Medical schools and academic medical centers should be the first to impose a ban on doctors receiving free handouts by drug companies, says an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The New York Times reports on the article, which claims that doctors’ clinical judgement becomes biased when they accept seminars, vacations, consulting fees, and gifts--including free drug samples--that pharmaceutical companies routinely offer. The article cites Kaiser Permanente as one of the few physician groups that has a policy of not accepting gifts from drug companies, which results in Kaiser Permanente doctors prescribing heavily marketed drugs less frequently than other physicians.
