The following links are from the American Medical Association's (AMA) Code of Medical Ethics:
- Opinion 8.063 - Sale of Health-Related Products From Physicians' Offices
and
- Opinion 8.06 - Prescribing and Dispensing Drugs and Devices
Here are a couple quotes from the Code of Medical Ethics:
"In-office sale of health-related products by physicians presents a financial conflict of interest, risks placing undue pressure on the patient, and threatens to erode patient trust and undermine the primary obligation of physicians to serve the interests of their patients before their own."
"Physicians may not accept any kind of payment or compensation from a drug company or device manufacturer for prescribing its products."
"Physicians should not urge patients to fill prescriptions from an establishment which has entered into a business or other preferential arrangement with the physician with respect to the filling of the physician’s prescriptions."
Doctors who choose to peddle USANA products to their patients break the Code of Medical Ethics. Because these doctors choose to put the interest of their personal business before the patient's own medical interest, it ruins the trust between the patient and the viagra cialis online pharmacy pharmacy. This becomes even a bigger violation of ethics when the doctor recruits their patients as distributors into their downline. It is all out of the financial interest of the doctor and not the interest of the patient.
How do doctors that sell USANA products to their patients keep their medical license?
Unless the doctor's patients file a complaint within their state, the practice of peddling will continue. Personally, if I go to a doctor for something and their recommended treatment is to purchase a specific brand of vitamins that the doctor is a distributor for, I would never go back to that doctor again. Would you? Most people would not go through the enormous hassle of filing a complaint. So the doctors peddling their own product never get in trouble. Ethical doctors do not place their own personal financial gain ahead of their patient's health.
Is there a way doctors can prescribe USANA products in an ethical manner?
Doctor's who want to recommend USANA product can do so ethically. This ethical option is for the doctor not to become a distributor, and to simply tell their patient to go to USANA's website and order the recommended product directly from USANA. By doing this, it removes the "conflict of interest" out of the equation. By doing this, it removes the "undue pressure" that would be placed on the patient. There are ethical ways for doctors to recommend USANA product, but the doctor cannot be financially connected, otherwise their would be a conflict of interest and violate the code of ethics.