According to a NY Times article published yesterday, more than 200 Harvard Medical Students and sympathetic faculty are on a war path to weed out the influence of pharmaceutical corporations on their education.

In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.

Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.

Does it surprise me? Yes and no. Yes, because it’s Harvard. No, because I’m cynical.

Harvard has fallen behind, some faculty and administrators say, because its teaching hospitals are not owned by the university, complicating reform; because the dean is fairly new and his predecessor was such an industry booster that he served on a pharmaceutical company board; and because a crackdown, simply put, could cost it money or faculty.

The rub. I know I’m just the ideological kid who doesn’t know how “the real world works,” but I feel as though most patients wish their doctors to receive the best medical education possible, the type of education that values science-based medicine and not politically-based bullshit. I’m proud of these students for standing up for such an insidious influence on their medical education; I only hope the faculty will listen.