Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15105

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

Grande D, Asch DA.
Commercial versus Social Goals of Tracking What Doctors Do
The New England Journal of Medicine 2009 Feb 19; 360:(8):747-749
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/360/8/747?query=TOC

Abstract:

On November 18, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the constitutionality of a New Hampshire statute that was the first in the nation to restrict the sale of physicians’ prescribing data for commercial marketing purposes.1,2 The District Court of New Hampshire had previously overturned the statute on the grounds that it unnecessarily restricted speech. Writing on behalf of the circuit court, Judge Bruce Selya stated that the statute “regulates conduct, and to the extent that the challenged portions impinge at all upon speech, that speech is of scant social value.” Moreover, he reasoned that the . . .