Probing Doctor and Pharmaceutical Industry Ties
Three papers published recently examine ties between industry and doctors in the US. They suggest that drug and other companies invest heavily in encouraging doctors to use and recommend their products and that despite recently published ethical guidelines by various professional bodies, many doctors are overstepping the mark when accepting reasonable favors, education and "freebies", ostensibly in the interests of patients. One paper, by a former drug rep and a physiology professor who researches drug marketing, looks at how drug reps are trained to influence doctors to buy their drugs and is published in PLoS Medicine. Another paper in the same edition of the journal looks at the impact of sales visits for one drug in particular. A third paper publishes the results of a national survey on doctor-industry relationships and suggests these are very common and vary according to specialists, type of practice and professional activity. It is published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
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