Yes, The House of Medicine is Haunted! Boo!

Haunting ahead.. just follow me:

It is still Halloween 2009 in the United States and still time to retell a scary story of, well, ghost writers. Yes, ghost writers. Oh! They don’t write ghost stories. Doctors are grabbed, yes grabbed in their busy offices and convinced that for a bit of money slipped to them from a pharmaceutical company they can write a journal article to educate other doctors and the public about their own experiences with a drug the pharmaceutical company would love to promote and promote.

Ah! That’s where the ghost writers come in. Without any scientific studies but with some flourishing words, they take the bits of experience from these doctors and come up with a beautiful article which could be published and, in fact, have been published. It’s all so simple and a little money paid out by the pharmaceutical company gets an article.. oh, not titled with the name of the ghost writer.. but the name of the grabbed doctor..it makes it oh so much more official and well, professinal. But remember, it is all part of a haunting ghostly experience and one that can raise a few more million bucks for the drug company. You know, I changed my mind: Maybe what they write are truly “ghost stories”.

Want to read more? Read the article by ethicist-physician Howard Brody in his “Hooked: Ethics, Medicine and Pharma” blog August 24, 2009 titled “Friendly Ghosts--Why Should Academic Docs Get All the Credit?”





Boo! ..Maurice.

Graphics: Photographs of student Halloween projects located at the Lombardi Farm Halloween Pumpkin Festival, Santa Clarita, California by me today..Halloween 2009.