Objective Medical Information??

So how many times have you gone to Medscape for medical information thinking that it was objective medical science. This excerpt below is an eye opener for those of us who keep the image of the public medical servant who always has the best interest of the patient in mind. The excerpt is from the Carlat Psychiatry Blog and a link to the full post is given below. -Duncan




Medscape is a medical education communication company entirely dependent on drug company advertising and CME funding for its existence. Many doctors have noticed recently that the company has dropped even the pretense of objectivity. Yesterday, I received a letter from Medscape in my office; inside was a brochure from Forest Laboratories advertising Lexapro, and nothing else. It was creepy, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

If you want to judge for yourself whether Medscape is capable of producing unbiased CME, go to their main CME page. You'll find dozens of CME articles, almost all of which are sponsored by different companies.

Here's one that can serve as a poster child for all that is wrong with industry-funded CME. Entitled "Managing Schizophrenia in a Patient With Alcohol Abuse and Hepatic Impairment", it is sponsored by Janssen, maker of Invega, a "new" antipsychotic which is simply the active metabolite of their now off-patent drug, Risperidone. As I've written here in The Carlat Psychiatry Report, Invega is simply a patent extender, with no real benefit other than the fact that it is not metabolized in the liver, and therefore is easier to dose in patients with hepatic impairment. In the grand tradition of promotional CME, Janssen commissioned Medscape to come up with a case-based program focussing on the single clinical situation in which Invega has an advantage.

http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2008/06/medscapes-cme-corruption.html
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