Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15006

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

Godlee F.
Doctors, patients, and the drug industry
BMJ. 2009 Feb 5; 338:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/338/feb05_1/b463

Abstract:

In the Royal College of Physicians’ report on relations between industry, academia, and the NHS (doi:10.1136/bmj.b442) Iain Chalmers is quoted as saying, “I do not blame industry for trying to get away with anything that is normally considered to be its primary purpose, which is to make profits and look after its shareholders’ interests. It is our profession that has colluded in all of this and been prepared to go along with it-we are the people to blame because we need not have stood for it.”

By “all of this” I assume Chalmers means the many ways in which drugs are promoted in the guise of science, education, and information: the misreporting of industry funded research, the use of ghost writers and key opinion leaders, the provision of free courses and conferences. His words echo Suzanne Fletcher’s in the BMJ last year (2008;337:a1023, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1023). For these . . .