Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5877
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: news
Dunlevy S.
Siren songs diverting doctors
The Daily Telegraph (Australia) 2006 Aug 11
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/opinion/story/0,22049,20082569-5001031,00.html
Full text:
Siren songs diverting doctors
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/opinion/story/0,22049,20082569-5001031,00.html
By Sue Dunlevy
August 11, 2006 12:00
Article from: The Daily Telegraph
A FEW years ago, when the breakthrough drug treatment meant to mend my
brittle bones wasn’t working, I gave my doctor research suggesting the
drug could be the problem.
She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and insisted a drug
company-funded study showed the medicine was a miracle worker.
A year later, when my bones were still fracturing, she gave up and sent
me to a specialist.
He was prepared to consider the evidence I’d gathered, which suggested
the drug could be making me worse.
After extensive investigations he concluded I was one of a small group
harmed, not helped, by the medicine.
I’m one of the luckier victims of doctors’ blind faith in drug company
funded research.
Thousands of other Australians have been left permanently disabled, in
chronic pain or at higher risk of cancer.
The standing of Australia’s doctors has taken a battering in recent
weeks with revelations they’ve accepted free travel, $200 meals, concert
and sports tickets from drug companies.
Doctors aren’t just passive recipients of these gifts – a study has
found 15 per cent of them actually demand drug companies pay for
overseas trips for themselves and their spouses or pay the salaries of
their nurses.
A GP last week revealed that more than 80 per cent of the courses
doctors do to update their medical knowledge are funded by drug companies.
And our drug watchdog is complaining that almost all our senior
specialists are paid up drug company consultants – accepting $10,000 a
year retainers to speak about the company’s drugs.
These revelations raise serious questions about whether Australia’s
medical profession can be trusted to be impartial and scientific.
It makes patients wonder whether they’re getting the best treatment or
just the drug made by the company that flew the doctor to Paris last month.
As my case showed, drug company largesse pays off.
My doctor was prepared to have blind faith in a drug company study
rather than consider the evidence in front of her that proved the drug
wasn’t working for me.
But a series of other, sadder stories shows just how devastating
doctors’ cosy relationships with drug companies can be for patients.
Four years ago, we revealed that thousands of other Australians were
left disabled and living in agony after their spines were injected with
an X-ray dye called Myodil used for 42 years.
Radiologists concede they didn’t routinely warn patients the dye could
cause a debilitating condition called arachnoiditis in which the nerves
in the spinal cord become fused causing debilitating pain.
When radiologists and the Australian Medical Association admitted there
was a problem and called for a study into the effects of the dye, no one
put up the money.
Then there is the sad story of three generations of Australian women
left facing increased risk of vaginal and breast cancer because of a
drug given to their mothers until 1971 to prevent miscarriage.
The drug, Stilboestrol, didn’t actually work and its victims have been
treated very shabbily by the doctors who prescribed it.
The Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was
asked by our drug watchdog to set up a register of cancer cases linked
to the drug but it did not do so.
Today these women are still fighting to get doctors and government
agencies to alert doctors and women to the need for special cancer tests.
In both cases, some of the doctors involved refused to see their
patients when they complained _ obviously fearful that they might be
sued for malpractice.
Medicine is a scientific profession. And the essence of good science is
method and investigation.
When you make a medical mistake or get an unexpected negative outcome
from a drug, it needs to be recorded and investigated so others don’t
suffer the same reaction.
How else can medical science advance and how else can treatments be
improved if this does not occur?
But the Stilboestrol and Myodil tragedies show Australian doctors are
more worried about the threat of litigation than advancing science or
protecting their patients.
A profession that really valued its standing would admit its mistakes,
it would learn from them and take some responsibility for looking after
the victims of their mistakes.
The drug companies are happy to fund patient groups when they think it
will help them get government funding for a new drug.
But they’re never around with funding for the support groups of the
victims of the drugs that go wrong.
Fewer drug company-funded banquets and a greater commitment to true
science might help rehabilitate the reputations of both doctors and drug
companies.
