BMJ  2006;332 (17 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7555.0-f

Editor's choice

What price integrity?

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

Whether we know it or not, we are all under some form of influence. The questions taxing contributors to this week's journal are, how well do we manage those influences, and can anyone be truly independent?

First, how worried should we be that medical education relies so much on the drug industry? Very, say Adriane Fugh-Berman and Sharon Batt writing in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics (which devotes its June issue to looking for ways to reduce drug company influence on doctors, (p 1410). "Only CME activities that are entirely free of pharmaceutical industry funding should qualify as education," they say. What's their plan for replacing the billions spent by drug companies on CME each year? Doctors should pay for it themselves. They say that US doctors can well afford to, having the highest median income in the US. The same may now be true of . . . [Full text of this article]

(fgodlee@bmj.com)

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