When Your Doctor Goes to the Beach, You May Get Burned

[Guest guest]

From the Science section in today's NY Times:

When Your Doctor Goes to the Beach, You May Get Burned

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.

A doctor I know maintains a fairly typical relationship with the

pharmaceutical industry.

He deplores its influence on medical practice and worries that his

colleagues' prescribing habits are increasingly swayed by omnipresent

drug advertisements and sales agents pumping new products.

Regarding his own independence and integrity, though, my friend has

no doubts. He feels that, as a man of science, he is trained to

recognize an advertisement when he sees one, and to file it away in

that corner of his brain reserved for potentially biased

information...A handful of studies have looked at the common practice

of giving doctors free drug samples and have shown that it

unquestionably induces them to prescribe drugs they would otherwise

avoid. The other gifts also appear to bring a nice return...

Leonie

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Read the rest here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/health/policy/24ESSA.html