No more free lunches: Summary of rapid responses

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7410.342-c

BMJ 2003;327:342-343 (9 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7410.342-c

Letter

No more free lunches

Summary of rapid responses

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Many of the 100 plus contributors to the editorial by Abbasi and Smith were indignant.¹ Wasn't it stating theobvious? Clearly drug companies would not spend vast sums on persuading doctors to prescribe their drugs if they didn't thinkthese tactics paid off. But doctors are more than capable ofresisting the blandishments of drug company sales representativesand seeing through the inducements of lavish corporate hospitality,they contended.

Disentanglement from drug companies whiffed of utopian sanctimoniousness, others fumed, and ignored both the realities of working in theNHS—where continuing medical education languishes atthe back of the financial priorities queue—and the inevitabilityof a profit driven, commercial world. It's a question of "mindfulpractice" suggested one correspondent. And many felt the severalpages of advertisements in the BMJ, paid for by drug companies,smacked of hypocrisy and blasted a large crater in the argumentsfavouring greater . . . [Full text of this article]