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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Your Medical Education on Drugs All cultures, I guess (let me put on my anthropologist's cap here) have what might be called sacred corrupt spaces. I pay a lot of attention to one such space on this blog: Mega-corporate university sports programs. We all know how foul they are; but most Americans worship them, and wouldn't think of laying a finger on the Elmer Gantrys who run them. Our cheatin' hearts love their cheatin' hearts... A recent opinion piece in the New York Times discusses another well-established sacred American corrupt space: Continuing medical education. The writer points out that legitimate medical schools have abdicated their responsibility to teach doctors, having handed this task over to drug companies, with predictable results: ...The chore of teaching doctors how to practice medicine has been handed to the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, dangerous side effects are rarely on the curriculum. ... Most states require that doctors obtain a minimum number of credit hours of continuing medical education each year to maintain their medical licenses. Not so long ago, most of these courses were produced and paid for by universities and medical associations. ... [But] drug-industry financing of continuing medical education has nearly quadrupled since 1998, from $302 million to $1.12 billion. Half of all continuing medical education courses in the United States are now paid for by drug companies, up from a third a decade ago. Because pharmaceutical companies now set much of the agenda for what doctors learn about drugs, crucial information about potential drug dangers is played down, to the detriment of patient care.... Education that doubles as advertising for drug companies occurs in all branches of medicine. How did this happen? Drug companies should never have been allowed to become the primary educator for America’s doctors. The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, a nonprofit organization composed of the major medical associations, establishes the rules that govern continuing medical education. According to the guidelines, companies are forbidden from directly paying doctors who teach continuing medical education courses. Something in our culture worships the rascals who engineered this scam, worships the money they dispense in order to corrupt people and institutions. We have more difficulty focusing on the unpleasant outcome of this set-up: The promotion of drugs that may be dangerous, and the neglect of drugs that may be life-saving. As with bigtime university sports, we have a curious reverence for people whose team wins at any cost. |