German doctors shaken by corruption allegations

BioEdge: German doctors shaken by corruption allegations: "The German Medical Association has investigated nearly 1,000 cases of corrupt doctors over the past few years, according to its president, Frank Ulrich Montgomery.

Dr Montgomery told Der Spiegel that more than half of the case involved alleged bribes from an Israeli pharmaceutical company, Ratiopharm. The doctors were paid for prescribing its drugs to their patients. This was “clearly prohibited”, says Dr Montgomery.

“The Medical Association punished 163 Ratiopharm doctors after state prosecutors made the files available to us,” said Montgomery. He wants the government to pass legislation which would permit the Medical Association itself to conduct searches and confiscate files.

However, this is opposed by health insurance companies. “Corruption is not a minor offence which doctors can regulate amongst themselves,” said an industry spokesman."

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Register all trials, report all results – it's long overdue

Register all trials, report all results – it's long overdue: "If researchers go to the effort of getting funds, recruiting patients, and following them up, you would think that they would be keen to publish the results. So it’s surprising that our best estimates show around half of all completed clinical trials have never been published in academic journals. And the half we have is biased towards trials with positive results."

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