Big Pharma & UK MD's - the end of the gravy train approaches

Under revised rules, due to be published later this year, the UK's General Medical Council (GMC) will warn doctors who accept gifts or hospitality from pharmaceutical companies could be struck off.

The GMC will also encourage doctors to blow the whistle on colleagues who are taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies.

A GMC spokesman said: "It will be made clear for the first time that their registration is at risk if they become involved in serious conflicts of interest of this sort”.

The decision to toughen up the rules comes as evidence increases that, in return for promoting their products, some doctors are taking inappropriate gifts and hospitality from the pharmaceutical industry.

Jane O'Brien, the GMC's spokesman on standards and ethics, admitted that it was hard to catch doctors behaving improperly, but said she hoped the appeal to whistleblowers would help."It is vital that patients can rely on the fact that a doctor is prescribing them a drug in their best interests and not as a result of bribes or junkets that they've received." She said that the GMC's code of conduct, which is currently out for consultation, is expected to take effect in November.

Dr Richard Nicholson, the editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, said: "I'm afraid there is an awful lot of sleaze going on in the medical profession. "If doctors are at risk of being disciplined, or even struck off, they are more likely to think twice about accepting money or gifts”.

Source: British Nursing News