Who pays when a doctor accepts a free lunch?
WHO IS guilty of wrongdoing when a drug company offers a doctor a gift and the doctor accepts the gift? One answer is that no one is to blame. Pharmaceutical advertising on mugs, pens and mouse pads are a commonplace sight in doctors’ surgeries and not necessarily a sign of corruption. What about a free lunch? Or journals and books? Or travel (first class) to an overseas conference? At what point do these gifts begin to influence a doctor’s behaviour? And at what point should the drug companies themselves be pulled into line for offering inappropriate inducements? Fifteen per cent of 823 specialists surveyed by the University of NSW in a recent study published online in the Internal Medicine Journal admitted they asked drug companies for gifts, money and travel, while 52 per cent were offered travel to conferences (two-thirds accepted). The study’s lead author, associate professor of ethics and law in medicine, Paul McNeill, has recommended the end of direct payments from drug companie
