I found it extremely disturbing that the May 24 issue of CMAJ came bundled with a 4-page advertisement from Berlex for their newly launched oral contraceptive pill.
The advert was thinly veiled as an educational document, complete with a stamp of approval from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) and the name of a professor who does not have the word “author” anywhere near his name.
Advertisements within your journal are a necessary evil; shameless adverts masquerading as continuing medical education (CME) documents are not.
After all the efforts invested by CMAJ on issues of social justice, medical ethics and intellectual property rights, to prostitute your publication on behalf of a pharmaceutical company is heartbreaking. It only provides more evidence that physicians on the whole are completely incapable of navigating the muddy waters of conflict of interest.
I found it paradoxical that the editorial at the front of the same CMAJ issue says, “The public expects physicians to advocate for their individual and collective well-being.”1
Unfortunately, the actions of CMAJ and the SOGC reinforce the notion that physicians today would rather advocate for the highest bidder.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None declared.
REFERENCE
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