Doctors and pharma companies have no ethics
It appears that drug firms, doctors, and hospitals are doing the best they can lose the trust of patients. That is unfortunate because good business is not about deliberately hurting your customers.
The New York Times has exposed yet another instance of pharmaceutical companies paying kickbacks to physicians so that they will prescribe specific drugs. If these drugs were helpful to the patients, that would be at least somewhat acceptable but if we look at the example of Zyprexa, Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex, Prozac, Viagra, Epogen, Procrit and Aranesp, it seems that companies are simply pushing drugs that not only do not good but could actually harm you.
The latest example is of a drug called Risperdal and several of its competitors like Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify, and Geodon that being prescribed to children for all kinds of imaginary disorders. It is important to note the US law here. It is illegal for pharma companies to bribe doctors (but they have good lawyers who tell them how to pay them money without violating the law – in most cases it means that they get paid for making speeches or become consultants or are sent to exotic vacations in the name of education) and to promote the use of a medication for a use that has not been approved by the FDA.
Here are few interesting statistics from the Times’ analysis: During the period 2000-05, payment to psychiatrists in Minnesota went up 6X and this led to a 9X jump in prescriptions. What a great ROI? According to the findings, “On average, Minnesota psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from atypical makers from 2000 to 2005 appear to have written three times as many atypical prescriptions for children as psychiatrists who received less or no money.”
Business is war but even wars have ethics and it is pretty obvious that doctors/pharmaceutical companies/hospitals feature on my list of businesses with no ethical standards.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.