Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14896

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

Willard MJ.
What is the cost of a free lunch? Taking time to assess hospitals' conflict-of-interest policies.
Mater Manag Health Care 2008 Oct; 17:(10):24-8
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19025169

Keywords:
Conflict of Interest*/economics Conflict of Interest*/legislation & jurisprudence Disclosure Drug Industry Fraud/legislation & jurisprudence Hospital Administration*/economics Hospital Administration*/legislation & jurisprudence Hospital-Physician Relations* Humans Organizational Policy* Physician Self-Referral/legislation & jurisprudence United States

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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