Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4600

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

Mather C.
The pipeline and the porcupine: alternate metaphors of the physician-industry relationship.
Soc Sci Med 2005 Mar; 60:(6):1323-34
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBF-4D5JSJJ-2&_coverDate=03%2F01%2F2005&_alid=398122182&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5925&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a3b4c00f922432b53675cfc8e056c2cd

Abstract:

Industry and medicine share a complicated relationship that engenders a considerable degree of controversy. Although they share a relationship, industry and medicine have different perspectives toward their involvement with each other. Industry conceives of medicine as one aspect of the “drug pipeline”, a larger set of relationships that is necessary for producing and marketing products. In contrast, select physicians refer to medicine’s relationship with industry as “dancing with the porcupine”, an inherently difficult and dangerous activity. This paper compares the “pipeline” and “porcupine” metaphors, and draws upon ethnographic data from fieldwork conducted among clinical neuroscientists at a Canadian medical school to further elucidate the perspectives of physicians toward industry and the nature of the physician-industry relationship. The paper argues that the physician-industry relationship is akin to a type of gift-exchange known as a total prestation, and that this form of total prestation is part of a strategy of capital reconversion.

Keywords:
Alberta Attitude Biomedical Research/ethics Biomedical Research/organization & administration* Comparative Study Conflict of Interest* Drug Industry/economics* Economics, Medical* Gift Giving Hospitals, Teaching/ethics Hospitals, Teaching/organization & administration* Humans Information Dissemination Interinstitutional Relations* Internship and Residency Interviews Marketing Metaphor* Models, Economic* Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't