Also
A lot of medical practice is dictated by the pharma' companies. They have an enormous amount of clout. So drug A may be better at treating Illness X, but the company behind drug B are bigger so gets prescribed by the doctors.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 9:10, 2 replies)

With The Greatest Respect
But that is total and utter crap.

Mrs Legless is a surgeon. She has no financial interest whatsoever in what she prescribes or what prosthesis she fits. She gets paid either an hourly rate or, when she's on call, fee for service. She gets no kickbacks, rebates or promotional goodies from any drug company. The regulations around what you can and can't accept from Big Pharma are incredibly strict. I think the best freebies she's ever had out of them were a wind-up torch (Australian Defence Force Recruiter) and a USB stick. A 2 gig USB stick.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 9:52, closed)

I blame Dr Goldacre
he lied to me then, the twat
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 10:38, closed)

That's what you get for listening to Dr Goldacre and not MrsLegless, you fool.

( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 10:40, closed)

*hangs head in shame*

(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 10:46, closed)

to Be Fairt
I believe the docs in the US get a cut of the price of the meds they prescribe. But that doesn't happen where you have a decent form of socialised medicine like Oz and the Uk
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 11:07, closed)

I have a trivial role in the healthservice
with no perceptible influence over procurement or delivery, but I've still had a number of free lunches from drugs companies.
Mrs Legless should attend more events.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 11:11, closed)

This may be true, but...
...in the vast majority of cases, both treatment A and treatment B have some positive effect.

I have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the "you're all in the pay of someone trying to sell and re-sell ineffective treatment" argument, as it usually comes from the spine wizards, amnesiac water-fondlers and human pincushion purveyors.

And it comes from them with neither a trace of irony nor a jot of evidence.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Thu 20 Oct 2011, 12:42, closed)