Medicine today is at the crossroads. There is as great an influence of new knowledge as of sponsors. On the one hand the latter ensure the faster output of new knowledge, on the other they try to skew its growth in their favour. Moreover, industry influence has come under the scanner of patients, activists and regulatory authorities. This has resulted in a spate of lawsuits against industry. This phenomenon is hardly likely to abate. In fact if present portents are any indication, it will increase, taking in its grasp clinicians and researchers too. Medicine and its ancillaries will have to do some serious soul searching to keep themselves firmly on course and prevent hijacking of their patient welfare agenda. A number of short term and long term measures will have to be put into place to ensure this. Short-term measures are related to preventing malpractice at various levels because of ulterior motives, both of clinicians and sponsors. Long-term measures are related to how we wish to chart the course of medicine in the future. For the latter, it is time a serious dialogue ensues on whether i) medicine should become a corporate enterprise; ii) remain a patient welfare oriented profession; or iii) become a patient welfare oriented professional enterprise.
This monograph is an effort to promote this dialogue.
It is most lovingly dedicated to one of the doyens of Indian Psychiatry, Prof. N.N. Wig.
About the authors
Ajai R. Singh, M.D., Editor, Mens Sana Monographs, is a Psychiatrist who has earlier worked with the WHO Collaborating Center In Psychopharmacology In India.
Shakuntala A. Singh, Ph.D., Deputy Editor, Mens Sana Monographs, is Principal and Reader and Head, Dept. Of Philosophy, Joshi-Bedekar College, Thane, India. She has earlier worked as a Fellow the Indian Council of Philosophical Research and the University Grants Commission.
They are Founders of the Mens Sana Research Foundation, India.