MDs peddling BS: Shedding Light on Doctors’ Conflict of Interest

The Washington Post reports that determining doctors’ ties with pharmaceutical companies and any related conflict of interest are often hard, if not impossible, tasks for patients.

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Herb Kohl, seeks to relieve some of that burden by requiring all payments more than $100 made by a drug or medical device company to a doctor be reported.

Doctors justify the “pharmaceutical pay-off” saying that the "doctor/industry partnership" is often needed to help develop beneficial new drugs.

But, the “doctor/industry partnership" is circular reasoning. Here’s the effect: Doctors argue that, with the help of doctors, the pharmaceutical companies develop so-called "new drugs," which the doctors then prescribes to patients, who then pay "big bucks" for the "new-drugs," so that the pharmaceutical company can make "big bucks" to “pay-off” the doctors.

It appears that the “MDs” are peddling “BS.” See, Ibby Caputo, The Washington Post 08/18/2009 Read Article: The Washington Post