Drug Company Perks As a Article Critique

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Patients have a right to know if their doctor's decision to prescribe a certain medication has been influenced by free lunches or other perks, rather than that doctor's objective overview of prescribing information.

In fact, the real ethical issue presented in the underlying case is not that the doctors are accepting gifts from the pharmaceutical companies. Drug companies did decide to some degree of self-limit in their gifts to physicians. However, whether or not the drug companies offer gifts may not be the real ethical issue. The criteria for acceptability or unacceptability of gifts should actually rest on physician response, rather than an arbitrary financial limit of gifts for physicians. In other words, some of the currently prohibited practices, such as taking the physicians golfing, seem like a smart business practice for the sales people. The doctors, however, should have to maintain a database for patients to access, where they inform the patients of any gifts received by pharmaceutical companies, and give patients a copy of the list whenever they prescribe a medication that they have received a gift for it.

I do not believe that the U.S.
government or the American Medical Association should have to place restrictions on the gifts and perks drug companies can offer physicians. Drug companies already have a duty to potential patients, and those duties are already covered in advertising restrictions towards patients and FDA testing requirements. I am much more concerned about the physician-patient relationship than the relationship between the physician and the pharmaceutical government. I think that, given how busy doctors are, hearing pitches from pharmaceutical representatives may be a good way to introduce them to information about new products, but that they need to exercise their professional responsibility and use that information as a starting point for research......

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