Dr Mike Dixon, of the NHS Alliance, which represents doctors, nurses and managers on the front line, perhaps summed it up best in his interview with the BBC's Today programme.
At the end of the day, the responsibility for the ghostwriting issue rests with the doctors and scientists that put their name on the by line (and cash the checks).
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"I think at the end of the day, if you look at over the past 15 to 20 years of the company, you'd have to say the management has been pushing the bottom line, telling doctors to cut corners, basically saying we are going to evaluate you and promote you based on how well you make money, not on how well you take care of the patients, " Caplan said.
Dr Dixon, who heads the NHS Alliance - an organisation which represents doctors, nurses and managers on the front line - said the danger with the current wording of the rules was "that it seems to put a duty upon the commissioner to go for competition with all contracts that are made".
If the strategy fails for Novartis (nyse: NVS - news - people), the drug would provide an alternative to doctors and patients but would do little for the bottom line.
However, with the recent arrests of several doctors involved in the attacks in the UK and Australia, this line of argument can no longer be referenced credibly.
Through partnerships with 250 medical organizations and Web sites -- including the American Medical Association and Physicians Online -- Bhan says he has access to more than half the estimated 350, 000 doctors and 835, 000 nurses who are on-line in the U.S. Medsite offers the organizations a 5% cut of book sales.
Of course, doctors and firms that step over the line to put patients at risk should be punished.
The failure of first line antibiotics also means that doctors have to resort to less conventional medications, many of which are more costly and associated with more-serious side effects.
Doctors must be vigilant even many years down the line, as the duty of confidentiality continues even after a patient has died.
Descended, he thinks, from a line of doctors and mathematicians in Leipzig, he is the son of a Saxon father and a Puerto Rican mother.
Through partnerships with 250 medical organizations and Web sites -- including the American Medical Association, Physicians Online and Nursing Spectrum -- Bhan says he has access to more than half the estimated 350, 000 doctors and 835, 000 nurses who are on- line nationwide.
In line with government aims, it wants to widen the pool of people who become doctors.
One issue: Doctors can still call a hot line that can help them get insurers to pay for the drug.
But this time he's trying to get doctors and nurses to buy medical books from MedBookStore.com, the Manhattan-based on-line retailer he founded in September 1997 with three college friends.
That is why the billionaire Mr. Chen, who I wrote about in "What I Learned from A Chinese Billionaire, " walks the halls of hospitals giving out money to poor people as they wait in line for hours to see doctors.
But this time he's trying to get doctors and nurses to buy medical books from MedBook-Store.com, the Manhattan-based on-line retailer he founded in September 1997 with three college friends.
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