Dr. Daniel Carlat knows all too well how easy it is for doctors to be seduced by drug industry money.
In 2002, he earned $30,000 in speaking fees to promote Wyeth's antidepressant Effexor XR to fellow doctors.
"I quit doing it because I felt I was beginning to push some ethical boundaries in terms of what I was saying and what I was not saying," said Carlat, a psychiatry professor at Tufts University in Boston who believes doctors need to cut their financial ties with drug companies.
"My own story was really nothing special," he said in a telephone interview. "I made $30,000 for the year, which is less than some of these doctors make in a weekend."
..."It is self-evidently absurd to look to a company for information about a product it makes," Dr. Marcia Angell of Harvard Medical School and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said in a telephone interview.
"Why can't doctors, who are among the most privileged members of society, pay for their own continuing medical education?" Angell said. "Why have they abdicated that responsibility to the companies who make drugs?"...
The above is a little expert from an article that appeared in Reuters, today. This is not just in the U.S. This prevails in almost every part of the world and I have personally witnessed this is India. A well qualified doctor in his mid 40s, who runs a medium sized hospital (quite a big one infact) is the secretary of the Association of specialized doctors and he handed me a signed phamplet whose title read "You sponsor, we prescribe", a notice on behalf of the association seeking sponsorship from pharma companies for prescribing their products. That was the worst moment of my career as a Medical Representative. Many doctors would shamelessly ask me for compliments that comes from the company. Some placed orders for Medical journals and books, making me wonder what my job was. Am I a medical representative who carries the product information or a business executive who is trying to buy doctors for a pharmaceutical company. And most pharmaceutical companies sponsor doctors (will I be offensive if I use "Bribe" instead of "sponsor"). "Corporate doctors" get the gifts from pharma companies and prescribe their products happily and the ultimate looser is the poor patient who pays a high consulting fees and buys costly drug when cheaper/alternate options are available.
Only a very few doctors who I met during my short tenure of 5 months were really looking for scientific information from a medical representative. I really respect those doctors who really practice professional ethics and I wish all doctors be more responsible in their profession and do not become puppets in the hands of pharmaceutical companies. After all, they are professionals.
