Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12113

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: news

Searing A.
UNC Medical Students Ahead of the Curve
The Progressive Pulse (blog) 2007 Oct 24
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/?p=672

Full text:

While I was over at the UNC Medical School this week, I noticed a student-led effort to limit gifts and food given to doctors by the pharmaceutical industry. It’s likely a bit of an uphill battle on a campus where even a major building is named after an international pharmaceutical company but one well worth doing.

It isn’t a secret that when drug companies give gifts to doctors, those doctors are much more likely to change their prescribing habits. Expensive and brand-name drugs mysteriously start to be used more often while generics and other cheaper options – regardless of effectiveness – sit on the shelf. This has led states like Maine, Vermont, Minnesota and West Virginia to pass laws requiring pharmaceutical companies to disclose the dollar value of gifts and food they provide for doctors. Minnesota has even enacted a $50 limit on gifts.

The medical students at UNC in partnership with the national American Medical Student Association are asking their peers to decline lunches, gifts, and pharmaceutical industry funding. They are also working to make such prohibitions official at the medical school. While increasing use of old technology and rapid development of new technologies that are rushed, often without regard for efficacy, to the health care “market” are the major drivers of cost growth, the skyrocketing cost of expensive brand-name drugs is not far behind. The UNC students have plenty on their plate just learning the basics of their profession so it is refreshing to see them taking a leading role in improving the health care world as well.