Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6958

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

Leong GB, Silva AJ.
Is academic medicine for sale? (5th of 13 letters)
New England Journal of Medicine 2000 Aug 17; 343:(7):509
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/343/7/508

Abstract:

. . . To maintain neutrality in the research endeavor, more neutral funding is needed. Much to the chagrin of those who advocate a reduction in federal spending, there does not appear to be a more reasonable solution that that of increasing federal support of academic medical centres. (full text)

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/United States/relationship with pharmaceutical industry/conflict-of-interest/bias/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: MEDICAL JOURNAL EDITORSHIP/SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH

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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