As much as we might like our doctors to be godlike, particularly when we are afflicted with a serious illness or injury, the reality is that these folks are just human. Like anyone else, they don their lab coats one sleeve at a time. Like anyone else, they may fall under the spell or influence of those who fawningly shower them with advice and gifts, those whose intentions are less than pure and tactics are less than savory. Like anyone else in this capitalistic nation, they may find it difficult to resist the lure of easy money.

Because doctors are not gods but mortals, there is a danger that their better judgment and clinical sense may be compromised in some fashion by their cousins in the pharmaceutical industry, who act as kin but are not, having been raised under a different roof with different values and allegiances. While doctors are bound by a code of ethics to act in the best interests of their patients, drug company representatives and management may feel free to act in the best interests of themselves and their shareholders. They may feel free to pursue profits at the expense of patient care. They may feel free to provide kickbacks to doctors as an incentive to dispense their products.

From the New York Times:

Doctors Reap Millions for Anemia Drugs

Two of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines, which regulators now say may be unsafe at commonly used doses.

The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the doctors who receive them are aware of their size. Critics, including prominent cancer and kidney doctors, say the payments give physicians an incentive to prescribe the medicines at levels that might increase patients’ risks of heart attacks or strokes.

Industry analysts estimate that such payments — to cancer doctors and the other big users of the drugs, kidney dialysis centers — total hundreds of millions of dollars a year and are an important source of profit for doctors and the centers. The payments have risen over the last several years, as the makers of the drugs, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, compete for market share and try to expand the overall business.

Neither Amgen nor Johnson & Johnson has disclosed the total amount of the payments. But documents given to The New York Times show that at just one practice in the Pacific Northwest, a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7 million from Amgen for prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year.

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration added to concerns about the drugs, releasing a report that suggested that their use might need to be curtailed in cancer patients. The report, prepared by F.D.A. staff scientists, said no evidence indicated that the medicines either improved quality of life in patients or extended their survival, while several studies suggested that the drugs can shorten patients’ lives when used at high doses. Yesterday’s report followed the F.D.A.’s decision in March to strengthen warnings on the drugs’ labels. [full text]