Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday sent letters to Pfizer and 14 other pharmaceutical companies to request information on continuing medical education grants that they award to physicians amid concerns of potential abuse, USA Today reports. Under federal law, pharmaceutical companies cannot use CME grants to promote their medications.

In the letters, Grassley asked the companies about their plans to make their CME grants public. Grassley said the requests are part of an effort to "meet the public's demand for transparency," which "builds both trust and accountability." He cited Eli Lilly, which recently began to list CME grants on the company's Web site. Grassley said, "I'm asking other pharmaceutical organizations to follow Lilly's lead and show the public there's nothing to hide."

Alan Breier, chief medical officer at Lilly, said that the company decided to begin "(posting educational grants) last year as part of our transparency agenda to build trust and confidence (among patients)." He added, "In 2004, we were the first company to voluntarily post our clinical trials and our clinical trials data" and "found it was something that patients and doctors appreciated and embraced."

Cathryn Clary, a vice president at Pfizer, said the company is "quite proud of the funding and support we provide" and plans to make public CME grants for the first quarter of 2008 at the end of the period (Sternberg, USA Today, 2/26).