Abstract
This empirical work attends to the tensions and contradictions medical students articulate when they discuss their objection to industry’s influence in medicine. Findings are based on 50 semi-structured interviews with medical students who are critical of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence in medical education in the United States and Canada. These students advocate evidence-based medicine (EBM) as one solution to the problems with industry influence in medicine; namely industry bias in medical research. This investigation is an effort to understand why EBM is posed as a solution to industry bias in light of the literature demonstrating the ways that what is considered ‘evidence-based’ is influenced by industry. Participants articulate a struggle to find the ‘best’ evidence in a context where industry interests are integral in the production of medical knowledge.
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Notes
The current iteration of the campaign, Just Medicine, features the slogan “No Kick Backs”. No Speakers Bureaus. No Free Samples. “JUST MEDICINE” and also seeks to “facilitate student engagement in work that promotes patient-centered, evidence-based clinical practice, medical education and research” (AMSA 2013).
Lexchin (2012) refers here to a process whereby a company or representative of a company recruits a person (or persons) to “take data from clinical trials and write an article with a ‘spin’ favourable to the drug,” then recruits an academic or doctor to pose as the author of that article (254).
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Holloway, K.J. A Troubled Solution: Medical Student Struggles with Evidence and Industry Bias. Sci Eng Ethics 21, 1673–1689 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9623-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9623-z