Pharmaceutical advertising
==========================

* Shelby Haque

I found it extremely disturbing that the May 24 issue of *CMAJ* came bundled with a 4-page advertisement from Berlex for their newly launched oral contraceptive pill.

The advert was thinly veiled as an educational document, complete with a stamp of approval from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) and the name of a professor who does not have the word “author” anywhere near his name.

Advertisements within your journal are a necessary evil; shameless adverts masquerading as continuing medical education (CME) documents are not.

After all the efforts invested by *CMAJ* on issues of social justice, medical ethics and intellectual property rights, to prostitute your publication on behalf of a pharmaceutical company is heartbreaking. It only provides more evidence that physicians on the whole are completely incapable of navigating the muddy waters of conflict of interest.

I found it paradoxical that the editorial at the front of the same *CMAJ* issue says, “The public expects physicians to advocate for their individual and collective well-being.”1

Unfortunately, the actions of *CMAJ* and the SOGC reinforce the notion that physicians today would rather advocate for the highest bidder.

## Footnotes

*   **Competing interests:** None declared.

## REFERENCE

1.  1. Physicians and advocacy [editorial]. CMAJ 2005;172(11):1413.
    
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