According to a story in The Australian, the drug company Merck has been accused of paying nurses to sift through patient medical records in search of potential candidates for the drug Vioxx.  Here’s what nurse ethicist Douglas Olsen, who recently wrote a two-part article (here’s part one; part two is here) for AJN on nurses and the pharmaceutical industry, wrote to us about the story:

The news report demonstrates the public’s visceral sense that the Merck program in Australia was unethical. Nurses, as well as doctors and pharmacists, can anticipate righteous indignation whenever their clinical deliberations appear compromised by a company’s desire to sell a particular drug. […]