Medical Schools and Big Pharmacy Money
The Association of American Medical Colleges has recommended that medical colleges and universities ban receiving money from pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers. They claim that conflict of interest problems inevitably ensue once a college starts relying on corporate money. When individuals start to receive perks from these companies it clouds their judgement. I couldn’t agree more.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars marketing to physicians. They spend more in this way than they even spend on direct marketing to consumers. Marketing to consumers costs more than any drug company’s research and development expenses yet we are told the exorbitant prices for otherwise cheap drugs (IE; AZT) is due to the money spent on research.
The idea that the drug companies, many which have falsified data to be presented to the Food and Drug Administration, create the content of many of the lectures being given to students, is frightening to me. A generation of graduates is leaving school with an educational bias that is flawed.
I can never mention Melody Petersen’s book, Our Daily Meds, enough as it does a great job describing the influence of the drug companies on the medical profession.
Here is an article on the proposed ban on med schools and staff accepting big business money in the New York Times.