Drug Reps Off Campus! Promoting Professional Purity by Suppressing Commercial Speech

Abstract

In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.Every physician-patient encounter is a conflict of interest. Every physician-payer encounter is also a conflict of interest.Wide-spread criticism of the pharmaceutical industry’s extravagant marketing practices and some doctors’ undignified, even appalling eagerness to stuff themselves, their pockets and their offices with the industry’s “stuff,” prompted physician groups, the drug and device industry itself (albeit synergized by the federal government’s ominous shadow) to institute reforms designed better to limit industry influence on physicians.But according to Troyen Brennan and his coauthors, the reforms, while reducing some of the most egregious instances of industry influence peddling and physicians’ self-debasement, were doomed fundamentally, for three reasons. First, they were based on common sense but incorrect assumptions about the mechanism of industry influence and on myths about the efficacy of disclosure as an ethical disinfectant. Second, they relied on voluntary adherence and so failed to pinpoint responsibility for monitoring compliance and enforcement.