摘要

The collaboration between medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers with physicians has produced many ground breaking medical treatments. However, some devices and medications with poor research results or significant morbidity were nevertheless introduced and promoted by both industry and physicians on its payroll. Sometimes the pursuit of industrial profit has taken a priority over patient care with some harmful devices and drugs causing unnecessary injury to many patients. Biased research by financially vested physicians is often hidden from the majority of well meaning treating doctors who utilize new treatments. . The mechanisms which allow this to occur are tied to a lack of financial disclosure and objectivity in research, and medicine in general. The areas where this sometimes inappropriate influence of industry on medicine is manifest range from authorship of research papers, medical society leadership, medical journal editorial boards, continuing medical education (CME) funding, and the FDA. This paper attempts to elucidate these concerns and the efforts by the Association for Medical Ethics to address them on a grass roots physician level.