Transparency

States want info about drugmakers’ gifts to doctors | USA Today | 2.16.06

From mugs and pens to expense-paid trips, the pharmaceutical industry’s largess to doctors and hospitals has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Now, a number of states want an even closer look.

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“If a doctor needs a Caribbean vacation or a mug or a pen, he or she is probably not very successful and needs to be in another business,” says state Sen. Mark Montigny, D-Mass., who sponsored the bill.

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“The No. 1 thing that keeps government and corporate officials honest is transparency,” Montigny says. “There ought to be, online, a report that everyone can see that says doc so-and-so has taken more than most.”

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State Sen. George Maziarz, R-N.Y., sponsored a bill to require such reporting after working in an office complex that also housed several doctors.
“They would show me their gifts: watches, leather jackets, golfing trips,” he says. “Someone is paying for that.”

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States considering bills that would restrict or require reporting of gifts include^†:

1. California
2. Hawaii
3. Illinois
4. Massachusetts
5. Mississippi
6. New Hampshire
7. New York
8. Ohio
9. Pennsylvania

^† Dendrite International, National Conference on State Legislatures

Medical Students’ Exposure to and Attitudes About Drug Company Interactions | JAMA | 9.7.05

Conclusions Student experiences and attitudes suggest that as a group they are at risk for unrecognized influence by marketing efforts. Research should focus on evaluating methods to limit these experiences and affect the development of students’ attitudes to ensure that physicians’ decisions are based solely on helping each patient achieve the greatest possible benefit.

Medical Student Exposure to Drug Company Interactions | JAMA | 1.18.06

Medicine is both an idealistic profession and a business. The profession is inextricably bound to the pharmaceutical companies, and most of our journals, conferences, and therapeutics would not be available without them. I believe the article’s conclusion that “research should focus on evaluating methods to limit theses experiences . . . ” is misplaced. Rather than attempting to limit these experiences, students and all physicians must learn to recognize the pervasiveness of these experiences and develop critical and even cynical ways to deal with them.

Medical Student Exposure to Drug Company Interactions—Reply | JAMA | 1.18.06

The fading boundary between medicine and drug companies is a huge problem because information presented by drug companies uniformly favors the sponsored product. As our article summarized, this is a problem that is magnified because physicians tend to deny that they can be influenced and often cannot recognize the bias, with negative consequences for patients and huge costs for society.

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Pharmaceutical representatives will not visit if they are told not to…

TANSTAAFL, No Free Lunch, AMSA’s PharmFree and Counter-Detailing Intiative (Quicktime)