Many doctors make a lot of money for promoting the use of particular prescription drugs and products, and Dr. Oz is one of them. In one of his syndicated columns with co-author Dr. Mike Roizen, the television host and cardiologist mentioned a particular product he recommends for treating hemorrhoids.
In the column, he said this:
If you need treatment, a device is coming to the market that makes getting rid of these much less painful: Ask your doc about HET bipolar ligator. (We helped develop this, and it’s a major reducer of pain in the, well, you know what.)
The parenthetical statement at the end is an attempt at full disclosure and transparency, which is important, but it doesn’t necessarily inform the public that he has made a profit. The Sunshine Law, part of the Affordable Care Act, requires every pharmaceutical and medical device company in the country to annually disclose payments made to doctors and teaching hospitals.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a 2007 study found that 94 percent of American physicians had some kind of tie with industry. In the last five months of 2013 alone, medical device and drug companies paid American doctors $3.5 billion.
But some argue that mandated disclosure doesn’t necessarily change the practice of drug promotion for profit. One study demonstrated how the law really hasn’t changed the prescribing practices for some doctors in Maine and West Virginia.
And in the British Medical Journal, doctors and editors pointed out how conflict of interest policies haven’t been very effective. They wrote:
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Judges are expected to recuse themselves from hearing a case in which there are concerns that they could benefit financially from the outcome. Journalists are expected not to write stories on topics in which they have a financial conflict of interest. The problem, obviously, is that their objectivity might be compromised, either consciously or unconsciously, and there would be no easy way to know whether it had been… Doctors might wish it were otherwise, but none of us is immune to human nature.
Technically, what Dr. Oz did and the money he made is fine, but it just highlights the fact that transparency about involvement doesn’t always inform the public about what that means in terms of profits. If it did, maybe some consumers would think at least a little bit more about products or drugs they choose to purchase or use.
