An unhealthy practice

摘要

A survey reported on page 1070 of this issue suggests that pharmaceutical companies often have financial links with the people who write guidelines on how physicians prescribe drugs. More than a third of the authors of such guidelines declared a financial connection to the companies that produced the drugs. No one is suggesting that the authors in question are deliberately adjusting guidelines to match these interests: most of them surely have their patients' interests at heart. But that doesn't mean that the potential conflicts don't matter. In other areas of medicine — including clinical trials and educational programmes — pharmaceutical money has been shown to exert a subtle influence on the choices made by physicians and researchers (see A. Wazana J. Am. Med. Assoc. 283, 373-380; 2000). So it is not unreasonable to assume that a similar effect is at work in the preparation of prescription guidelines.