Materials

Issue 131: Meyer, Frank P.: Ethik der Verantwortung. Verkommt »Evidence Based Medicine« zu »Money Based Medicine«?March 2002

The patient does not have any lobby! Industry sponsors studies that serve their business interests. Principal investigators, subinvestigators (= physicians), ethics committees concede to this procedure as a rule. In primary literature results are presented as being excessively positive and any negative results are played down or concealed (publication bias). In secondary and tertiary literature the opinion leaders deceive physicians and dispensing chemists by "cooking" the figures. Advertising specialists inflate marginal effects into colourful, shiny balloons. This encourages physicians to carry out pharmaceutical treatment that, in the most favourable case, does not harm the patient. In most cases the situation is less favourable. The feeling arises that the growing profitorientation of medicine rapidly reduces the responsibility towards the patient by those in power and with the knowledge required. This process can hardly be stopped. The ethics of responsibility towards the patient falls by the wayside.