Comments on Billy Rubin's Blog: Drug Company Funding of CME--Notes from the Family...

R.W.?

Medscape Nurse editors maintain an ex...

2009-02-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

R.W.?

Medscape Nurse editors maintain an excellent Web site for nurses.

Your comment "would not have survived editorial re...

2009-02-07T18:44:00.000-05:00

Your comment "would not have survived editorial review by the Medscape Nursing editors, in my opinion." is interesting. I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you disparaging nurses? Indirectly insulting a profession so closely allied to physicians, seems to me, to be an example of the culture of entitlement mentioned earlier in this blog.

R.W.,
You may be surprised to learn that even O...

2009-02-03T04:18:00.000-05:00

R.W.,
You may be surprised to learn that even Op-Ed pieces—in reputable publications—are checked for accuracy. If you need more information on this topic, look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/opinion/31shipley.html?pagewanted=1

Check out this “Roundtable” article:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/506101

Op-Ed?

Conscientious editors generally label Op-Ed pieces as such, like this:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/587141

Nancy,
You’re joking, right? The Roundtable ar...

2009-02-01T02:50:00.000-05:00

Nancy,
You’re joking, right? The Roundtable articles are opinion pieces, nothing more, with every effort made to accommodate opposing views. So, on what basis would you have the article removed? That it doesn’t express the “correct” opinion?

I arrived via Dr. Carlat’s blog as well. The Medsc...

2009-01-30T15:07:00.000-05:00

I arrived via Dr. Carlat’s blog as well. The Medscape article critiqued here would not have survived editorial review by the Medscape Nursing editors, in my opinion. Physicians, have you written to the editorial director of the Medscape Internal Medicine Web site to request that the article be removed from the site? If not, here is the editor’s contact information:

Carol Peckham
Director, Core Specialties
Medscape Internal Medicine
Email: FamilyEditor@medscape.net

Dr. Rubin,

You may or may not be interested...

2009-01-29T13:33:00.000-05:00

Dr. Rubin,

You may or may not be interested to know that Howard Brody* speaks a great deal about the culture of entitlement among physicians in his book ("Hooked"). He too seems to think that it is at the social and cultural core of what drives much physician behavior as to COIs.

Great post, BTW.

*Full Disclosure: Dr. Brody is a professor and mentor of mine, and a member of my dissertation committee at UTMB (my dissertation is not on COIs, though I do work on the subject). I receive nothing whatsoever for mentioning his book here.

I'm also here via Dr Carlat's blog (and have one o...

2009-01-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

I'm also here via Dr Carlat's blog (and have one of my own where I periodically take up this topic). Nicely written. I would add that physician entitlement ("I deserve fine things") is fundamentally the same dynamic as, "I'm not biased even if others are." Call it hubris or narcissism... I've heard pharma reps themselves imply that any doc worried about being biased by industry pitches must be insecure and weak-willed. It's almost a schoolyard dare: Are you man enough? Only with the maturity to see ourselves as fallible humans can we get past this, and focus on treating our patients instead of our egos.

Here are some links to Medscape. The jury is still...

2009-01-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

Here are some links to Medscape. The jury is still out on their ethics.

http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/06/medscapes-cme-ethics.html#links

http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/06/medscapes-cme-ethics-part-ii.html#links

http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/11/missing-in-action-on-medscape.html#links

Bernard Carroll

Thank you, interactMD and therapyfirst! It is most...

2009-01-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

Thank you, interactMD and therapyfirst! It is most encouraging to know that there are actually people, um, reading this blog.

As I was writing this entry I wondered about Medscape itself, which like so many other parts of medicine is very much tied into Big Pharma, on which it depends for sponsorship. On the one hand, I like Medscape for its design, for their video feeds, for the fact that it's got a huge readership, on the order of 100,000. On the other hand, like CME it is hard to ferret out the potential bias introduced by corporate underwriting. Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

I will check out InteractMD.com in the coming days.
--br

Nicely done.

I, for one, am trying to bring...

2009-01-28T15:06:00.000-05:00

Nicely done.

I, for one, am trying to bring medical education back to the realm of pure education. I run a medical news blog called InteractMD.com. The idea is that doctors and patients should get the medical news from doctors, not drug companies or journalists.

Oncology is one of the more frequent offenders, sad to say, when it comes to conflict of interest. I don't see drug reps, but the influence comes in subtler forms, like "journal articles" written by ghostwriters, and biased studies that ask the wrong questions.

The AMA is in bed with industry as well--they sell our prescribing data to the drug companies. This is why the drug reps have such detailed information on our prescribing practices.

I hope to see more and more grassroots rejection of the current medical "education" paradigm that has evolved around the industry's best interests.

Learned about this post from Dr Daniel Carlat from...

2009-01-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

Learned about this post from Dr Daniel Carlat from his blog, and it is on the mark for me.

Very nice, very accurate, very sad to have to say I am a physician and have to say these are my "colleagues".

Money is the worst addiction in this culture.

therapyfirst, board certified psychiatrist