pathology professor at Harvard Medical School who was not involved with the study. "What this paper says is while we don't know for sure, we've got one extra point on the side of the people who believe it will work in humans."

The four medical schools in Massachusetts earned passing grades for their conflict-of-interest policies in a new report card issued by a medical student's organization, including a jump from F to B for Harvard and a change from I to D for Tufts.

The American Medical Student Association's PharmFree Scorecard gave Bs to Boston University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School for their guidelines governing interactions between pharmaceutical companies and medical students and faculty members. Tufts University School of Medicine got a D. Last year's grade was and I for "in process" while the school was working on its policy.

Tufts University has helped a Texas surgeon take care of some unfinished business, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

In 1959, Dr. David Lichtman, now chairman of the orthopedics department at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, enrolled in a three-year undergraduate program at Tufts that would result in a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology once he completed medical school, the story says. But he left Tufts, transferring to the State University of New York while a medical student and making a commitment to the Navy.

After earning his medical degree, he spent 30 years as a surgeon in the Navy, retiring as a rear admiral in 1994. But he never got his bachelor's.

"I didn’t think I needed a bachelor’s degree because I figured I was going to graduate from medical school," Lichtman, now 67, told the Star-Telegram. "But because it went unfinished, I used to have dreams that I went back to Tufts."

Linda Dixon, secretary to the board of trustees at Tufts and a classmate of Dr. Lichtman’s, said the university decided to award him a four-year degree after hearing his story and getting letters of recommendation, according to the Star-Telegram.

"There are a handful of individuals like Dr. Lichtman who would lead very exemplary lives and many years later they or their children would think, 'Gosh, it would be great to finish that degree,' "  she told the Start-Telegram. "This is very unusual. But I’m sure Dr. Lichtman is very deserving since he was granted the degree."

A prominent critic of drug industry influence on healthcare is calling for the medical profession to eliminate free drug samples, asserting that they can harm patients and raise costs while serving only as a marketing tool.

Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, builds a case for banning drug samples in an essay he wrote with Susan Chimonas of the Center on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University.

"The tradition of physicians dispensing samples has many serious disadvantages and is as anachronistic as bloodletting and high colonic irrigations," the authors write in this week's PLoS Medicine. "As the profession begins to slowly extract itself from the influential grip of industry, it must also deal with the undue influence of free samples."

Psychiatry's view of schizophrenia has evolved since it was first described as an early form of dementia with a similarly grim prognosis, a Tufts doctor writes in today's New York Times.

Better treatments and a fuller understanding of its many forms have made remission and even recovery conceivable, Dr. Ronald Pies writes. But he was still nonplussed 20 years ago when a patient of his who was doing well asked him to sign off on a part of ordinary life.

"Hope is what Harry presented to me at his most recent appointment — along with a request that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. He wanted me to sign off on his application for a driver’s license," he writes. "Suddenly, I was caught between two conflicting visions: one of my patient obeying some malign voice behind the wheel, with who knows what consequences; and another of a young man yearning to get his life back."

They came up with a plan that chose hope over pessimism.

"After all, driving is what guys do — guys with a real life."

Nine scientists from Massachusetts have been elected to a national body of experts charged with advising the country's leaders.

The National Academy of Sciences today named five people from MIT, two from Harvard, and one each from Tufts and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole to its roster of scientists and engineers tasked with furthering science and advising the federal government on science and technology.

The new members are:

Gary G. Borisy, director and chief executive officer, Marine Biological Laboratory

Ralph R. Isberg, professor of molecular biology and microbiology, Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences and Tufts University School of Medicine

Tyler Jacks, professor of biology and director, David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, MIT

Rakesh K. Jain, professor of tumor biology, Harvard Medical School, and director, Edwin L. Steele Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital

John D. Joannopoulos, professor of physics, MIT

Monty Krieger, professor of molecular genetics, MIT

Daniel G. Nocera, professor of energy and professor of chemistry, MIT

Gilbert Strang, professor of mathematics, MIT

Cumrun Vafa, professor of science, Center for Fundamental Laws of Nature, Harvard University

Harvard Medical School is the top research medical school in the United States, according to annual rankings compiled by US News & World Report.

Boston University School of Medicine ranked 35th, Tufts University School of Medicine placed 45th, and University of Massachusetts Medical School came in 48th out of 126 US medical schools and 20 schools of osteopathic medicine.

In primary care, UMass ranked 7th, Harvard was 15th, and Tufts 40th. BU was among those not ranked in primary care.