August 18, 2009

Probing Doctors’ Ties to Industry

By Kelley Luckstein

Probing Doctors' Ties to Industry

You may not be able to trust your mortgage broker, your car salesman or your congressman, but you can trust your doctor.

 

Can't you?

 

Patients might well ask themselves this question when they learn that 94 percent of physicians have "a relationship" with the pharmaceutical, medical device or other related industries, according to a national survey of physicians published two years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

"Once the information is out there . . . patients will realize that there are a lot of physicians involved in [relationships with industry] for the betterment of patients," said Rafael Fonseca, a hematologist and the deputy director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. Fonseca is on the steering committee of a new organization called the Association of Clinical Researchers and Educators (ACRE), formed in response to what it calls the "anti-industry movement."

 

Washington Post, by Ibby Caputo, 8/17/2009

Tags: Business Relations, Business Relations, medical device

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