Recently Marcia Angell, M.D., the significant other of Arnold S. Relman, M.D., both former Editors of The New England Journal of Medicine, spent her holiday (read the link ½ way down the page to read about her travels) in a tear against the industry.
She treated us to a diatribe on the dangers of pharmaceutical-physician relationships by dusting off one of her many papers against industry and publishing it as a book review (though I had to read halfway through the article to get to the review of books).
In her article she describes the evils of the industry and references Gardiner Harris’ articles and Senator Grassley’s investigations (what a circle we have going on here), I quote you, you quote me…
From this, she also made the guest list of MSNBC, where she also got to discuss the dangers of industry relationships.
In both articles, she downplays the importance of physician involvement in clinical trials. As if somehow physicians should conduct clinical trials at their own expense.
Marcia has clearly been spending too much time criticizing industry (a cottage industry of her own), and little time treating patients or conducting valuable clinical trials, perhaps she should have taken the holidays off.