Of doctor conventions and drug companies

Pharmaceutical companies provide the majority of financial support for staging the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Annual Scientific Assembly. In return they are allowed to dominate the physical and mental environment. The assembly is opulent and entertaining, but undoubtedly much of the expense is passed to the health care consumer in the form of high-priced brand-name prescription drugs. Additionally, public perception of such spectacles threatens the image that the AAFP has been careful to nurture--that family physicians are the ultimate advocates for our patients and, by extension, the health care-consuming public. Family physicians and our representative AAFP must recognize our complicity with and vulnerability to media forces. We must further adjust our role, not only to avoid the appearance of impropriety but to rededicate ourselves to our science, our intellectual basis, and ultimately our patients.