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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11794

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Steinman MA, Baron RB.
Is continuing medical education a drug-promotion tool?: YES
Can Fam Physician. 2007 Oct; 53:(10):1650-3
http://www.cfp.ca/cgi/content/full/53/10/1650


Abstract:

In recent years, industry sponsorship of continuing medical education (CME) has grown rapidly and now accounts for up to 65% of the total revenue of CME programs in the United States.1,2 In Canada and the United States, national guidelines state that “independent” programs should maintain scientific objectivity and independence of content and receive commercial support only through unrestricted funding mechanisms.3–5 Despite the technically unrestricted nature of such industry-funded programs, however, substantial conflicts of interest and the potential for undue commercial influence persist.6 …


Notes:

Free full text in English and French

 

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963