Catherine DeAngelis, the editor of JAMA, is costing her "ride" (aka the ad folks at JAMA) a bundle of pharma ad dollars because she once said to a doctor who dodged a tough question during an industry-funded speech, "Do you understand what prostituting yourself is? That's what you just did." This is according to a recent post to the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog (see "How to Rile Up the Editor of JAMA").This got my creative juices following and I just had to interpret Catherine's remarks visually. Maybe she''ll frame the above image and hang it on her office wall. (BTW, don't write me any comments about the political correctness of this image. I work with what I have.)
According the WSJ Health Blog:
How does DeAngelis reconcile her tough stance on drug information with the pharmaceutical ads that fill JAMA? She notes that ads don't run in the section of the journal where research studies appear, and says she routinely bars ads that she deems misleading: "A couple weeks ago, the ad people came down and said, 'You know, you've cost us $750,000 this year because you've turned down ads.' I said, 'Is that all?'"This leads me to ask, How much money does JAMA and other medical journals make from pharma advertising if Catherine can shrug off $750,000 per offhand remark? At what point does it become Kettle, Pot, calling each other black? (Don't write me about the PCness of that either!)
Go, baby, go. I have said it for years. If one more office asks me what I can give them or to bring in another lunch, I think I'm going to come unglued.
ReplyDeleteThe Senate Committee on Aging, which met yesterday, heard testimony from, among others, Jerome Kassirer, a Tufts University professor who was once editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, pointed out that NEJM and JAMA could produce editorial publications WITHOUT the need for pharma advertising. The income derived from subscription and classified advertising was sufficient to publish these prestigious journals. Why then are they heavy on pharma-related content? Is this where the "pimping" starts?
ReplyDeleteInquiring minds want to know!
ReplyDelete