by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
Some of my longtime Heart Sisters readers may recall my other blog called The Ethical Nag: Marketing Ethics for the Easily Swayed. I started The Nag in 2009, shortly after my post-heart attack launch of Heart Sisters. (Not one but TWO websites? I must have had a lot of recuperation time on my hands back then!)
My Heart Sisters blog is about my true obsession – women and heart disease (which, by the way, kills more women each year than all forms of cancer combined). But in those early days, I was also writing about other issues that somehow didn’t quite fit Heart Sisters. So The Nag became a home for those other posts – but it was one specific article that ultimately made me pull the plug:
That post, for example, called out snake oil salesmen with the letters M.D. after their names who were openly pushing their own unregulated (but apparently miraculous) dietary supplements on their self-promoting retail sites.
Where I live (on the beautiful west coast of Canada), our provincial regulators at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia take a dim view of such retail practices among doctors. In fact, these regulators provide ethical guidelines for physicians who wonder if a cash side hustle selling supplements, medical devices or “meditative mood sprays” to their patients is an acceptable practice. Consider this cautionary warning to physician members of the College, for example:
“The sale and promotion of these items to patients by physicians has been a source of complaints to the College. These transactions can be viewed as self-serving, and can compromise the relationship between physician and patient. Patients may assume that physicians’ recommendation of a product or device implies an endorsement of its efficacy and benefits.
“In general, physicians must avoid selling or promoting medical supplies or devices to patients, particularly if they are not medically required and/or are readily available elsewhere for purchase.”
Good call, College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia! I’m not a doctor, but even I know that trying to sell stuff to your patients that is “not medically required” is not good doctoring.
Dr. Linda Girgis is a family doctor in New Jersey who shares those guideline concerns. You can tell that she does by the title of an essay she wrote, which she called: “I Question The Ethics of Any Doctor Who Sells Supplements to Patients.”(1) In her essay, she wrote about the disturbing experience of one of her own patients who had just visited a different physician:
“She told me that she had purchased ‘special supplements’ from this doctor – supplements that are ‘way better’ than what can be purchased in the pharmacy or any other store. She would pay him about $150 per month – for supplements that could easily be replaced with a generic multi-vitamin.
“We physicians have a duty to help our patients, not try to wrestle away their hard-earned money.”
And speaking of doctors selling retail: here’s where I explain my decision to delete a post I’d written for The Nag after a FedEx courier delivered a mysterious big brown envelope one morning.
The envelope was sent from an American law firm – which will remain nameless so they don’t threaten to sue me. Again.
The big brown FedEx envelope contained a scary one-page letter on the firm’s letterhead.
Their letter basically warned me that vague but terrible consequences would reign down upon my head if I didn’t remove every word I’d just written about one of their celebrity snake oil clients before the deadline of precisely 5 p.m. on Friday, June 30, 2012. (At the time, I was reluctant to point out to the brainiac lawyers that June 30 fell on a Saturday that year – not a Friday).
Well, never mind. . .
My first reaction to this alarming threat had been bold yet naïve outrage, something like:
“These bullies do NOT know who they’re dealing with!”
But then I Googled the name of the firm and learned that it is “one of the highest-grossing law firms worldwide.” The more I pondered their warning, the more I realized I was no match for legal bullying. So I basically held my nose and deleted the relevant article as demanded.
In my own defense, I must add that the words I wrote about their client which had flagged the law firm’s attention had been copied word-for-word directly from the doctor’s own retail website! So the lawyers weren’t threatening me because their doctor/client thought I’d lied about what he was openly selling, but because I’d told the truth – based entirely on his own words!
My outrage fizzled fast while my family and friends were reminding me that the celebrity snake oil guys out there apparently have more money, more power, and more lawyers on annual retainer than I could ever imagine.
I, by comparison, am a dull-witted heart attack survivor living on a modest retirement pension (so modest that it barely keeps my balcony garden in bloom each summer). But those lawyers are funded by wealthy, entitled and highly litigious clients. (Think: Trump’s lawyers suing a journalist for calling him a “millionaire” instead of a “billionaire”!)
I didn’t want to shut down The Nag site, but I was exhausted.
Sadly, my Ethical Nag site was being rapidly embraced as the darling of a growing anti-science/anti-authority movement – never my intention, even when I was writing about questionable marketing claims aimed at vulnerable patients.
I was feeling increasingly distressed to see my name, my reputation and my words co-opted as if I actually supported uninformed extremists, anti-science influencers, conspiracy theorists and other nonsense-peddlers.
Asking informed questions of scientists is smart practice for all of us. But attacking science blindly simply because medical contrarians somehow believe they’re smarter than scientists is not.
There’s simply no such thing, for example, as “what your doctor doesn’t want you to know!”
Think about that world view for a moment. If there were actually such a real life medical secret so miraculous that physicians were, en masse, trying to hide it from us, don’t you think that Big Pharma would have already patented and made a fortune off it by now?
If you do have a genuine interest in credible science (not just the latest from a brain worm-addled “expert” pushing pseudoscience to boost his political ambition), please consider visiting the following credible health and science resources:
– Health Canada 🇨🇦 (if you’re an American who is no longer able to view your own government’s public health websites, Health Canada offers an extensive wealth of sound scientific and medical resource topics ranging from drugs to diseases, product recalls, mental health support, medical research updates, safety alerts and so much more).
– McGill University’s Office of Science & Society based in Montréal, Canada) 🇨🇦 – whose lofty mission is: “Separating Sense from Nonsense”. This office is led by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, author of (love this book title!) Superfoods, Silkworms, and Spandex: Science and Pseudoscience in Everyday Life.
– Center for Science in the Public Interest (non-profit consumer watchdog agency: an independent organization that does not accept corporate or government donations, based in Washington, DC)
– NPR Science (credible and patient-friendly news about all kinds of science “from dolphins to diseases”, this independent, non-profit national public radio broadcast organization was “founded on a mission to create a more informed public”. UPDATE: Last month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced its investigation of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service – so this important science resource might be unfortunately killed off by the time you read this).
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1. Linda Girgis MD, MedPageToday, Kevin MD: “I Question the Ethics of Any Doctor who Sells Supplements to Patients”, September 20, 2016.
Image: Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay
NOTE from CAROLYN: For lots more on women’s heart health (but not too much on medical ethics), read “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease”. You can ask for my book at your local library or bookshop, or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon – or order it directly from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press (use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price).
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Heart Sisters 
Hi Carolyn — My daughter worked for a cardiologist who has “his own line of supplements”.
My husband still orders them to this day and they are expensive. I am convinced they are of no better quality than what you pick up at Walmart.
I confess to buying things right after my heart attack, hoping they would help. It was not long lived, but it was expensive!
I came to the same conclusion – that Big Pharma would have already bought it if it was some miracle.
Thanks for the link to Health Canada. I have a feeling we will need that in the coming years!
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Hello Jodi – lovely to hear from you. Your husband’s experience is a perfect example of how hard it is to say NO to a cardiologist!
I wish that Americans didn’t need to seek out credible public health info from a foreign country (Hey! so far Canada IS still our own country – and WILL BE FOREVER!)
Take care. . . ❤️
Dear readers: Read about Jodi’s heart attack adventure – and her concept of Heart Attack Stun!
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