Hospitals around the country are pushing for full disclosure of their doctors' financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry to help patients determine whether their doctors are making money from drug and device companies.
The Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation's leading medical centers, will announce this week its decision to fully disclose all of its doctors' and scientists' financial ties with pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers on its Web site, www.clevelandclinic.org
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My Comment:
This is a great step in the right direction. An individual's health is so important, that we should hold doctors to a higher standard that any other "industry". However, he drug industry has already infiltrated the nation's medical schools, so doctors are already behind the eight ball, in terms of being influenced by drugs.
Some highlights of the article:
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"I don't care at all. I really, truly don't," said Judith Ursitti of Dover, Mass., whose son, Jack, 8, has autism. "When I take Jack to a specialist, I research their level of knowledge and how they treat other patients. If I see that they have financial ties to other companies, it doesn't bother me, as long as they are knowledgeable about my son's condition."
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"I actually think that the push to disclose is rather a reproach to the ethical compass of my profession," said Dr. Nortin Hadler, a professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "The fact that we think that disclosing somehow means that there is no further conflict of interest seems a rather flimsy argument."
Hadler said that the push for full disclosure among many medical centers accomplishes very little in terms of eliminating doctors' conflicts of interest, and instead highlights how widespread the problem of pharmaceutical and industry ties are among our nation's physicians and researchers.
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