published letters

Published in SMH on Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Medical devices are like drugs, they save lives. They also make large profits for their manufacturers. This is big business, and shareholders require profits. Marketing is crucial. Health outcomes are important but are definitely not foremost in the minds of those who control these businesses. We doctors interact with them at great peril, because they are masters of marketing, having sustained huge profits for decades through their skills.

We doctors are susceptible to marketing pressures despite claims by some doctors of a god-like capacity to remain unaffected. Whilst such companies can wine and dine us, take us on overseas trips to conferences at 5 star venues, and generally attempt to woo us in perfectly legitimate ways, there is a problem. Codes of conduct guidelines and self regulation are no match for the power of the marketer.
We need to keep these businesses at arms length, and for that to happen we need a combination of funding to fill the holes in education, training, and research which these businesses currently fill, and regulation to control our interactions with them.

Dr Tim Woodruff
President
Doctors Reform Society