Doctors and drug companies.
نویسنده
چکیده
When a great profession and the forces of capitalism interact, drama is likely to result. This has certainly been the case where the profession of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry are concerned. On display in the relationship between doctors and drug companies are the grandeur and weaknesses of the medical profession — its noble aspirations and its continuing inability to fulfill them. Also on display are the power, social contributions, and occasional venality of a very profitable industry whose products contribute in important ways to the health and longevity of the American people but that at times employs methods that are deeply troubling and even criminal. Government also plays a part as it tries with limited success to help the profession stay true to its own tenets and to deter the industry’s most egregious excesses. The spectacle is profoundly human and, like most such spectacles, seems never to end or to lose its fascination. The interaction of doctors and pharmaceutical companies is also extremely consequential for patients, doctors, and the larger society. The drug industry manufactures, distributes, and publicizes powerful chemical and biologic agents that have proven benefits and that physicians sometimes fail to use as often as they should, or in sufficient doses. 1 In this sense, industry’s efforts to encourage the use of some agents by physicians can be seen as contributing to the public health. At the same time, the marketing by the drug industry of its products to physicians is manifestly aimed also at improving industry profits; in the process, such marketing may contribute to less savory social consequences, including increasing drug costs and the misuse or overuse of medications in ways that may adversely affect patients. 2
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- The New England journal of medicine
دوره 351 18 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2004