An interesting talk on the Australian Broadcasting Commission ‘Ockhams’Razor’ radio program about the marketing of (legal) drugs by big pharma through the medical establishment. The speaker is Professor Christopher Norden, from Adelaide Hospital and the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Sciences. He talks of his own experience of the many incentives offered to practitioners by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe their wares.
From Professor Norden’s talk:
"It is about a hundred years since that great Canadian-born physician Sir William Osler, Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford, complained about the increasing influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the medical profession. If he knew how this influence had increased since then, he would be turning in his grave at the way the industry now dominates doctors’ prescribing habits. It does this not only by direct and indirect pressure on the doctors themselves, but also by encouraging the public to ask for scripts and to demand that governments provide the money."