The Boston University School of Medicine’s Continuing Medical Education office received a $50,000 unrestricted educational grant from Purdue Pharma in 2010, a company being sued by the Massachusetts attorney general for allegedly misleading the public about its drugs’ risks, particularly regarding addiction and overdose.
The lawsuit was filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in January and states Purdue Pharma “created the [opioid] epidemic and profited from it through a web of illegal deceit.”
The lawsuit also alleged the company deceptively promoted Purdue opioids at BU through a $50,000 “program on opioid prescribing for chronic pain.”
Gina DiGravio, the associate director of Media Relations at BUSM, wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press BU did receive a $50,000 unrestricted educational grant from Purdue as partial funding for a safer opioid prescribing continuing education program.
“These funds were used with strict adherence to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards for Commercial Support which require that the education be developed completely independently of input from any funding source,” DiGravio wrote. “That is, the funder had no input on the content covered during the program or the faculty who taught it.”
