The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell

Author:Marcia Angell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781588362117
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

Pretending Drug Companies Are Educators

Why do doctors pretend they believe drug companies are interested in education? (Some of them may actually believe it.) The answer is: It pays. Membership dues would be far higher if professional societies were not supported by industry. Doctors would also have to pay for their own continuing medical education. In addition, they would lose the travel and entertainment and other emoluments too many of them have come to believe are entitlements of their profession. Many doctors become indignant when it is suggested that they might be swayed by all this industry largesse. But why else would drug companies put so much money into them? As Stephen Goldfinger, chairman of the APA’s Committee on Commercial Support, said, “The pharmaceutical companies are an amoral bunch. They’re not a benevolent association. So they are highly unlikely to donate large amounts of money without strings attached. Once one is dancing with the devil, you don’t always get to call the steps of the dance.” 10

Big pharma, for its part, insists that it has an educational mission that can be separated from its commercial interests. The 2002 PHRMA Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals begins with the statement that “relationships with healthcare professionals . . . should be focused on informing healthcare professionals about products, providing scientific and educational information, and supporting medical research and education.” 11 In other words, big pharma insists it is in the education business. Then it goes on to recommend that companies not provide payments or gifts to doctors unless they serve an educational or research purpose. (Precisely how gifts serve such purposes is never explained.) In case there is any confusion, the code presents a series of hypothetical scenarios. Here are a couple:

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