Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine

Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine: "

Health care around the world is beset by

* rising costs
* declining access
* stagnant quality
* increasingly dissatisfied health care professionals.

Physicians fear their core values are threatened.

These values include:

* putting the interests of individual patients ahead of other concerns;
* practicing with honesty and integrity;
* keeping patients' information confidential;
* teaching the next generation of health professionals;
* practicing medicine based on science and scientific principles.

Strong but generally unrecognized threats to these values arise from concentration and abuse of power in health care systems, because:

* health care is increasingly dominated by large organizations;
* these are often lead by the ill-informed, the self-interested, and even the corrupt.

Thus, the results are:

* patients and physicians are caught in cross-fires between conflicting interests;
* patients and physicians are subject to perverse incentives;
* free speech and academic freedom are threatened;
* pseudo-science and anti-science are gaining ground."