As a gastroenterologist, I treat hundreds of patients with heartburn. You already know the names of the medicines I prescribe, since they are advertised day and night on television and appear regularly in print newspapers. Pharmaceutical representatives for each one of these drugs come to our office each claiming some unique clinical advantage of their products over the competitors. They have a tough job since the medicines are all excellent, are priced similarly and are safe. On some days we will have 2 or 3 reps visiting us, each one proffering a medical study or two that supports their product. They show us graphs where their drug is superior to the others regarding an event of questionable clinical import. Their goal is to show that the graph line of their drug is going up, while those of their competitors are going down. Physicians, like me, who do give these folks some time, have mastered the art of the slow head nod as the drug’s virtues are being related. In the past, the rel
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