I appreciate our fellow blogger Roy Poses over at Health Care Renewal adding some further insights to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)/Coca-Cola controversy:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/11/paging-and-paying-dr-coca-cola.html
Dr. Poses wonders, as I have, why the leadership of AAFP seems so tone-deaf to the outcry that points out how bad the organization has made itself look by signing the deal with Coke to support public "education" about obesity. Dr. Poses, however, was far more energetic in doing some research, and his results are as follows:
"Nonetheless, one would think that the latest round of criticism would make the top leaders of this august professional society less comfortable about the organization's financial relationships with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and now beverage corporations. I fear, though, that they may live too much in the sort of bubble that now protects top executives of most large health care organizations to really question their corporate ties. After all, according to the most recent (2007, covering 6/2007-5/2008) US Internal Revenue Service form 990 filed by the AAFP (via Guidestar), its leaders get sufficient compensation to put them into such a bubble. For example, Dr [Douglas] Hensley [AAFP CEO] received $441,027 regular compensation and $108,930 in benefits and deferred compensation, compared with a median compensation for family physicians in 2008 reported as $159,000 ..."
I guess that when your ears are stuffed with that many dollar bills, tone-deafness is the logical result.
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There is a whole business built around this tone-deaf ecosystem. You have websites pushing drugs on people such as the AAFP sponsored familydoctor.org that shows every symptom any hypochondriac could think of while prominently displaying drugs from the pharmaceutical industry.
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