Sometimes if just plain feels good to give a nanny-nanny-pooh-pooh response.

If you hang around me long enough, you’ll eventually hear my take on the whole healthcare thing. The fact that this was released last week kind of makes me smirk:

Doctors are “clearly” influenced by drug companies: new study

Pharmaceutical promotion may cause some doctors to prescribe more expensively, less appropriately and more often, according to a new study.

The findings, published in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine and led by University of Queensland professor Geoffrey Spurling, offer a broad look at the relationship between doctors’ prescribing habits and their exposure to information provided by drug companies. Researchers analyzed 58 separate studies of this phenomenon from Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, dating from the 1960s.

“Many doctors claim they aren’t influenced by the information provided by pharmaceutical companies. Our research clearly shows that they are — and the influence is negative,” says study co-author Joel Lexchin., a professor in the School of Health Policy & Management in York’s Faculty of Health and an emergency physician in Toronto.

More…

I don’t care that they are influenced; I’m sick of the pretense that they are “scientific” in their approach. Get the FDA out of your back pocket and let’s go head to head in a fair fight. It’s rather difficult to rumble when both arms are tied behind your back and a cocked gun is pointing at your head.