18. What control is exerted by plaintiff or defense organizations on the research and educational activities of EMC?

Statement on Organizational and industry grants in support of EMC

Expert Medical Consultants, Inc. (EMC), as defined in its mission statement, organization, and business plan, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of review processes to insure fair and relevant expert medical witness testimony, with research and educational endeavors in pursuit of that mission. In support of these objectives, the organization will accept support from medical malpractice related defense and legal organizations, insurance companies and governmental entities in pursuit of its mission. The acceptance of these grants will be structured to assure that they do not inject bias or unequal focus of one aspect of the expert medical environment to the detriment of other equally significant issues. Therefore, all such grants accepted by EMC will be accepted as unrestricted research grants as to specific subject areas to be researched and published..

EMC will entertain acceptance of research grants specific to issues related to a medical specialty with agreement by all parties that the EMC Board of Directors will be the exclusive arbiters of the research protocols without oversight by a funding organization. In a similar manner as with research grants, all educational grants for seminars will accepted by EMC with the agreement that the specific educational topics will be exclusively controlled by the EMC Board of Directors in consultation with the individual authors. These policies are consistent with the medical education movement away from medical industry directed education because of the conclusion that such directed education programs have the potential to preferentially market or unfairly bias the education to the benefit of the granting organization. In a similar manner, EMC will avoid research support that requires an aspect of medical direction outside the exclusive control of the Board of Directors of EMC.