Beware of what lurks in the dark
I'm trying to get my mind around this number: $21 billion dollars.
No, that's not our national budget deficit. That's how much that Big Pharma spends annually to peddle their products—and the mother load of that amount is directed at doctors and med students.
With a machine like that, it's a wonder anyone escapes unscathed and unprescribed. And that's exactly the goal of the drug companies: To get everyone prescribed something (or many something's) for every disease, condition, cough and tickle.
Researchers performed a literature review of 12 studies on medical centers that had worked to redefine the relationship between the drug companies and their medical students and residents.
The greatest impact a school could have was to ban contact with drug company representatives. It actually changed the future behavior of these students and residents in regards to these companies.
By keeping these representatives from "training" these students, they're putting up a natural divide that should have been instituted a long time ago.
Evidently, this type of policy leads to a healthy skepticism on the part of these students when they do come into contact with these representatives, and any information these reps gave them. These medical students understand the reality of the relationship from the start: There's a financial web that ties the mainstream medical community to the drug companies. The sooner that lesson's learned, the better.
And medical schools aren't the only places Big Pharma's tactics are being outed. Attention is being called to these companies' roles in medical research papers. In fact, the author of one policy paper coined this "ghost management." That's because it's not readily apparent that these companies are playing the man behind the curtain. They're hiring communication companies to assist them in producing medical articles and then finding them placement in medical journals.
These are studies that are packaged and sold like a commodity rather than as the fruit of true science. And sadly, what they package and print is affecting many people's lives—from the doctors who don't know how to pick a study apart and on down to the patients of those doctors. Even some of the researchers involved may not fully realize what they're a party to.
The only way to get the fingers of these drug companies out of both the medical schools and the medical literature is to keep putting a spotlight on them at every turn, putting on public display their behind-the-scenes shenanigans.
Cockroaches are known to come out in the dark and hide from the light of the day. Let's keep the lights on.
