Drug Industry’s Voluntary Marketing Policy Not Enough
Robert Pearl, executive director and CEO of the Permanente Medical Group, called the pharmaceutical industry's new voluntary marketing guidelines "nothing more than window dressing, a weak, transparent move by an industry that is pretending to take strong action, but is really doing nothing more than preserving its ability to continue its most problematic practices." Pearl writes that his medical group strictly prohibits its physicians from accepting any gifts from drug or device companies.
- "Toward Purer Medicine" (Pearl, San Francisco Chronicle, 7/15).