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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3213

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

Relman AS.
Dealing with conflicts of interest.
N Engl J Med 1985 Sep 19; 313:(12):749-51


Abstract:

Business arrangements have an increasing role in medical research and readers of medical journals need to be told about those arrangements. When important commercial associations are not disclosed, suspicions inevitably arise, and the public trust is jeopardized. In this editorial the New England Journal of Medicine announced its policy on conflict of interest.

Keywords:
*editorial/New England Journal of Medicine/conflict of interest/drug company sponsored research/scientific publications/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: JOURNALS AND MASS MEDIA American Medical Association Ethics* Ethics, Institutional* Fees, Medical* Professional Practice* Referral and Consultation/economics* Referral and Consultation/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