Patients expect doctors to be objective in determining the best treatment and to keep the patient’s best interests foremost. But there is disturbing evidence that some doctors supplement their incomes significantly with industry agreements on the side. How does this affect our health? Our guests offer two opposing answers to this question.
Guests: Jerome Kassirer, MD, Distinguished Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. For more than eight years Dr. Kassirer was editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. His book is titled On The Take: How Medicine’s Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health.
Thomas Stossel, MD, is the American Cancer Society Professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also Director of the Translational Medicine Division and a hematologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Dr. Stossel serves on the boards of directors for ZymeQuest and Critical Biologics Corporations and owns stock options in both companies. He has served on scientific advisory boards for Biogen, Dyax, and Merck.
