My jaw just about dropped when I read this story.  I knew the physicians were “buttered up” by drug companies with things like expensive golf trips, dinners, and God knows what other incentives, but this could be classified as downright conflict of interest. 

Apparently oncologists, or cancer doctors, are the only doctors that are actually allowed to profit from the sale of pharmaceutical drugs – in a cancer doctor’s case, this is chemotherapy drugs and treatments. 

What happens is that they usually will buy the drugs in bulks, and sell them to patients, or patients with insurance, at a marked up cost, making a hefty profit in the interim as the “middle man” of chemo sales. 

Not only that, but the really worrying part is that cancer physicians make the bulk of their income this way.  That’s a serious conflict of interest in my eyes, and quite frankly I am surprised some regulatory commission has not stepped in and put an end to this, so that patients may get a better, more well rounded treatment, possibly in favor of other types of treatments for cancer, other than what is in my opinion an extremely destructive and deadly form of medication. 

I have seen too many people wither away and pass on, mostly from the side effects of this body-ravaging treatment, than I have seen benefit from it, so call me partial, I’m fine with that. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Medical News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.