Hightower Lowdown

When your doctor recommends a medicine for your heart condition, asthma, diabetes, or other ailment . . . who’s talking to you? Is your doctor acting as the mouthpiece for a drug company?

In choosing treatments, most physicians rely on clinical protocols, which are written by researchers and usually published in medical journals. Little known, however, is the fact that drug makers have their monetary tentacles wrapped around most of the authors of these guidelines, raising questions about whether your doctor is unwittingly recommending a treatment that’s been tainted with drug-company cash.

In a recent survey of 100 researchers who write these guidelines, nine out of ten admitted that they have financial ties to the industry, including getting drug-company consulting fees and even having their research financed by the industry. Worse, six out of ten had direct financial ties to the companies making the very drugs they were researching and recommending.

Pharmaceutical giants claim that these monetary ties to researchers are merely an effort to help educate doctors. However, Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, says the relationship is “simply a way for researchers to make money and the industry to buy their good will.”

To learn how you can help sever these corrupting ties, contact the Health Research Group at Public Citizen: 202-588-1000.