*STS Circle at Harvard* [image: image.png] *Sergio Sismondo* *Queen's University, Philosophy* * * on
*Pharma's Key Opinion Leaders: Valuing Conflicts of Interest and Independence* Monday, March 19th 12:15-2:00 p.m. 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106 [image: image.png] Lunch is provided if you RSVP. Please RSVP to sts <[email protected]>@hks.harvard.edu<[email protected]>by 5pm Thursday, March 15th. * * *Abstract:* The pharmaceutical industry uses some physicians, called key opinion leaders or KOLs, as intermediaries to influence prescribing physicians. One marketing firm says, for example, that “KOL” is “a convenient shorthand for those people – usually eminent, usually physicians – who we co-opt into our development and marketing strategies.” This presentation describes the history and evolving structures of KOL management, and the industry's delicate balancing, both rhetorical and in practice, to influence or control the dissemination of medical knowledge, while maintaining the value of that knowledge by allowing KOLs to appear independent. The use of KOLs fits a broad pattern of pharmaceutical industry management of medical knowledge. This calls for attention to political economies of scientific knowledge. *Biography*: Sergio Sismondo is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at Queen’s University, Canada, and in 2011-12 is a non-resident fellow at Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics. His current research is on the political economy of pharmaceutical knowledge, exploring the industry’s development and deployment of clinical trial knowledge. Sismondo also is the author of An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell 2010) and a number of other general and philosophical works in STS. See www.sismondo.ca A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/ Follow us on Facebook: STS@Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS>
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