Medical malpractice is all too common in the health-care industry. Whether it’s in the operating room or diagnosing the wrong personal injury, when medical mistakes happen oftentimes lives are lost.
Sometimes medical malpractice occurs when a doctor is illegally paid to endorse a product.
Currently, the United States Senate investigation of ties between doctors and the medical device maker Medtronic has brought to light the potential for medical malpractice when doctors are paid by medical technology companies to endorse their products.
This situation becomes a conflict of interest as the new medical technology may have not been thoroughly tested for safety; and if a doctor endorses it because he is paid to do so, our San Diego personal injury attorneys believe that has the potential to cause an injury to you or a loved one.
The physician under investigation, Dr. David Polly Jr, urged members of a Senate panel in 2006 to continue paying for Defense Department medical research into combat-related injuries. But Dr. Polly did not disclose during his testimony that he was a Medtronic consultant and was billing the company $6,000 for his appearance. Instead, he told lawmakers that he was representing a professional medical association of orthopedic surgeons.
Dr. Polly, who is a medical professor at the University of Minnesota, received some of the Defense Department research funds, to head an animal study involving a Medtronic bone growth product called Infuse. That study, which the Defense Department paid over $466,000 to support, involved laboratory animals and was intended to show whether the use of various antibiotics in combination with Infuse could speed the healing of badly fractured and infected shin bones. Such traumatic injuries are common for soldiers wounded in Iraq by roadside bombs and other explosive devices.
While no personal injuries were reported by the patients in the study, this type of conflict of interest is unacceptable. If a doctor is paid to research a product by the manufacturer of that product, who is to say he or she won’t just claim it’s effective to continue getting paid?
Call us now at 1-800-655-6585 or click here for a free consultation with an experienced San Diego personal injury attorney after you get into a car accident and find out how we can help you. We speak English and Spanish, and we look forward to providing advice for your case. No fee if no recovery.
About Michael PinesMichael Pines is a former insurance company attorney who specializes in car accident injury. While he was an insurance attorney, he learned from behind the scenes on how insurance companies work and how they decided to pay injured people. Now that he works against insurance companies, Michael's inside knowledge has resulted in significant benefits to his clients injured in car accidents.
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Tags: Dr. David W. Polly Jr., Infuse, medical malpractice, Medtronic
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