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Conflicts of Interest, Institutional Corruption, and Pharma: An Agenda for Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Marc A. Rodwin
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Why do physicians have financial conflicts of interest? They arise because society expects physicians to act in their patients’ interest, while simultaneously, financial incentives encourage physicians to practice medicine in ways that promote their own interests or those of third parties. Because physicians’ clinical choices, referrals, and prescriptions affect the fortune of third parties (providers, medical facilities, insurers, drug firms and suppliers of ancillary services), these third parties may offer physicians financial incentives to make income-driven clinical choices. In the past, physicians and scholars typically conceived of conflicts of interest as an ethical issue to be resolved according to individual judgment or professional and organizational norms. However, society can mitigate or eliminate conflicts of interest by changing financial and organizational arrangements in medicine. Conflicts of interest, therefore, are as much matters of public policy and management as individual choices or social norms.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , Fall 2012 , pp. 511 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2012

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