Warping the motivation – monetizing

[Good intentions]

SAGES has released some really interesting videos recently that seem dramatically different from their supposed objective. This seems to be a following of the general trend in society of measuring everything in money. Everything has to be monetized.

Patients need to be aware of these things when they are planning surgery. Even Dr. Yunis’s web site has a large display of promotion by “World Renowned Hernia Specialist, Dr. Shirin Towfigh”. It is so alien to the thought that the physician you are talking to became a physician to help people, that that is their primary focus. Now they are expected to promote their practice at high intensity, to compete, to make sales, to think like venture capitalists. It doesn’t seem healthy.

[Good intentions]

I can understand owning intellectual property. I have had the thought that if the individual doesn’t own it that a large corporation can take it and bury it. I am fairly certain that their are much better mesh-type prosthetic materials possible but the mesh-making corporations are fine with the their existing product line. Chronic pain is the cost of doing business for them.

[Good intentions]

Ethical Considerations Regarding the Implementation of New Technologies and Techniques in Surgery

“Balancing Responsibilities to Patients and Society

Finally, the cost and value of new technologies, to each of the many constituents in healthcare, must be addressed. Forces impacting health care and its delivery are increasingly important, particularly now as the US transitions to a national health care system. (30,31) At times however, a physician’s responsibility to advocate for individual patients on the one hand, and honor the responsibility to society for stewardship of finite resources on the other hand, may be competing considerations. Physicians do have responsibilities to both, as pointed out by the ACS in its “Code of Professional Conduct” and by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) in its Physician Charter on “Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium”. (32,33) To guide physicians struggling with conflicting responsibilities, the ABIM establishes the following principle: “Principle of primacy of patient welfare…Market forces, societal pressures, and administrative exigencies must not compromise this principle”.

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