This from the NY Times
Stanford University Medical Center will prohibit its physicians from accepting even small gifts like pens and mugs from pharmaceutical sales representatives under a new policy intended to limit industry influence on patient care and doctor education.
….The move is part of a reaction against corporate influence on medicine at a time of growing concern over the safety and rising cost of drugs and medical devices. About 90 percent of the pharmaceutical industryâs $21 billion marketing budget is directed at physicians, according to an article by an influential group of doctors, scientists and lawyers in The Journal of the American Medical Association in January.
That article called upon academic medical centers to adopt policies like Stanfordâs, saying that existing guidelines, like a prohibition of expensive gifts, did not go far enough. Some studies have shown that even small gifts create a sense of obligation, they wrote, while free drug samples are âa powerful inducement for physicians and patients to rely on medications that are expensive but not more effective.â
If someone can explain the relationship between concerns about drug safety and corporate influence — in the form of pens and advertising — please let me know. Does passing out pens corrupt the prescribing process, thereby completing the circle of companies shoving unsafe medicines and ineffective new medicines through the FDA (because of the cozy relation of course) which in turn are marketed through ads that dupe and lavish buffets and junkets that seduce, thereby driving up drug costs which in turn are driving medical costs sky high?
Oh, I forgot the clnical trial data and medical journal articles that are skewed to drug benefit when in fact there is none.
Taken together — since this mantra has been repeated and amplified since the the 1950’s — or rather since this passion play has been produced and reproduced over and over and over again one can only assume that no new drug has any really benefit since they are more expensive than its predecessor and all have been marketed. And moreover, in the past they were marketed more extravagantly and with nicer parting gifts than some cheap pen or mug (I remember a medical student friend of mine getting clocks and briefcases) . So by the logic of the conspiracy theorists, no medicines really should work because they have all gone through this sick, money driven combine and indeed, it should have been worse in the past because the misbehavior was worse years ago.
None of which explains increase life expectancy, declinining mortalility, the fact that drug costs are still the smallest share of the health care dollar and smallest contributor to premium increases or that most of the validated scientific advances — elucidation of biological pathways based on genomics and proteomics — are coming from the pharma and bio industry.
In any event, what will the know it alls do when drug spending increases after all there so-called reforms are implanted in the minds of medical students because the drugs actually work in the clinical setting and their efforts to manage cost without caring for the wellbeing of patients fail.
The attack on drug spending is political, driven by technocrats and arrogant leftists like Jerry Avorn who care nothing about the impact their jihad has on long term health. They want to replace the clinical judgement of doctors with the one dimensional and politically driven decisions of politicians who are more interested in screwing drug companies than they are in saving lives or investing in changes that really save money down the line.
