The relationship between the drug industry and doctors is upside down
and backwards. Although the drug industry is motivated primarily by profit,
lacks clinical experience and judgment, and has a history of egregious
dishonesty, the drug industry nonetheless dominates doctors. The drug
industry’s economic might, political connections, deceptive marketing,
biased research, and self-serving educational functions render even
experienced doctors little more than medical students who seek a passing
grade and prize the prescription pad as a badge of honor and raison
d'être.


It’s no wonder that doctors and medical journals are now half-heartedly and
belatedly trying to emancipate themselves from the drug industry’s
hegemony and patronage, while the drug industry is hypocritically trying to
maintain the status quo. And it’s no wonder that healthcare is so frustrating,
expensive, confusing, ineffective, and dangerous. How sad for doctors,
patients, and patients’ families, who suffer along with patients and struggle
to pay inflated medical bills.


Those who seek to defend the drug industry’s right to monopolize
healthcare, gouge the public, and make rapacious, extravagant profits
should read Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Competing interests:
None declared